TERRACE TALK: Chelsea - Goal bonanza raises spirits for Paris trip

It is amazing what a 5-1 win can do. We didn’t just score goals, we scored good goals and that can only help us going into tomorrow’s Champions League grudge match in Paris.

Obviously Newcastle were shockingly awful but that is by the by — we needed to remember that when we attack we can be pretty formidable.

Costa is certainly beginning to look his old self which is a relief as we don’t have many options in terms of strikers. He is rediscovering his aggressive nature — not in the sense of causing ructions with opponents and officials — but in terms of his football. He is focused, confident and seems to be enjoying the game again.

Pedro continues to divide opinion amongst the Stamford Bridge faithful — personally I like him and not just because he scored a couple of goals on Saturday. Like Willian he works hard, does a lot of running and is difficult to contain. He doesn’t perhaps get stuck in as much as others but he doesn’t really have the physique. It’s also good to see some attacking play after seeing Guus stifle any inventiveness by playing both Matic and Mikel.

Despite the final score, one thing that was quite worrying is just how badly we fell apart for 15 minutes following John Terry’s exit. Had we been playing anyone better than Newcastle we could have been made pay for that headless chicken period.

Ivanovic may be a triple-hard bastard, and he may have been at the club seven years, but he is no captain. I’ve talked about this before, but the fact is that we have no other real leaders on that pitch other than JT and we seem to need one. Who do the club have in mind to replace him in that regard? Because I see no one up to the job, quite frankly.

But back to the here and now, we continue to make (slow but steady) progress up the table. Our fall from grace was catastrophic so we cannot think that things will right themselves immediately. The top four seem to be more or less a given now but 5th/6th places are up for grabs. I wanted to avoid the Europa Cup but we need to make that level of recovery up the table to re-establish ourselves and to maintain confidence in the team.

We will certainly need some confidence tomorrow night —Paris St Germain could be our last Champions League opponents for quite some time. The rivalry between the two clubs has grown year on year and they have in effect become the new Barcelona as far as we are concerned.

The disparity between us could not be any starker at the moment. Our fall from grace is well documented — in contrast they are 25 points ahead of their nearest league rival in France, haven’t lost a game and have a goal difference of a massive plus 51. Looking at those figures, we don’t stand a chance. But you never know... Chelsea are nothing if not unpredictable.

Traditionally we never play very well in our European aways — we save our heroics for back at the Bridge but I think we need to put down some sort of marker in Paris this week.

Things don’t get much easier after Paris — we’ll have another mountain to climb in the shape of Manchester City on Sunday.

They are a formidable team but I think they’ve under-performed this season given the quality of their squad. They should be leading that league by a country mile. Instead they look as if they may wrestle the fourth place trophy out of Arsenal’s grasp.

Still, one could rightly point at our squad and remark that it has taken us six months to get into positive goal difference! Anyway, by next week’s article we will be at a stage where we will have a clearer picture of what is achievable and what isn’t.