Chelsea chief Ron Gourlay concedes judgement on their campaign will be decided by the Champions League final.

The Blues face finishing outside the top four this season.

"It's certainly not where we set out to be at the start of the season," said Gourlay, who refused to go as far as some of Chelsea's players by branding such an outcome a "disaster".

"I don't think we talk about disasters at this stage because we've still got the opportunity of turning this into the most historic season for the football club."

However, Gourlay all but admitted it could not be considered a successful season if Chelsea ended it out of the Champions League for the first time since Abramovich bought the club nine years ago.

"If we won the FA Cup and Champions League final then, yes, we would've turned around our season and it'll be a fantastic end to a season which has, in parts, been very, very difficult," Gourlay said.

"We'd sit down and we'd look at the whole season and we'd try to correct the things that went wrong in the first place and make sure we learned from any mistakes."