RICHARD WILLIAMSexplains why last night's victory at Stamford Bridge was a great result for the tea lady

PRETTY WELL everybody, not just the home fans, wanted a goal for Chelsea last night.

The world was agog to see how the players would respond to Andre Villas-Boas’s exhortation, made in the privacy of the club’s training ground, to turn to the bench and include the support staff in their moment of celebration in order to convey the impression of harmony and unified ambition.

There was fun to be had from wondering how the players would react to such a bizarre request, particularly the more experienced among them, the representatives of a generation who are rapidly being cleared out by their 34-year-old manager.

Maybe they would all react to a goal by reaching into their stocking-tops and pulling out Villas-Boas masks. Or perhaps they would behave as custom dictates, simply sharing a moment of pleasure with their team-mates.

The Portuguese certainly says some odd things. Whereas many foreign managers have been castigated for their inability to communicate with their players in English, Villas-Boas may be almost too eloquent for his own good.

Whatever he says to his players, with the media he expresses himself in a peculiarly glib version of management-speak, coming on like the David Brent of the technical area.

“We incentivise decision- making,” he observed last week, in the course of a press conference. Say again?

Too much of this sort of thing can make one yearn for the blunt simplicities of an Allardyce or a McCarthy.

Then he added, apropos of something else: “There is an extreme level of comfort in what we are doing.”

Well, not much comfort was in evidence after 98 seconds of last night’s crucial fixture, when Mario Balotelli held off Branislav Ivanovic before touching the ball wide of Petr Cech and sliding it calmly into the empty goal.

Once again, Chelsea’s central defence – such a formidable barrier in the days when John Terry was flanked by Ricardo Carvalho – had been taken apart.

At that moment, incidentally, it was interesting to note that when the Italian started to celebrate his beautifully taken goal in his characteristic manner, by turning to the occupants of the Matthew Harding stand and stretching out his arms, the palms of his hands upraised, with his face a carefully composed mask of indifference, James Milner rushed up to his team-mate and wisely shepherded him away from a possible confrontation with the shocked home fans only a few unprotected yards away.

It would be interesting to know what incentives Terry, Daniel Sturridge and Raul Meireles were on when they combined to create Chelsea’s equaliser in the 34th minute.

The ensuing celebration seemed much like any other, with no special acknowledgement of the parts played in its construction by the coaches, the kit man, the tea lady or the Stamford Bridge cat.

Among those on the bench was Frank Lampard. Villas-Boas seemed to be making it clear that he has decided on the midfield trio on which he intends to build Chelsea’s immediate future.

It is composed of Meireles, Ramires and the 20-year-old Oriol Romeu, who has supplanted John Obi Mikel as decisively as Meireles replaced Lampard – even though he scored the winner from the penalty spot – and Ramires has filled the hole left by the eternally injured Michael Essien.

This is a younger, faster and more athletic unit. Meireles and Ramires are more accomplished footballers than their roles have usually allowed them to show, although Meireles took his chance with an impressive mixture of aplomb and finesse, and Ramires was flying towards the City penalty area when Clichy trod on his foot and received an instant red card from Mark Clattenburg.

This is an important month for Chelsea, with Villas-Boas responding to transfer requests from Nicolas Anelka and Alex by sending them away to train apart from the first-team group and then even despatching the reserves to the academy pitches.

There were signs against Valencia that his scorched-earth policy may work, and certainly last night his players performed with enough energy and spirit to suggest rumours of internal dissent may not be fully accurate.