Chelsea’s postponed match against Manchester United is a good news/bad news scenario.

The bad news is that Chelsea already have fixture congestion and a make-up game won’t help. A thin squad doesn’t need several weeks of two-games-a-week.

Also, it looked like Chelsea had found something in the 2nd half against Spurs. This might have been a good time to play United.

But maybe the good news outweighs the bad.

It’s an additional week of rest and recuperation for Frank Lampard and John Terry, as well as Zhirkov and Bosingwa. It won’t help Lampard’s endurance but the extra training might help him regain his touch.

And it couldn’t come at a better time, as the fixtures come thick and fast starting next Monday. Away to Arsenal, followed 2 days later by home to Bolton, then another 4 days and home to Villa and then another 4 days and away to Wolves, another 4 days and the FA Cup draw against Ipswich Town.

For those of you scoring at home, that’s 4 matches in 14 days. Phew! A real endurance test for Chelsea’s aging stars. So a mini-break before it begins can’t be a bad thing.

And league leaders Manchester United now have 2 make-up games to jam into their schedule, so they have it even worse than Chelsea.

One final thought: with Chelsea showing signs of life, might not Arsenal be a better next opponent than Manchester United? It’s away, of course, and that makes it much tougher. But tactically Ancelotti seems to have found something that works against the Gooners. And like Spurs, Arsenal are prone to giving teams room to operate. A recuperating Chelsea evidently thrive on a bit of space in the midfield.

No-one likes to see a huge match like this postponed. But if it’s going to happen, overall it seems to me that in this instance the good news outweighs the bad.