Last season in this competition Chelsea came to Norway and were involved in a farce of a game in a Tromso blizzard. Last night they returned to the same country to find themselves taking part in another absurd 90 minutes of football which this time featured not a flurry of snow but of goals, substitutions and indifference.

The game was such a doddle for the holders that they treated it just like a testimonial, playing at half speed, pulling out of tackles and generally taking the easiest of routes to the semi-final.

This was because they killed the tie off with two goals in the first 15 minutes, putting themselves 50 up on aggregate. Gianluca Vialli left Marcel Desailly and Frank Leboeuf behind to protect minor injuries ahead of Sunday's Premiership game at Aston Villa and his decision proved justified.

Vialli scored the first from a cross by one of the men given their chance in the reshuffle, 18year-old John Terry. A left-footed swing at the ball failed to connect, but the player-manager followed it up with a right which found the net from close range.

Three minutes later Chelsea scored again. This time a Dennis Wise corner was headed clear, but only to the defender Bernard Lambourde who cracked home a low shot. Chelsea lifted their foot off the gas and paid the price for their complacency on 27 minutes when Valerenga pulled a goal back. The 19,000-strong home crowd - almost three times larger than normal - greeted the goal as if it was the winner in a cup final.

Dag Riisnes swung in a corner from the right that found the head of the 6ft 6in Valerenga captain Fredrik Kjolner, who looped the ball over Ed De Goey and into the far corner.

But quality defending was not a strong point of this game and seconds later Dan Petrescu's cross from the right set up Tore Andre Flo for a header that flashed past Mikko Kaven.

However, Valerenga's heads did not go down and three minutes before half-time they pulled back another goal. Again its genesis was shoddy defending as Carew pounced on a poor back-header from Michael Duberry, rounded the flailing De Goey and finished brilliantly from a tight angle.

The burlesque nature of the game was emphasised at half-time when Chelsea, disregarding the possibility of any future injuries, used up all three substitutes in one fell swoop. It made sense in terms of resting players but reduced to a nonsense what was, after all, a quarter-final tie in a so-called major European tournament.

Valerenga: Kaven, Berntsen, Walltin, Levernes, Tran, Riisnaes, Haraldsen, Hovi (Haug 78), Simpson (Thorsten 54), Carew (Musaeus 82), Kjoelner. Subs Not Used: Bolthof, Karlsen, Kaasa, Oedegaard. Goals: Kjoelner 27, Carew 41.

Chelsea: De Goey, Terry, Duberry, Lambourde, Le Saux, Petrescu, Di Matteo, Wise (Newton 45), Babayaro (Myers 45), Flo (Nicholls 45), Vialli. Subs Not Used: Percassi, Zola, Morris, Hitchcock. Goals: Vialli 11, Lambourde 15, Flo 33.

Referee: A Ancion (Belgium).