Grant serves up a dish fit for an oligarch as Chelsea slice apart soft-centred City
Just so long as Abramovich does not expect wins of this magnitude to become a habit. At heart this is still the Chelsea of Mourinho, based on sound defensive principles with Mikel’s assiduous tracking-down of Elano, City’s Brazilian inspiration, as crucial as their attacking excellence. Impressive though it was, moreover, Saturday’s performance needs to be kept in perspective. City’s manager, Sven-Goran Eriksson, was not being disingenuous when he declared “we made Chelsea look better than they are today”.From Chelsea’s point of view what made the result significant, in addition to the winning margin, was the eagerness with which their players sought further goals long after the contest had been decided. This would not have been Mourinho’s way. Once Didier Drogba’s second goal had given Chelsea a 3-0 lead before the hour the game would have been rapidly wound down as the team played out time.Grant sees things rather differently which is why he is now in charge. “We are concentrating on attacking football,” he said. “How to move right, how to behave right, how to get the best out of the players and make them better. I know we cannot do it in every game over the 90 minutes but I think we need in modern football for people to come and have fun.”Under Mourinho fun was strictly rationed, like sweets in wartime, and despite Grant’s good intentions Chelsea will still experience occasions when the frolics have to take second place to achieving a satisfactory result. Nevertheless, Stamford Bridge should be in for a few more fun days to judge from the way the full-backs, Juliano Belletti, Paulo Ferreira and, when fit, Ashley Cole, are allowed to overlap in attack whereas previously they were tethered to the halfway line.Saturday’s success, however, was rooted more in Chelsea’s mastery of the midfield in which Frank Lampard was outstanding with Michael Essien not far behind. There was a telling moment in the ninth minute when Dietmar Hamann completely sold himself as he went to challenge Lampard and found himself tackling thin air. Seven years earlier, on a similar grey October afternoon at Wembley, Hamann had set in train events which led to Eriksson becoming England manager when he ran the midfield for Germany in a World Cup qualifier and scored the winner, Kevin Keegan resigning when the game ended. Now Hamann suffered echoes of Germany’s 5-1 defeat by Eriksson’s England a year later.Manchester City remain a pratfall waiting to happen but their early-season form under Eriksson had been impressive, not least because of the discipline and composure he had brought to the defence.”Maybe there has been too much talk about us playing good football,” he said, “and I will not blame anyone for that but if you don’t defend well then these things will happen that have happened today. If you give Frank Lampard, Michael Essien and Joe Cole all the time and space we gave them they will kill you, and they killed us. I am not talking about the four defenders. If you defend in football today you have to defend with 11. We did exactly the opposite.”Bereft of midfield cover City’s back four were drawn and quartered, most notably by Lampard’s superb diagonal ball, which sent in Drogba for Chelsea’s second, his cushioned pass having set up Essien for their first. Drogba scored again after Lampard, who looked offside, had seen his shot parried by Joe Hart, and the Ivorian’s nod-down released Cole to score a fourth. Essien then created a fifth for Salomon Kalou and a sixth for Shevchenko.By this time Javier Garrido, allegedly City’s left-back, might as well have worn a notice saying All Through Traffic. Not that Chelsea needed any guidance. They were having fun.Man of the match Frank Lampard (Chelsea)
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