ENGLISH PREMIERSHIP/Liverpool 0 Chelsea 2:A TEPID match inflamed the hearts of visiting supporters who witnessed Chelsea taking themselves to the verge of the title. Carlo Ancelotti's side need, at the very most, a home win over Wigan next Sunday to bring the Premier League back to Stamford Bridge for the first time since 2006.

Conspiracy theorists, however, will linger over the opener, when Steven Gerrard rolled a careless back pass in the 33rd minute that invited a lurking Didier Drogba to open the scoring.

Anyone of a paranoid disposition who supposed there had been a plot against Manchester United will have to concede the lapse was not as shocking as it would once have been.

Gerrard has an unanswerable case if obliged to proclaim his integrity.

The captain’s form has been so poor for so long that even an aberration on this scale was in keeping with his sorry season at the club. Even so, he can get ready for incessant gags about how, belatedly, he did win the league for Chelsea, the club that once ached to buy him.

The Liverpool malaise extends far beyond an individual’s blunder and Rafael Benitez would have met with a mutiny by fans had it not been for the fact that this loss had a marked appeal for them.

The crowd, in any case, is now accustomed to such an outcome. Chelsea follow Aston Villa, Lyon, Fiorentina, Arsenal and Reading in being victorious at Anfield in this season.

Ancelotti’s squad certainly contained the means to prevail here purely through its own efforts. Frank Lampard, indeed, was to notch his 21st league goal of the season after the interval.

That was the true illustration of the talent at the manager’s disposal. In his debut campaign in England, Ancelotti has a perfect record against United and Arsenal as well as Liverpool.

There has been a calmness to his work as he restricted himself to minor alterations and focused on sending out a well-prepared line-up, as he did here. There is no denying the fact, of course, that this stadium was not the crucible of passion it can be.

Liverpool had needed to win to stand an outside chance of landing the last of the Champions League qualifying round places but that was scarcely a great cause to galvanise the crowd.

In the streets around the ground entrepreneurs had been hawking friendship scarves that contained the colours of both clubs. Trade was brisk since there were purchasers aplenty eager to declare the anti-United coalition.

No conniving, it has to be emphasised, is essential to bring about a tame Liverpool. The outcome was merely another demonstration of their decline.

Benitez’s own position should be in jeopardy, even if it is his intention to reject a rumoured offer from Juventus, but any successor of note would insist on a grand budget to restore the club.

While Liverpool are, in effect, on the market, there is no prospect of such radical and costly reconstruction of the squad.

Nonetheless, that type of exercise is essential if the erosion of a fabled institution is to be halted. The blandness here was wholly consistent with recent sorrows. Two hours of action against Atletico Madrid on Thursday night were taxing enough but it was even more debilitating for Liverpool to end that Europa League semi-final in the knowledge that, for a fourth successive season, there would be no trophies.

Despite Gerrard’s brainstorm, Liverpool were not really bent on aiding the opposition’s cause. Alberto Aquilani, for instance, was cutting it fine with a 25-yarder that brushed the top of the bar in the 11th minute if he had secretly been bent on missing. It did Liverpool no good either that Glen Johnson was ruled out with a calf strain and Maxi Rodriguez went off injured in the 42nd minute.

Each team played to no more than a moderate standard for much of the time, although the visitors could blame any conservatism on the delicacy of the situation. Ancelotti was enraged when the referee, Alan Wiley, refused to award a penalty as Salomon Kalou went down after 45 minutes, but the forward’s heel had caught the knee of the pursuing Lucas Leiva.

Chelsea, however, might have had their second goal by then had Sotirios Kyrgiakos not made a fine saving tackle to deny Nicolas Anelka a goal in the 38th minute.

Nine minutes after the interval, though, the Frenchman took a pass from Drogba to stroke a low, pinpoint cross from the right and Lampard made sure of the win. The occasion petered out but Chelsea will have felt they were surging to the title as they made the trip back to London.