Charlton 0 Chelsea 1:Teams get nothing for losing, yet Charlton took almost as much satisfaction from Saturday's defeat as Jose Mourinho's side did from victory. While the return of Petr Cech in goal and, for the closing minutes, John Terry to their defence, has brought the champions up to strength for a month of cup football, Charlton will hope the strength of this display bodes well for a sequence of fixtures against fellow strugglers.

Before the game the Chelsea manager told his players "in February we have five cup finals". In fact, they have only one, against Arsenal in the League Cup at the Millennium Stadium, but what Mourinho was seeking to get across was the importance of the next few matches to the success of Chelsea's season.

Beating Charlton ensured Chelsea would not fall further behind Manchester United at the top of the Premier League, and they should progress in the FA Cup against Blackpool or Norwich, but the Champions League must now be Mourinho's prime target.

Chelsea were not back to their best here, where an impressive start failed to produce an impressive victory. Again Andriy Shevchenko and Michael Ballack were expensive adornments rather than essential components. Shevchenko brought a sharp save from Scott Carson on the quarter-hour, but was off target with a header five minutes later following the best of several well-judged centres from Wayne Bridge. Ballack went close with a couple of headers but is still at odds with the intensity of the Premier League and appeared to lose interest as the match progressed.

Such shortcomings were, as ever, redeemed by the selfless industry and shrewd manoeuvrings of Frank Lampard, who scarcely wasted a ball all afternoon and held the team together as Charlton pressed forward consistently after half-time.

An important by-product of Terry's recovery from back surgery will be the return of Michael Essien to bolster Chelsea's midfield. "Michael has played at centre back for one-and-a-half months and has been brilliant," Mourinho explained, "but at the end of games he has a lot of energy left. That's why he likes to play in midfield."

Confident after winning at Portsmouth and drawing at Bolton, Charlton were much improved compared with their performance when they lost 3-0 to Liverpool in mid-December. Les Reed, the tame technocrat, was then in charge and the extent to which the players have responded to his successor, Alan Pardew, was evident in the way they worked to deny Chelsea time and space.

Nevertheless, the weaknesses which have kept Charlton in the bottom three since last September, and seen two managers come and go, are still there. The ball is still being given away too easily too often, and there were moments on Saturday when the situation demanded a quick pass or centre only for the man in possession to hesitate, uncertain of what to do next and deaf to 27,000-odd voices advising him of the obvious.

Amady Faye summed up the good and the bad of Charlton's football. Never mind a game of two halves, this is a footballer of two halves. In his own half Faye can be a defensive liability, but in the opposing half he is often an attacking asset.

After 18 minutes, for example, he won the ball near his penalty area, lost it, won it back, then lost it again to a persistent Shevchenko who stood back to allow Lampard to score with one of those precise long drives which have brought him many of his 17 goals this season.

In the second half, with Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink joining Marcus Bent up front and Bryan Hughes shoring up their right flank against the incursions of Bridge, Charlton moved forward on a broader front and, just past the hour, Bent found Faye surging through a huge gap in Chelsea's defence to produce a rising shot which Cech just managed to tip away. Soon after, Cech thwarted Faye at the near post to reconfirm the importance of his presence in goal.

Not so long ago Charlton were leaving the field to prolonged booing, but on Saturday they received an ovation. "If we can play with the spirit we have shown in the last three games," said Pardew, "we have a very good chance of staying up."

After visiting Manchester United this Saturday, three of Charlton's next four matches are against West Ham, Watford and Wigan.

Guardian Service