Not a lot of praise is being heaped on Chelsea after our win this weekend, and in all truthfulness it wasn’t an astonishing performance, but maybe it deserves more credit than has been dished out.

Most vitally is that we still have that 5-point lead on our closest challengers, with United and Arsenal both overcoming difficult tests.

Ivanovic. The Right Choice At Right Back. ©A.P. Photos

United somewhat bizarrely, but not altogether unfairly (Gomez is to blame as much as the ref), and Arsenal even later than we did.

There are certain games where you wake up in the morning and in your heart-of-hearts aren’t wholly convinced that you will be coming home with all three in the bag.

For me on Saturday, Blackburn away was one of these games. I’m merely being pragmatic, we have only lost one game this season and there will no doubt be a bleak period – this is football, it happens.

At the moment though I’m sitting here wondering when.

Bar the blip against City and the draw against Villa we have won each and every game in a different fashion. Again showing our versatility in the league.

We have had the scraps, we have had the sublime and after Saturday we’ve had the scrapes.

This is why we are sitting at the top of the league. The only disturbing thing at the moment is that Man United seem to be building up a good amount of points with extremely uninspiring performances week in, week out.

It is only a matter of time until they have a spell where they are better, at which time they’ll have this cache of points they’ve eked out.

The same happened last season, United almost capitalising on our poor run during Christmas after a poor start to the season of their own. However they are a year older in many crucial positions and defensively pretty poor.

We have nothing to bemoan. We’re never going to play every game to our full potential, however much we all would like to see dazzling football every weekend, realistically it will never happen.

The game in the week against Spartak was today highlighted by The Times as crucial in the future of our season, and with good reason.

If we can win, and thus qualify, there will only be 2 remaining group stage matches as a formality followed by a gap in the competition until late February – making the Premier League the priority for around 3 months!

Liverpool on Sunday is going to be a massively tricky test.

Even though they are in terrible form, as I stated last week, it will be a massive fillip for their season to take all three points in front of a blood thirsty home crowd.

It would do Hodgson the world of good, something he will be well aware of. As well as Torres, who quite likes knocking the odd goal past us.

There is a lot of water under the bridge in this fixture, and the Chelsea players may well switch off against our recent foes seeing as they are not a challenge to the title.

Who knows what Chelsea will turn up on Sunday. Personally I’m all eyes on the game at Anfield, Wednesday against Spartak is a very unwelcome distraction!

Keep The Blue Flag Flying High!