TERRACE TALK: Chelsea - Smooth sailing but clouds never far away

Given that the Manchester City team were barely out of nappies, we were expected to win this cup game and win it easily. And so we did, and it felt good.

Although I don’t subscribe to the notion that Mourinho was “toxic” —it’s more that the press whipped up every situation to be toxic, sometimes, it’s just nice to be quietly going about your business, which is what seems to be happening at the moment.

The only dark cloud on the horizon is the John Terry situation, but maybe someone will come to their senses and smooth that over to the satisfaction of all parties so we can heal all wounds in time for the end of the season to stand us in good stead for the new.

Who am I kidding? That’s not how Chelsea work — shooting oneself in the foot is our speciality — this is just probably the quiet before the storm — but I will enjoy it none the less for now.

Our performance against PSG was actually better than I expected. They were better than us — but then we knew that. The fact that the score was as close as it was, given the firepower they have, is pretty encouraging — and what with the away goal as well, it’s as good as we could have hoped for really. Not that I think we can prevent them scoring at the Bridge. It will still be nigh on a miracle should we get through, but at least we can say that we gave it a pretty damn good go. And what with being fortunate enough not to be tear-gassed, robbed, or spat at this time, I would count this trip to Paris as fairly successful.

Hazard continues to worry me. I’m not sure whether we just have no right to expect him to recreate his form of last season, whether he is simply struggling, or whether his heart really isn’t in it at the moment. Sadly, I think it’s the latter — Real Madrid have been fluttering eyelashes in his direction while PSG have been far more obvious than that — flashing their knickers, if you will.

It will be interesting to see how the Chelsea board handle this one. He would command a big fee and we have demonstrated in recent times that almost everyone is available at the right price.

Despite his current form, Hazard is a special player, possibly one of the top five players in the world and do we really want to let such a player go — at any price? Wouldn’t selling him be an admission of our lack of ambition?

Good clubs do not rest on their laurels, they look to improve every season.

It worries me that we still seem to be looking at bargain basement buys — that we are still trying to unearth a previously unseen superstar. What worries me more is that we seem to have made a difficult task even harder by using Grant and Emenalo in that process. It’s like mining for diamonds armed only with a tooth pick and a butter knife. But I digress...

Still no clues as to who our next manager is going to be, and I don’t mind admitting that I am getting nervous. I get that those in the mix will invariably be working elsewhere at the moment and will not want to destabilise their current club’s season.

But these things do usually have a way of getting out and there seems to have been very little talk of any real substance. I hope this doesn’t mean that we are struggling to attract anyone of a suitable calibre to the position.

This was always my fear when we sacked Mourinho.

Perhaps if we did struggle to get a manager it would be no bad thing — a lesson learnt perhaps? I don’t like the possible consequences of that either but it is a possibility and one we need perhaps to be prepared for.