Júnior's treble sends Chelsea cruising past Vitesse

“I don’t score goals like that every week, but I try,” Júnior said with a shrug, the match ball tucked under his arm. “When the team plays like this, the chances come.”

They came in a rush on Tuesday night, and the Brazilian took them all. Giels de Wilde had silenced the Drogba Arena inside three minutes, sweeping Vitesse into a lead from a rare early sortie. But Júnior answered with a finish that owed everything to anticipation, then twice more before half-time, and Billy Laing added a fourth after the break. By the end, the scoreboard read 4-1, Chelsea had moved to 18 points from seven games, and the old boy Stuart Musselwhite’s homecoming had been reduced to a footnote.

Musselwhite, who spent six years on Chelsea’s books and made four first-team appearances, started on the left wing for Vitesse. He touched the ball 47 times, completed 33 of 39 passes, and watched much of the match from a distance. His former team-mates barely gave him a sniff.

The night belonged to Júnior. He struck in the 12th minute, leveling after de Wilde’s early goal, then again in the 33rd and 35th, both times arriving at the far post with a winger’s timing. The hat-trick took him to six goals in this season’s Champions League, to go with five assists, and his match rating of 10.0 was the kind of number that appears only when everything a player touches turns to gold. He was replaced after 62 minutes, the job done, the crowd on its feet.

Laing, too, was everywhere. The left winger scored the fourth, assisted one of Júnior’s three, and made six key passes. He covered 13.5 kilometres, the most of any Chelsea outfielder, and won four tackles. Bruce Hilgers, the metronome in midfield, completed 70 of 80 passes and set up another. The Blues’ 4-3-3, with 16-year-old Ali McKillop anchoring the midfield for only his second start, looked as fluid as it has all season.

Vitesse, for their part, were game but outgunned. Their goalkeeper, Takaaki Mochizuki, made 13 saves, five of them parried, and was the only reason the scoreline stayed respectable. Their shape, a 5-2-3 with wing-backs, was designed to frustrate, but Júnior and Laing found the gaps. Mark Andreasen, the left wing-back, was booked in the 55th minute for a lunge on Laing, and by then the contest was long over.

The result leaves Chelsea third in the 36-team league phase, level on points with Athletico Madrid and one behind Rotherham United, with a game in hand on the leaders. Vitesse sit 12th, still well placed for a top-24 finish. The Blues’ next European assignment is not yet on the calendar, but the domestic schedule is relentless: Nottingham Forest away on 3 February, then Newcastle at home three days later.

Before all that, there is the small matter of Juventus and their £71.5 million bid for Nacho Valera. The Spanish striker started on Tuesday, took six shots without scoring, and was withdrawn at half-time for Pablo Ferrer. The bid was withdrawn on 18 January, but the noise around Valera has not gone away. On this evidence, Chelsea can afford to be patient. They have Júnior, and on nights like this, that is enough.