Chelsea suffered a stumble in the title race with a 1-1 draw at Blackburn to round off a week of bitter disappointment for Carlo Ancelotti's side.

A match seemed there for the taking after Didier Drogba's early goal somehow drifted out of Chelsea's grasp.

El Hadji Diouf headed a superb equaliser as Blackburn put in such a powerful second-half performance that keeper Jason Brown was barely tested.

Drogba carved out an early chance for himself, dinking a neat curling shot just wide of the post despite being surrounded by a posse of defenders. That was just a foretaste of what was to come as the Ivory Coast striker opened the scoring in the sixth minute with an almost effortless simplicity.

Anelka burst down the right, cut inside Jones and laid the ball back for Drogba to wrong-foot the entire Rovers defence and keeper Jason Brown with a neat left-footed finish back into the opposite corner.

David Dunn won a free-kick in Morten Gamst Pedersen range after being halted by an agricultural challenge by Alex, but although the Norwegian was on target Chelsea keeper Ross Turnbull turned his effort behind.

Blackburn, as if scenting that Chelsea may have missed a trick by scoring just a single goal in the first half, upped the tempo in the second.

The suspicion that Chelsea had seemed over-confident in settling for a 1-0 win had been growing the longer the second half went on, and in the 70th minute Diouf made them pay.

The Senegal international hung in the air above Ferreira to meet Michel Salgado's cross with a superb header down into the corner.

Chelsea, stung in action, became more direct themselves and Alex struck a piledriver from a 30-yard free-kick over the bar. With time running down, Drogba was denied a fine winner by a good block, then Phil Jones crowned a magnificent debut with an intercepting header to keep out John Terry.