SOCCER/PREMIER LEAGUE/Chelsea 6 Derby County 1:CHELSEA HAVE their respite. After the traumas endured in the FA Cup to Barnsley, Avram Grant's side took the Premier League's whipping boys apart last night with Frank Lampard, so conspicuous in his absence at Oakwell, running riot. The England midfielder alone scored four times.
Lampard's fourth goal was arguably his best, holding off the challenge of James McEveley to swivel and plant his shot inside the near post. David Jones scored for Derby within seconds, but that was only his side's sixth goal away from Pride Park all season.
Chelsea managed that tally last night alone and are within five points of Arsenal at the top with a game in hand. Real tests lie ahead, but this rout has provide a timely injection of confidence.
Derby had arrived braced for a backlash, and it duly arrived. Their hosts had been simmering since Oakwell, John Terry expressing the frustrations gripping the club from boardroom to dug-out. He wrote in the programme: "Everyone needs to perform when selected. The result and the performance weren't acceptable and everyone in the team must take responsibility."
Derby huffed and puffed last night, occasionally offering to bite on the break through Kenny Miller, but even if this was one of their more vaguely coherent displays, they still shipped goals at will.
By the interval Paul Jewell appeared to be sinking deeper and deeper into his bench coat.
It summed up the Derby manager's luck that Alan Stubbs was forced to hobble off just after the quarter-hour mark having tangled with Nicolas Anelka. The centrehalf's replacement, Dean Leacock, was soon afterwards penalised for tripping Lampard after Joe Cole's reverse pass had slipped the midfielder into the area.
The penalty from the usual source was precise in establishing Chelsea's lead.
However, their rhythm was rarely fluent even then, snatching at shots too often when calmer heads were required, but three minutes from the interval, Darren Moore and Roy Carroll were a confused muddle on the edge of the area as they attempted to ward off Anelka. The goalkeeper merely cleared the ball to Salomon Kalou midway inside the visitors' half and the Ivorian's finish arced beyond the aghast Carroll and into the empty net.
The Northern Irishman made amends of sorts moments later, smartly pushing aside another Kalou attempt, but Derby were prone and already hopelessly adrift. Quite how Lampard and Joe Cole failed to add a third early in the second half with visiting defenders in disarray was baffling, though it mattered little. With Anelka flicking a header wide from Kalou's cross as Didier Drogba warmed up on the sidelines, Derby were never likely to resist.
True to form, Anelka and Joe Cole combined yet again for the winger to wriggle to the byline beyond Stephen Pearson with his cross tapped in from under the bar by Lampard. The midfielder had missed the shambles in south Yorkshire, apparently left behind in Surrey to nurse a slight thigh strain.
He completed his hat-trick just after the hour with a shot from distance that squirmed through Carroll's attempt to save.
Not that Lampard, with his 16th goal of the season, was plundering alone. Two minutes earlier Anelka had forced Carroll to palm his shot away with Joe Cole outpacing retreating defenders to tap in the rebound. Grant promptly threw on Drogba; but this contest had long since become Rams to the slaughter.
CHELSEA: Cudicini, Ferreira, Carvalho, Terry, Ashley Cole, Ballack (Drogba 67), Makelele (Essien 73), Lampard, Joe Cole (Shevchenko 74), Anelka, Kalou. Subs not used: Hilario, Alex.
DERBY: Carroll, Edworthy, Stubbs (Leacock 16), Moore, McEveley, Sterjovski, Ghaly (Earnshaw 52), Savage, Pearson, Lewis (Jones 58), Miller. Subs not used: Price, Villa. Booked: McEveley.
Referee: Chris Foy (Merseyside).
