Roman Abramovich has demanded two Champions League trophies in the next six years, but the Chelsea owner will be out of luck if his team perform as unconvincingly as they did against Rosenborg last night. The Norwegian champions deserved their 1-1 draw and the boos at the end reflected the home supporters’ dissatisfaction. What will also unsettle Abramovich is that those fans declined to turn up in their usual domestic droves. The crowd of 24,973 was the lowest at Stamford Bridge for four years.

They saw Chelsea recover from a 1-0 half-time deficit in their opening group B match and at least Abramovich enjoyed the sight of Andriy Shevchenko, his favourite son, scoring the second-half equaliser and generally shining amid the uninspiring individual displays around him.

It was the third match in a row that Chelsea have failed to win, after the 2-0 league defeat away to Aston Villa and the 0-0 draw at home to Blackburn Rovers, and José Mourinho was clearly perturbed by another lacklustre performance. “Am I alarmed? Of course, I am not happy,” the manager said. “Against Blackburn and Rosenborg we did enough to win both matches. The history of the game is that we could not score more than one goal in 20 shots.

“These are the type of games that you normally win, at home against a team that is usually the weakest in the group. But we are not scared of the situation we find ourselves in. Maybe we will need to get four points against Valencia but . . . it is not a drama.”

Chelsea badly missed the injured Frank Lampard and Didier Drogba and Mourinho confirmed that neither is likely to be fit for the Barclays Premier League match against Manchester United at Old Trafford in Sunday.

By contrast, Liverpool were hugely grateful for their 1-1 draw, away to FC Porto. Behind after eight minutes to Lucho González’s penalty, they equalised through Dirk Kuyt’s header and though rarely looking in trouble afterwards, the quality of their performance left much to be desired.

Liverpool also had Jermaine Pennant sent off for a second bookable offence and the winger may face further punishment if Lubos Michel, the Slovakian referee, reports him for taking almost a minute to leave the pitch.

Rafael Benítez admitted that his team had played poorly. “The first half we started really badly,” the manager said. “We were making so many mistakes. The second half was better, but it’s very difficult with ten players. We needed to show character to get the result and I think we did that.”