Chelsea found only cold comfort in Norway yesterday as they took time off from a domestic season that continues to fall around them. And that was not just because on arriving here they discovered a thick flurry of snow doing the same.
Having been frozen out of the FA Cup and having slipped up in the Premiership, Gianluca Vialli's team must now try to find some enthusiasm for a competition that eight days ago was third on their list of priorities but now looks to represent their only realistic chance of winning some silverware.
Tonight's tie should not prove too demanding given Chelsea's 30 first-leg lead but retaining a cup which is so discredited that this is its final year of life was not what fuelled their hopes just over a week ago.
Of course there is still the goal of a European place in the Premiership to play for. But, with Graeme Le Saux still to face his FA showdown with Robbie Fowler and the Chelsea coach Graham Rix fearing a prison sentence for under-age sex, the Stamford Bridge dream has lost a lot of its shine.
The last thing they needed was to find Oslo covered in two inches of snow. However, the arctic climate does not threaten tonight's game: the under-soil heating at the National Stadium has been on for the last two months now. But memories of Chelsea's rather effete reaction to the blizzard in Tronso during last season's Cup run spring to mind, when they lost 3-2 to those Norwegian part-timers.
Add to that the fact that Chelsea are going through their worst spell of the season - two defeats in their last three games without scoring - and Norwegian romantics are busy dreaming of what could be.
Defeat for Chelsea will be a surprise, however. Valerenga's shortage of attacking ideas in the first leg was only partly due to the Scandinavians not having played for three months because of their winter break.
In addition, Chelsea's problems are not at the back - they have conceded only one goal in five Cup Winners' Cup ties this season - but up front. A semi-final place looks easily within reach.
So confident is Vialli about tonight's game that he has left his first-choice central defenders, Marcel Desailly and Frank Leboeuf, in London nursing injuries which, he says, would have been risked had this been a more important match.
Chelsea (probable, 4-4-2): De Goey; Ferrer, Lambourde, Duberry, Le Saux; Petrescu, Di Matteo, Wise, Babayaro; Zola, Vialli.
