There was a moment’s silence before the start of the game, not that you’d have noticed. Matchdays at Stamford Bridge these days dawn with a curious mixture of fascination and foreboding: roughly akin to the sensation of sitting down in a restaurant that has a 3.3 rating on Google Maps. Nobody really knows what to expect any more. None of the old benchmarks of quality seem to apply. What constitutes success amid the permanent concussion of post-Abramovich Chelsea? Top four? A sense of stylistic progress? An unchanged starting XI?
In this respect, it was tempting to suggest that these 104 minutes of football changed little: for all the thrills and plot twists, the deflections and the chaotic counterattacks and the 20-yard slide tackles in the teeming rain. We knew that Chelsea thrive against opponents who give them space to run into; that they remain barely competent at defending the areas around their penalty box. That they are capable of producing moments of sublime quality and moments of abject calamity, and as you scan the barcode on your ticket you have no idea of knowing which will prevail.
