Afternoon:
9°c
After the astonishing boom of goals at Anfield the previous evening, the bust swiftly followed at Stamford Bridge as the rate of interest in the title race fell to virtually zero. This precursor to next month's FA Cup Final was half as uplifting and electrifying as Alistair Darling's delivery of his Budget, and there was no surprise about that.
Along with birth, death and taxes, one of the certainties of human existence is that intense pleasure must always be followed by pain. Drink too much and you suffer a hangover. Eat too well and you end up on that wonder drug with side effects too gruesome to be dwelt on here. Have sex and 14 years later you're staring across the breakfast table at a surly adolescent.
All in all, then, it was inevitable that the 4-4 feast served up by Liverpool and Arsenal would be balanced by scoreless famine when Chelsea and Everton renewed the London-Scouse rivalry 24 hours later.
When Guus Hiddink insisted, before this wretched game, that Chelsea still had a shot at winning the Premier League, he was speaking with precisely the same fake optimism Darling brought to his prediction that the economy will shortly begin to recover. He knew he was talking ritualistic nonsense but what else could he say?
Judging by the apathy that suffused them for the first 75 minutes, the Chelsea players were also well aware that their coach was talking cobblers about challenging Manchester United.
And even if it wasn't obvious to them before the match, it had become abundantly so within 10 minutes of the kick-off when it fell to a natural-born Evertonian to remove any lingering doubt about the title. Once Wayne Rooney had given United the early lead against Portsmouth, the evening's pointlessness was fully established and two teams with nothing but the avoidance of injury to concern them duly reflected the irrelevance.
Everton under the splendid David Moyes are neither elegant nor aesthetically pleasing but they are spirited and well drilled. These yeoman qualities were more than enough to frustrate Chelsea, whose lack of a playmaker with the vision to unlock defences has seldom been so apparent.
The other thing Chelsea sorely need is to concede the first goal. These days, their finest performances invariably come when they are invigorated by the shock of falling behind. In this, if nothing else, they were unlucky last night, because Everton striker Jo was wildly profligate when twice given a clear run on Petr Cech's goal.
Had the Brazilian taken either of those sitters, no doubt Chelsea would have been roused from their slumbers and gone on to win. Instead, with nothing to motivate them, they huffed and puffed in a first half of such dullness that Didier Drogba's mandatory pretend injury (a minute of agonised writhing, languid hobble off for treatment, return to the pitch within 11 seconds miraculously cured; the usual sequence) came as light relief.
The second half maintained the tedium, until with a quarter-hour remaining full-strength Chelsea decided that they might as well try to beat under-strength Everton. The tempo was raised, and a few decent chances were made, until in added time Drogba produced the game's only memorable moment, when he spun beautifully off his marker and quivered the bar with a half-volley. But the game didn't deserve a winner, let alone a glorious one, and it would have meant nothing to either side.
This feckless performance won't worry Hiddink a jot. His mind will be firmly focused on more momentous challenges, such as the rematch with Everton at Wembley at the end of May, and the small matter of the imminent Champions League semi-final against Barcelona.
What perhaps will worry him, when he gets round to watching the tape of last night's scintillating 4-0 demolition of Sevilla, is Barca's form. They are playing the football of the gods right now, so heaven help Chelsea if they perform at the Nou Camp as they did at Stamford Bridge last night. Something tells me that they will be back to their combative best in Spain, and will at the very least have the spark of falling behind to ignite the fire. If this pallid fixture was the calm (and it had the tranquillity of a controlled coma), the oncoming storm will be something to savour.
