Essien drags Blues out of mediocrity

WHEN Michael Essien smiles, and he smiles a lot, it feels like an extra floodlight has just been switched on.

The Ghanaian is blessed with the sort of luminous grin that makes dentists go weak at the knees and his absence over the last six months has left Chelsea fumbling in the gloom,

There are many reasons why Luiz Felipe Scolari’s Stamford Bridge tenure proved such an unmitigated disaster but the Brazilian might well point to the moment in early September when scans at a London hospital revealed a rupture to Essien’s anterior knee ligament as central to sealing his fate.