Ahead of tonight's match, columnist Giles Smith celebrates the true essence of European football, while still harbouring a nagging thought.

There are many good reasons for avoiding a slip-up in tonight's Champions League match in Romania - not least the field day it will hand to the headline writers for tomorrow's papers. 'Cluj-less Chelsea', 'Sorry, I Haven't A Cluj', etc. No one needs that.

Then, of course, there would the cost in terms of the loss of momentum that a disappointing result could inflict, just when the team seems to be getting on a fairly formidable roll across all of the available competitions.

I won't be the first person to notice that we have announced our entry into each of this season's campaigns so far - the Premier League, the Champions League, the Carling - with a 4-0 victory, which is a fairly decent bugle call.

At the same time, to see the extent of the damage that can be inflicted by one unexpectedly poor performance, you've only got to look at Arsenal.

Top of the league, whipping people with their U10 side in the Carling, boasting about never having to buy a player again because they keep finding perfectly decent ones under the carpet - then, kaboom, Hull pitch up in the mood for a scrap and the entire organisation descends into a 48-hour period of mourning, uncertainty and miserable self-examination, with the manager declaring himself physically sickened by what he has seen.

Let's hope our own players will have had plenty of time to digest the implications of this sorry tale on the flight to Romania and will be properly steeled against anything like that happening to us.

There seems to be a general feeling that tonight's match isn't one of 'the glamour ties'. Some commentators have even wondered what a team like Cluj is doing in the Champions League in the first place.

To which the obvious answer is, 'They qualified, stupid.' And then, having qualified, they beat Roma away from home. This is clearly no time for any G14-style sniffiness.

In any case, aren't ties like tonight's the essence of European club football - the reason a club fights to be involved in foreign competitions in the first place? Ideally, the Champions League is about coming into contact with something properly exotic and unusual - or certainly something largely unknown. And too often, in our recent history, it's been about coming into contact with Liverpool, which simply isn't the same.

I'll even admit, at this point, to occasionally (not often, but just every now and again) experiencing a low-level twinge of envy for teams involved in the Uefa Cup - coming up against the likes of FC Gobsplaat, Szkrgsbrg, AC Frj and all those other teams whose names look like the letters-board on 'Countdown'. Because that's properly European and different, isn't it? Unlike Liverpool.

I'm not really complaining, of course. In fact, generally speaking, what is there for any of us to complain about? The season so far has been a joy to behold. Last week, in this space, we wondered whether Mr Scolari would show himself to be a 100 percent Carling Cup kind of manager, thus aligning himself with one of the great traditions of this club and properly lending his backing to what is (let no one forget this) the second oldest knock-out cup competition in English football.

He answered emphatically by fielding a cast-iron side in round three (the ultimate test of Carling-related seriousness) and cruising all over Portsmouth 4-0 for the second time in the season.

Meanwhile, in the league, the team continues to look increasingly fluid and, at the same time, increasingly firm and hard to sway. At Stoke - one of those tricky away trips against a hyper-active, newly-promoted side with a fresh set of batteries and a point to prove - we lacked Deco, Carvalho, Essien and Joe Cole, yet it didn't really seem to matter because of the way that everybody else played.

So, three more points and another clean sheet. We haven't lost at home in the league since football was played in black and white. We play so far forward these days that our full backs keep getting caught offside. This is, in so many ways, an extraordinary period and we should consider ourselves lucky to be living through it.

However, there is one small but strangely persistent black spot. I am constantly reminded, when I look at the table, that we are responsible, in a way, for exactly half of Tottenham's total points tally for the season so far - a stonking great one of their two points from six matches. And, call me over-sensitive, but I can't help but find that slightly shaming. How did it happen?

'Well,' people will say, 'the Premier League is a league in which anyone can beat anyone, on their day.' I'm not sure that it is, though. It is, however, clearly a league in which anyone can draw with anyone, on their day. I suppose that must be at the root of it somehow.