Champions show signs of recovery

HAVE Chelsea turned a corner, after the dark mid-winter months that have seen the champions slide from the summit of the Premier League to a place among the also-rans?

If winning ugly is a necessary requirement for all winning teams, as is so often said, Chelsea showed that they are capable of doing that with a gutsy display in a scrappy game that looked destined to be deadlocked until goals from Branislav Ivanovic and Nicolas Anelka ended Blackburn’s resistance.

Ivanovic scored a scruffy goal from a tight angle after 57 minutes, and then thumped in a header that Anelka touched over the line in the 76th minute to seal three points and move Chelsea back into the top four.