Telegraph:

Carlo Ancelotti's pragmatism pays off for revitalised Chelsea When the story of Carlo Ancelotti’s first season is written, special mention will be made to the events of Saturday April 3.

By Jason Burt

It was at Old Trafford, rather than the seven-goal beatings of Sunderland, Aston Villa and Stoke City, or the record eight goals on Sunday, or even the home and away victories against Arsenal and Liverpool, that the Chelsea manager believes his team produced their season-defining performance.

It was also, for Ancelotti, their best display and one in which his tactics worked perfectly. It dulled the memory of that Champions League exit to Inter Milan. And it banished doubts about him.

Losing to Jose Mourinho will, nevertheless, always be the thorn in Ancelotti’s side, a wound that will fester until he can deliver the holy grail of a Champions League trophy. But that is for next season.

Hitherto, European competition has always been the place where Ancelotti has achieved. Indeed, in one season at Chelsea he now has as many league titles as he accrued in eight at AC Milan, with the hope of converting it into a league and FA Cup double, something that eluded Mourinho.

Chelsea deserve the title. Ancelotti deserves credit for creating a more attacking unit and also having the instinct to change formation, and then change it again when it was not working. They finished one point ahead of Manchester United but also 13 goals to the good, with

103 goals for the league season.

Analysis of the squads available to the top four would indicate that Chelsea undoubtedly possess the strongest but, as Roman Abramovich has pointed out in the past to previous managers, and to Ancelotti in the wake of that Champions League loss, this is a set of players who should have achieved more. He demanded more. The return has not equalled his investment and he has been unwavering in that belief. The penny also dropped with the players.

Not that Ancelotti did not want to change it. When he was wooed by Abramovich, there was a promise to try to deliver some ‘marquee’

players. Tellingly, Abramovich had spoken to Ancelotti of a Chelsea team that lacked personality and his complaints did not go unheeded, even if the likes of Franck Ribery and Andrea Pirlo could not be lured.

Importantly, it was a state of affairs accepted without argument by Ancelotti, even if he knew his task of improving Chelsea’s style as well as their results would be made harder by having to work with unchanged personnel.

Luiz Felipe Scolari had similarly been denied replacements — bar midfielder Deco — but his task was more demanding and he wasn’t up for the fight in the way that Ancelotti clearly was. Scolari came for a sabbatical not a new adventure.

Not one of Sunday's starting XI was acquired by Ancelotti, who also had little to do with the arrival last summer of those on the bench — Yuri Zhirkov, Daniel Sturridge and Nemanja Matic. Instead he has worked with what he has been given or inherited while Chelsea will point to the new contracts delivered to Didier Drogba and John Terry — fending of Manchester City — as being of great significance.

Ancelotti’s sense of equilibrium and organisation helped while he will appreciate the decision of his right-hand man, Bruno Demichelis, to move from Italy with him and institute some of the fitness techniques and holistic approaches that made the Milan Lab legendary. Ancelotti has also enjoyed a stronger, more fruitful relationship with Chelsea’s sporting director, Frank Arnesen, and has bought into the idea of promoting some of the expensively acquired Academy players next season.

At times the manager wasn’t slow to upbraid the players – extra training on defending set-pieces became necessary – but he realised that if he couldn’t change the personnel there was no need for a revolution. It was about incremental change, subtle differences in training, a more tactical approach, coaxing more out of them. It also meant Chelsea were more open, more vulnerable and susceptible to dramatic collapses – the kind rarely seen, or tolerated, under Mourinho.

Ancelotti also had to cope with the personal crises which beset Terry and Ashley Cole — and in a sense here his remoteness helped – while he battled through the injuries that befell Michael Essien, Jose Bosingwa and Ashley Cole, and Joe Cole’s struggle to reproduce his form.

“Carlo has brought great calmness and a great atmosphere,” Terry said last night. “He gives us free spirit to go out and play as we want to.

Tactically, we know what we’ve got to do but he leaves it down to us to play our own game.”

Much will be made of Didier Drogba’s Golden Boot contribution — though at times Chelsea played better without him — while Frank Lampard had an outstanding second half to the campaign once Ancelotti abandoned his experiment of playing the midfielder at the tip of a diamond. He brought better performances out of Deco and Michael Ballack but it was the likes of Florent Malouda and Branislav Ivanovic who were the unsung heroes.

It will be a significant summer. Ancelotti will hope to be given the reinforcements the squad needs. If not, he will shrug and carry on and Chelsea will, undoubtedly, be close again.

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Alan Hansen: Carlo Ancelotti must be brutal with his Chelsea squad despite triumph Carlo Ancelotti is one game away from winning the double in his first season in English football, but the only certainty facing the Chelsea manager is that he must be brutal when it comes to reshaping his squad this summer.

By Alan Hansen

Regardless of the standard of the Premier League this season – the performance of England's four clubs in the Champions League suggests a slide in quality – you still have to win it and Ancelotti has done that.

But Ancelotti and the Chelsea owner, Roman Abramovich, must now sit down and be realistic and brutal when it comes to analysing what they have got at Stamford Bridge.

Sport on television Even if Chelsea add the FA Cup to the Premier League title later this week, their squad needs perhaps four or five new players if they are to challenge for the Champions League next season.

>From Chelsea right down to Liverpool in seventh place, all of the top

clubs need to strengthen this summer, but Chelsea cannot allow their success this season to paper over the cracks.

When clubs such as Liverpool and Manchester United were in their prime, winning title after title, they still realised the need for strengthening after successful campaigns.

By finishing second this season, Sir Alex Ferguson will have already identified the need for a revamp at Old Trafford. Chelsea must have the same approach.

I'm not suggesting that time is up for the likes of John Terry or Petr Cech, but Chelsea certainly need to bring in players who are capable of not only challenging those two, but keeping them out of side.

Both Terry and Cech have been fantastic servants for Chelsea. They have not had the best of seasons, but they could still come back bigger, stronger and better.

Chelsea cannot afford to sit back and wait for it to happen, though, and they have to make provisions by finding younger players – in their mid 20s rather than teenagers – who will raise the quality and stiffen the competition within the squad.

Michael Essien's return to fitness will be a huge boost next season, but the smart people at Chelsea will know that Ancelotti needs four or five new faces.

Winning the league is a great position for them to be in and it certainly keeps the wolf from the door. Chelsea will rightly enjoy the moment, but the fact remains that this has been the worst Premier League for 10 years.

It isn't their fault that the rest have been so bad, though, and Ancelotti will not complain about that having guided Chelsea to their first title since 2006.

But despite his achievement, it is much too early to suggest that he has now laid the ghost of Jose Mourinho at Chelsea.

True, Mourinho never won the double as Chelsea manager and Ancelotti is on the brink of doing that, but the reality is that the title-winning squad was already in place when Ancelotti arrived. He hasn't made any obvious additions to the squad and Chelsea only won the league on the final day of the season, despite United having one of their worst seasons for a long time.

It still amazes me that United went into their final game on Sunday with a chance of winning the league because they have been so bad for so long this season, yet somehow managed to remain in the race right until the very end.

Both Chelsea and United face a tougher challenge next season because the five teams below them will be looking to close the gap even further.

The so-called 'Big Four' –Chelsea, United, Arsenal and Liverpool – have all gone backwards, while Tottenham, Manchester City and Aston Villa have improved. Each of those clubs will be chasing better players this summer, but there are only so many to go around. They all want to be successful, yet there are only two trophies that matter, so somebody is always going to be disappointed.

Chelsea can at least say they have won the Premier League, but the Champions League is getting harder to win, as proved by the way this season's competition has turned out.

So Ancelotti and Abramovich will celebrate their success as worthy champions, but if they want to enjoy the same taste again next season, they cannot ignore the job that faces them this summer.

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Chelsea's four title-winning seasons

Telegraph Sport takes a look back at the four occasions when Chelsea have finished top of English football's top flight.

By John Ley

1 FIRST DIVISION: 1954-55

Chelsea eventually won their first English League title in 1955, half a century after the club turned professional. Manager Ted Drake brought in players from lower division clubs and promoted a high level of fitness and a hard-working team ethos that served him well. At one stage of the season they were in the bottom half of the table, but they secured the championship with a game to spare, beating Sheffield Wednesday 3-0. The star was Roy Bentley Bentley, who joined Chelsea from Newcastle in 1948 for £11,000. He was the leading scorer at the club for eight successive seasons, including the 1955 campaign when he scored 21 goals.

The Special One wasted little time in securing success. In his first season in charge, Jose Mourinho set about building a side that went on to secure a host of Premier League records. Chelsea kept 25 clean sheets, won a record 96 points, won 29 of their 38 games, including nine consecutive away victories and conceded just 15 goals. And, having won the Carling Cup earlier in the season, Chelsea won the title with three games remaining. Petr Cech was outstanding, going a record 1,025 minutes without conceding. And they lost just once, at Manchester City.

3 PREMIER LEAGUE: 2005-06

The second title success under Mourinho was not as spectacular, though they still won it by eight points ahead of Manchester United and they finished the campaign with a 1-1 draw with Everton, to equal Liverpool’s record of 63 unbeaten Premier League home games. Key to their success was their form at home where Chelsea won 18 of their 19 games, drawing the other, and conceding just nine goals. And again Frank Lampard was instrumental in steering Chelsea to the title with

16 League goals from midfield, while Didier Drogba added a dozen.

4 PREMIER LEAGUE: 2009-10

Title number four was the most exciting, with Chelsea taking the premier League on the final day. For much of the season it was a three-horse race, with Manchester United and Arsenal pushing Chelsea for most of the campaign. Only in the final two weeks did Arsenal fall away, and after losing at Spurs, Chelsea left the way open for United to extend the race to the 38th game. Lampard was again a goalscoring machine from midfield with an impressive 22 goals, while Drogba has led the way with his best haul in the Premier League, a magnificent 29.