With just two rounds of Champions League group matches played, Europe has already watched CFR Cluj beat Roma and hold Chelsea; Belarus side BATE Borisov take a point off Italian giants Juventus and Anorthosis Famagusta from Cyprus draw away in Bremen.

The big name clubs from the big name leagues are not having it all their own way in the competition.

Add to that last night's Anorthosis 3-1 win over Henk Ten Cate's Panathinaikos, another well-established Champions League side, and there might be early signs of a levelling-up in standard across Europe.

'The time has gone when you go to a place, especially in the Champions League, and you win easily,' agrees Michael Ballack who played the full 90 minutes of the goalless stalemate in Romania.

'You saw that with some of the other results, not just ours, that if you don't play with 100 per cent of your quality, you draw or you lose.'

Though admitting the Chelsea performance fell short of the level seen for most of this season, Ballack also acknowledges that Cluj's quality had made it tough.

Not since the FA Cup defeat at Barnsley back in March had a team prevented Chelsea from finding the net. The previous club to do so in the Champions League was Olympiacos a month earlier.

'It has been a long time, but these games come when you can't score,' Ballack says.

'This team was new in the Champions League, everybody expects a victory for us but you could see Cluj played good football and they deserved a point. It was not an easy place to come and they made life difficult for us. Near the end they hit the post so we have to be happy with the point.'

As much as the lost points in Cluj, it's the loss of more players to injury that is occupying Chelsea minds the day after the game, with news awaited on the medical examination of Didier Drogba.

Ashley Cole before the game plus centre-backs John Terry and Alex were also afflicted, leading to a shuffling of positions towards the end of the game.

'Both teams have to play on the same pitch but there was a lot of sand and a lot of players have problems now after the games. But this is football, sometimes the pitch is good, sometimes the pitch is not so good.

'At the moment we are not so lucky with injuries. For a few minutes I had to play up front and it shouldn't happen that we have more injuries. It is not easy at the moment.

'It looks like a few players have problems, especially for Sunday's game, but we have a strong squad. I just hope it is enough now and we can keep going.'