Chelsea – Looking for Love?

2nd October 2005 is a date all Liverpool fans will want to forget – but they won’t find it easy. Just days after drawing a Champions League game with Chelsea that they should have won, the Merseysiders were crushed by an embarrassing 4-1 margin that hardly flattered the league leaders.

It has to be acknowledged that Chelsea were awesome - immensely powerful, brilliantly organised, devastatingly efficient, and totally ruthless. In the second half in particular, they demolished Liverpool and stunned the Anfield faithful in a crucial game whose significance can be measured not only by the reaction of the players, but by the leaping delight of their pumped up Portuguese manager as he raced from the dug-out to punch the air.

The post match quotes attributed to both manager and players suggest that Chelsea have been stung by recent criticism and felt they had a point to prove. Apparently, what particularly riles them is that they do not believe they are given enough respect. That is not entirely true. With 8 victories from 8 games, 18 goals and a mere 2 conceded, a 100% record, a massive 9 point lead at the beginning of October and certain bookies willing to pay out on bets that they will be Premiership Champions for a second successive season before a quarter of the fixtures have been fulfilled, only a fool would deny them respect.

Mourinho and his players should be assured of this. Respect they have in abundance. They are a truly formidable team universally admired for their resources, for their efficiency, for their spirit and togetherness, for their determination and ambition. What they are not – beyond the confines of their fan base – is loved. And there is a very good reason for that. They have not so much raised the bar as changed the bar. They are widely perceived as cold, clinical, almost robotic – adjectives which most observers would agree were not applied to their predecessors at the top of the Premier League in recent years.

Manchester United at their best played with a panache that made them irresistible – as wave after wave of attacks rained down on their opponents. Arsenal at their most compelling produced sublime attacking football, a heady cocktail of pace, power, intricacy and spontaneity. And both clubs demonstrated that the Premier League could be won, gloriously won, by producing football which was consistently entertaining – indeed they gave the distinct impression that as far as they were concerned, that is how it should be won.

As the new kids on top of the Premiership block, there is a lesson for Chelsea here. It will be interesting to see whether they have both the intelligence and the humility to learn it. To appreciate, and to demonstrate that they appreciate, the difference between confidence and arrogance. To show as well as to demand respect. To play with flair rather than to exhibit flair occasionally. And to smile a lot more – because at the moment for all the success their football has brought, they so rarely seem to be enjoying it.

Then they will be loved. Perhaps then, too, their much admired manager will allow the word ‘entertain’ a place in his football vocabulary.