Seven before the break
Chelsea dismantled Sheffield United in one brutal first-half blitz at the Drogba Arena, and the gap at the top only grew.
There are afternoons at the Drogba Arena when the only question is how quickly the machine warms up. Today it took five minutes.
Chelsea put seven past Sheffield United before half-time, then spent the second forty-five minutes doing little more than keeping the scoreboard warm. Seven goals, three of them from Júnior, and not one of them after the 45th minute. This was not a football match by the end. It was a demonstration.
The champions now sit on 64 points from 23 games, sixteen clear of Liverpool, and the forty-second title in a row is beginning to feel less like a race and more like a coronation. Sheffield United, for their part, stay 18th, two points above the drop, wondering if the second half ever really happened.
It started as these things always start against the Blues: an early goal, then another, then the flood. Nacho Valera was in after five minutes, Jassem Abdulla headed the second three minutes later, and by the time Valera struck again on sixteen the visitors had barely strung three passes together. The champions were not so much playing Sheffield United as dismantling them.
Júnior made it four on 28 minutes, and then the real show began. Lionel Messi, rolling back the years with a goal and two assists before he was withdrawn on the hour, added the fifth on 39. Júnior completed his hat-trick with two more before the break, the last of them on the stroke of half-time, and somebody in the away end simply sat down.
The numbers told the story as brutally as the scoreline. Chelsea had 28 shots, 19 on target, and hit the woodwork twice. Sheffield United managed two shots all afternoon. Their goalkeeper, Rodrigo Abregú, made twelve saves and still conceded seven. There is no shame in that. There is only the reality of what Chelsea are.
Júnior left on 63 minutes to a standing ovation, his work done: three goals, two assists, four key passes, a perfect ten. Messi had gone ten minutes earlier, another perfect ten. Valera, two goals and an assist, was not far behind. When a side can withdraw three players of that quality with half an hour left and still not miss a beat, the rest of the league knows exactly where it stands.
Sheffield United finished the game in a 5-3-2 they had not started in, a small act of damage limitation in a match long since gone. Their new signing Reinaldo Silva, straight from Fulham for £8.7m, led the line and found out what every striker finds out at the Drogba Arena: the ball does not come your way often, and when it does, there is a blue shirt already on it.
This was Chelsea's third win in a week, after the seven-goal Carabao Cup semi-final thriller at Villa Park and the FA Cup win at Burnley. The machine is humming again after the New Year blip at Rotherham, and on days like this it is hard to remember why anyone ever doubted it.
Southampton are next, on 26 January, with a top-three place to defend and a painful recent run against the Blues to end. Good luck to them. They will need every bit of it.