There was a beautiful symmetry about this result. Manchester United were determined to prove a point by winning by three goals and in doing so they played some of the most exhilarating football of the season.
Slowly but surely the champions are correcting their early-season mistakes and displaying the title form they traditionally produce at this time of year. They are clearly in the mood to push Arsenal all the way but may ultimately be denied by the home lapse against Middlesbrough last month that is allowing Arsène Wenger to breathe easily.
This was atonement in full for the 3-0 defeat Chelsea inflicted on United at Old Trafford in December, the one contributing the final letter in the acronym BLANC, which represented the first letters of the teams who had beaten them before Christmas.
Here the French centre-half was magnificent, easily dealing with the threat of Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, the leading Premiership goalscorer, and putting his erstwhile World Cup colleague Marcel Desailly in the shade. Desailly is still playing international football and returned from France's midweek friendly against Russia with the news that Arsenal's French contingent would be rooting for Chelsea in this fixture. 'That made me laugh,' Desailly said. 'Most of the time it's the opposite.'
Arsenal should know by now that you cannot trust Chelsea if your life depends on their result. Despite Claudio Ranieri's insistence that a Champions League place was still a realistic ambition, it looked as if Chelsea were saving themselves for the FA Cup final. They will need to play better than this to bother Arsenal. Hasselbaink and Eidur Gudjohnsen made no impression on Blanc and Wes Brown, Emmanuel Petit and Frank Lampard were second best in midfield and Gianfranco Zola was unable to get into the match from the left wing or when pushed up as an emergency striker. 'They took the mickey out of us,' Chelsea defender John Terry said. 'It was embarrassing.'
Ranieri admitted that his side 'didn't play', but Chelsea's poverty cannot detract from a consummate United exhibition of attacking on the break, or a win all the more impressive in the absence of David Beckham and Roy Keane.
Their gameplan was simple. Soak up the Chelsea pressure, then strike like lightning when the opportunity presented itself. Its execution was a pleasure to witness. United scored their first goal from a Chelsea corner, Fabien Barthez intercepting to send Ruud van Nistelrooy rampaging down the right wing with a throw and bring Ranieri leaping from his dug-out to shriek his concern at the flimsy cover.
A foul by Jesper Gronkjaer appeared to have cleared the danger at the expense of a booking, but Chelsea were still not paying sufficient attention when United took the free-kick. Ryan Giggs shaped to cross, then rolled the ball square at the last moment to Paul Scholes, who crashed a first-time shot past an unsighted Carlo Cudicini from outside the area.
Lampard brought a save from Barthez on the half-hour, but United scored their second goal four minutes before the interval with a move that began in their own penalty area and ended with a twenty-second Premiership goal for their leading scorer after almost as many passes.
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer waited until the right moment to flick the last one forward to reach Van Nistelrooy when he was still on side and the Holland striker did even better to accept the pass, round the advancing Cudicini and tap home from a narrow angle with an insouciance that suggested he had yards rather than feet in which to operate.
United would have turned round 3-0 up, but for Van Nistelrooy missing an easier chance midway through the half, opting for power instead of placement and hitting Cudicini from Solskjaer's defence-splitting pass.
Still, Sir Alex Ferguson correctly described the second goal as a killer and with the match effectively over, there was little to keep the Chelsea fans interested in the second half, save for the question of whether the home side could prevent United scoring a third. They held out until four minutes from the end, with Cudicini denying Giggs and Van Nistelrooy and William Gallas wasting a great chance to pull one back, but the home side were undone by the vision of the stand-in United captain. Giggs pointed to where he wanted to receive the ball from Van Nistelrooy, then eschewed the option of shooting in favour of a sharp pass across goal that Solskjaer buried with his usual elan.
'We've done our job right today, now we've just got to sit and wait for other results,' Ferguson said. 'Arsène is quite right - we are not in the driving seat, but it's a long wait for Arsenal, too.'
