Here
we are less than a third of the way through the Barclays Premier League
season and already it seems only an epic turnaround will deny Chelsea their
first title for four years.
The Blues are setting a frightening pace at the top of the table - their
best ever points return at this stage - and second only to Manchester City's
championship-winning side of 2011/12.
Right from day one - when Chelsea shrugged off the spirited challenge of
Burnley to record their first win - there has been an inevitability about
their progress.
Already blessed with a sound defence, Jose Mourinho added two vital pieces
to his team in Diego Costa and Cesc Fabregas and the jigsaw now looks
complete.
If there are any teams in world football in better form than Chelsea right
now you could count them on one hand.
They're in their moment: supreme defensive organisation, allied with
devastating offensive combinations. We could be watching the most complete
team the Premier League has ever witnessed. Arguably their only fallibility
this season has been complacency.
At Shrewsbury, Mourinho was an angry man in the Chelsea dressing room, and
the same frustrations surfaced away to Maribor when Mourinho's demand for
focus failed to get through.
They should face no such problems on Saturday, surely, when they meet
Sunderland, who ended Chelsea's hopes of winning the title last season with
a most unlikely victory at Stamford Bridge.
Of all the games we've witnessed on Saturday Night Football that was the
most surprising.
Mourinho had never lost a league game at Stamford Bridge and Sunderland
seemed destined for the drop, but that 90 minutes changed everything.
Spark
Remember that was the second time last season that Gus Poyet's team beat
Chelsea, having already knocked them out of the Capital One Cup.
But those successes have been few and far between: the last time Sunderland
avoided defeat at home to Chelsea in the Premier League, Peter Reid was in
charge!
That Chelsea are so strongly fancied on Saturday is no slight on Sunderland.
The Wearsiders have found their feet again after the embarrassment at
Southampton.
Costel Pantilimon has played his part, replacing the shell-shocked Vito
Mannone, but so too has the defence in front of him, ably marshalled by John
O'Shea.
Poyet's greater problem has been finding enough creative spark in his team
to win tight games.
They survived last term largely because of the goals of Connor Wickham,
which flooded his team-mates with belief. But this season Wickham been
shunted to the left flank and the team seems to have suffered as a result.
To beat Chelsea looks like mission impossible for Sunderland ... but then we
said that in April.
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