Efficient Chelsea edge closer to second title

Bolton 0 Chelsea 2

Pragmatic, effective and efficient, Mourinho’s team ruthlessly capitalised on Manchester United’s astonishing implosion against Sunderland and, nine points clear with four games remaining, can now secure the championship today if Alex Ferguson’s side slip-up at Spurs and Chelsea beat Everton.

Yet this was no glorious victory parade. As so often since the turn of the year, Chelsea triumphed without ever hitting the heights, a telling illustration of their overwhelming superiority over the rest of the Premiership, and with a display that was pock-marked by the now familiar posturing and diving that Mourinho and his players have turned into an art form.

It is hardly any wonder that the win was generated an enormous sense of anti-climax.

Not that Mourinho is at all bothered by such niceties. The Portuguese is concerned only with winning titles, not hearts and minds. Indeed he revealed, that his family cannot imagine life without an end of season celebration.

“First of all I want to win it,” he said. “If I win it, it will be the second in England and fourth consecutive in two different countries. It’s a great situation for me but I must be ready also for the other side of the coin, because one day I will lose a championship. I must be ready for that moment. But if we win the second Premiership you can say, ‘yes, only you and Alex did it’. But he has so much silverware you cannot compare.

“I enjoy when it’s over and I have my wife and my kids with me. My family never goes to football, they only go when we receive the cup. My kid is six, you can imagine since he was born he’s always had a trophy. And he’s asking me for a couple of weeks, ‘when’s the party?’ Imagine next season or in two season’s time, no cup and no football.

“If I’m not champion it’s not good enough. That’s not easy.”

Typically, it was the Frank Lampard who set the seal on this win at the same stadium where he scored twice last season to secure the club’s first title for 50 years.

The England midfielder capped the best attacking move of the match, collecting Hernan Crespo’s cleverly weighted ball inside the area before drilling the ball past Jussi Jaaskelainen just short of the hour.

Having gone behind immediately before half time when John Terry and Didier Drogba both made contact with Lampard’s free-kick, Bolton’s confidence visibly drained and the match was over as a contest.

Lampard’s goal was his 15th in the league, a Premiership record and the player is already anticipating next season’s challenge. “We’re determined to make this success a long-term thing,” he said.

“But we won’t stop there, we’re hungry and we want to go on and do it again, again and again and emulate the monopoly that Manchester United had.

“It will not be easy, we know that, we’ve noticed opposition teams this season are trying very, very hard to beat us.

“It’s been harder than last season because every place you go to as reigning champions, you find teams are upping their game, they make it difficult and we’ve had a lot of tight games this season. But we’ve pulled through. We’ve still got a little way to go but hopefully we will do it.”

For Bolton, a fifth successive defeat dealt a severe blow to their hopes of returning to European competition and manager Sam Allardyce admitted that would be a devastating end to the campaign.

“We would feel we haven’t had a good season whatsoever.”

Opta Fact: Chelsea's defenders have scored nine Premiership goals this season, more than any other team's backline.

Opta Fact: Frank Lampard has scored five goals in his last three meetings with Bolton.