One final roll of the dice. The faint hope of lightning striking for the fourth time in little more than a decade.
It is a brutal illustration of Chelsea’s woes this season that they arrive here, in early April, knowing their last shot at silverware, and their only chance of qualifying for the Champions League, is to ride the wave of memory and win Europe’s most coveted prize. Simple as you like.
Not much about this campaign — two fired managers and two interims, £600million spent on new signings and a slide to 11th in the Premier League — suggests they will leave the Santiago Bernabeu tonight with anything other than a mountain to climb in next week’s quarter-final second leg.