SOCCER:How Chelsea must wish the Premiership's four leading clubs really were in a league of their own.
They would be favourites to stay its undisputed champions, instead of puffing after Manchester United in the real table. Jose Mourinho, since coming to this country, has had a total of 15 league matches against Liverpool, Arsenal and Manchester United, losing just once in a defeat at Old Trafford inflicted by Darren Fletcher's header in November 2005.
Those woes have given rise to the principal theme for the assumed elite. Just what were they to do when Chelsea were led by a manager of such shrewdness and funded by an owner of fathomless wealth? It ought to have been too much for the also-rans to hope that the pair would become estranged and that this would occur while injury denuded Mourinho's squad.
Past durability is not necessarily a guide to future performance, particularly the imminent future of today's lunchtime kick-off for Chelsea at Anfield. It is mortifying for Rafael Benitez, a man so adept in other tournaments at nullifying the strengths of better-equipped opponents, that he has gone through five Premiership games with Chelsea and been beaten in them all.
There are always grievances festering in a record of that nature and the outcome, to take one example, could have been different in January 2005. With the game goalless, the only spots in the Anfield stadium from which it was impossible to witness the visitors' midfielder Tiago clearing a cross with his fist inside the penalty area must have been the ones occupied by the referee, Mike Riley, and his assistant.
Benitez is too pragmatic to refer much to that particular injustice. He has eliminated both United and Chelsea in knockout tournaments, but he will realise those days showed primarily that his uneven squad is adept at rising to a particular occasion.
Chelsea, with consecutive titles, have had no alarms to rush them into redevelopment. It is the would-be challengers who are left striving to do that. Should Mourinho be in trouble, it will be because of the conscious wish to alter a successful formula, with significant figures such as Eidur Gudjohnsen and Damien Duff allowed to leave while he elected to find out what would happen if he cut squad numbers.
The main conclusion today is that it puts you at the mercy of the sort of key injuries that give Benitez his best chance yet of notching up a Premiership win over Chelsea. While most Anfield fans would agree there are better players at the club than when he was appointed three years ago, Liverpool's two Premiership victories since then against another member of the elite have both come against Arsenal, the first of them through a last-minute swing of Neil Mellor's boot in November 2004.
The most marked response to disappointment is to be found in Arsene Wenger's team. Almost two years ago his line-up were beaten 4-2 by United at Highbury. Of the starting line-up that February night in 2005 just two will be expected to begin tomorrow's game. Even then, Mathieu Flamini may be sharing that distinction with Thierry Henry because Gilberto Silva's suspension has created a vacancy. The rest have been sold or consigned to the reserves.
While Wenger has a history of winning trophies with some regularity, he behaves as if there is no rush. The manager never needs the indulgence of the crowd for long, but Arsenal are the kind of club where patience was to be anticipated. Wenger swiftly exceeded all expectations, both in the quantity of silverware accumulated and in the elan of his teams' style. Arsenal are in his debt and he is fully aware of the fact. The effect is a liberating one and Wenger is emboldened to give youngsters their chance. There is a deep well of trust to be drawn on both by him and by the newcomers he recruits.
Wins over United, however, have been scarce and the fully merited 1-0 victory at Old Trafford in September felt like a breakthrough. Alex Ferguson's circumstances have not been as civilised as those of Wenger. Now 65, time was not on his side as it could be for the Arsenal manager and he had to live up to the splendours, including a Champions League triumph, that he had created in the 1990s.
He may have gone on doing well against Liverpool and even Arsenal, but there was no kudos in that while Chelsea were out of reach. He had neither the time nor the personnel to attempt another youth revolution such as the one in which he promoted David Beckham, Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes and Gary Neville. Ferguson required a good year immediately if the Glazers were to continue employing him.
His reaction to the Chelsea ascendancy has been to invest faith in age as much as promise. With Giggs and Scholes unexpectedly to the fore again, Edwin van der Sar and, recently, Henrik Larsson have been added. In addition, Nemanja Vidic has been of great significance to the defence, Patrice Evra is performing more forcefully than looked conceivable and Cristiano Ronaldo is entering his maturity.
Whatever one makes of the price, Michael Carrick, too, is doing the job expected.
United lead the Premiership and Arsenal suggest they will be far nearer the peak in the years to come. As the belated reactions to the Abramovich era become apparent, Liverpool's fortunes today will give us more clues as to whether or not it is Chelsea who are slipping downwards.
Guardian Service
FA PREMIERSHIP The top four
P W D L F A W D L F A Pts GD
Man Utd 23 10 1 1 29 8 8 2 1 23 8 57 36
Chelsea 23 8 4 0 24 8 7 2 2 17 9 51 24
Liverpool 23 9 2 0 23 3 4 2 6 12 13 43 19
Arsenal 23 6 5 0 28 8 6 1 5 15 11 42 24
Today: Liverpool v Chelsea, Anfield, 12.45. On TV: Sky Sports 1
Sunday: Arsenal v Man Utd, Emirates Stadium. On TV: Sky Sports 1
