Stoke City 0 Chelsea 2:NOTHING SUMMED up the manner in which Chelsea handled this tricky fixture better than John Terry's response to the Stoke supporters who were taunting him from the corporate boxes during a post-match interview. Rather to the surprise of the protagonists he climbed the steps to the stand before signing autographs, posing for photos and shaking hands with almost every one of them.
Not for the first time in the afternoon Chelsea had succeeded in quietening, if not silencing, the raucous home support, with the 100 or so fans congregated in the middle tier changing their chant from "Terry is a Tosser" to "There's only one John Terry" by the time the England captain had returned to pitchside.
He was minus his tracksuit top, which had been handed over to one supporter but, as he departed down the tunnel, it felt like a few hearts and minds had been won as well as a football match.
Making friends was about as important to Jose Mourinho as producing entertaining football but Luiz Felipe Scolari clearly has other ideas and, although this was not an occasion to stand back and drool over Chelsea's free-flowing style, the manager's approach was, nonetheless, rubber-stamped on the outcome. While full-backs were committing a sin if they crossed the halfway line under Mourinho, there are no such restrictions with Scolari in charge, something Jose Bosingwa made abundantly clear here.
The Portuguese scored his first goal for the club after linking with Salomon Kalou and Frank Lampard before setting up Chelsea's second for Nicolas Anelka.
"He's a super player," said Ray Wilkins, the new Chelsea assistant manager, before explaining how Scolari encourages the full-backs to attack. "You look at Brazilian football over the years, and Phil's Brazilian side as well, and the two full-backs were paramount in the results they got, in that they got themselves forward into dangerous areas and could also defend."
The task was made considerably easier for Chelsea when it emerged Rory Delap would not be fit. Without the threat of his long throw-ins, Stoke never looked dangerous and when Mamady Sidibe did have a chance Chelsea reacted as if affronted, Bosingwa scoring within seconds.
Stoke roused midway through the second half but there was a certain inevitability about Chelsea's second, seized when Anelka capitalised on Leon Cort's failure to deal with Bosingwa's whipped cross.
For Stoke's manager Tony Pulis, who had called on the former boxer Sugar Ray Leonard to give a motivational speech beforehand, defeat was no disgrace, particularly as he regards Chelsea, who take on CFR Cluj in the Champions League on Wednesday, as the team to beat.
"I just think there's more goals in the Chelsea team, everywhere you look," he said.
Guardian Service
