Tense? How could Chelsea supporters not feel tense? Daunted, too. Here we sit on the eve of yet another encounter with our bitterest rivals in the competition that (let’s make no bones about this) really matters, and with exalted triumph or gut-wrenching defeat the only alternatives at the end of it all. Who wouldn’t be anxious?

But let’s not dwell here on the Barclays Premier League title decider against Manchester United on Saturday, and the possibility — incredible to think — that Chelsea may yet lift their third league championship in four years. Instead, let’s try to turn our minds to the prospect (as inconveniently timed as it is) of this semi-final meeting with Liverpool in the Champions League — a consolation prize, clearly, in the context of Chelsea’s season, but still worth taking fairly seriously, for all that.

I don’t suppose any Chelsea fan was delighted by the draw. That’s partly history. We’ve been here before, twice, and, if memory serves, it didn’t worked out particularly happily on either occasion. I like the Liverpool joke about getting to keep Chelsea if they beat them again. Technically, though, wouldn’t it have to happen five times for that rule to apply? And it couldn’t happen five times, could it? Tell me it couldn’t happen five times.

Mostly, though, the deflation is geographical and has to do with the disappointment of travelling this far in Europe and ending up in Liverpool. You enter the Champions League, surely, in the hope of measuring itself against the continent’s finest teams or, at the very least, playing someone from another country. Otherwise the Champions League is merely the FA Cup with added sight-seeing, and where’s the fun in that?

Still, even now the match will be, in its own way, a showcase for two radically different approaches. Chelsea go into Tuesday evening’s encounter after a season of must-win games across four competitions, whereas Liverpool have, essentially, been resting players in anticipation of this one since August.

It’s a question of priorities, I suppose, and if Rafael Benítez long ago decided to make Europe’s fancy money-magnet the limit of Liverpool’s ambition, then he has every right to. True, it’s the equivalent of a company deciding to invest absolutely everything in the works outing and give up almost entirely on the work. But good luck to the club in this engagingly light-hearted approach to the job in hand. It wouldn’t suit everyone, obviously, but it seems to satisfy Liverpool, give or take the odd, frustrated outburst from Steven Gerrard, and, at the end of the day, I always say, whatever makes you happy.

With regard to the potentially key factors, I don’t suppose there is a single Chelsea fan who isn’t relieved that the second leg is at Stamford Bridge, rather than at Anfield (as both times previously), where the crowd plays its fabled role as a “twelfth man”.

That said, historically it can’t be denied that the twelfth man has had a gradually diminishing influence on these fixtures, managing a decisive (if widely disputed) early goal the first time out, but requiring extra time and penalties on the second occasion. Signs, there, of a definite waning, surely, and it would have been interesting to see whether the twelfth man had been rested early enough to have a decisive impact this time.

Is it of any relevance that Liverpool find themselves mired in “boardroom turmoil”? I don’t suppose the players are all that bothered. It’s culturally fascinating, though, isn’t it?

Liverpool are at present the hapless plaything of two warring American franchise-leasers, and may yet end up twinned with Dubai. Chelsea, by comparison, represent old money and a rather regal stability.

Anyway, I’m with Oscar Wilde: once was misfortune, twice was carelessness and a third time is, at the very least, statistically improbable. Please.