He came. He tested our patience. He scored. He finally scored. What a sight that was! Platini once said scoring a goal is an orgasmic feeling. Forget scoring. Ask the Chelsea fans all over the world that erupted as Torres hit the back of the net. It was unbelievable! And man, what a celebration by the team! One of the best I’ve ever seen!

He’s got not only the monkey off his back, also the The Daily Mirror, The Sun, BBC Sports, Sky Sports, The Independent, The Telegraph, The TimesOnline, The News Of The World, every tabloid, every editor, every paparazzi and his dog. Having got so much/many off his back, he must certainly feel lighter.

He’s my man of the match. There are better contenders but Torres produced the best moment of the match. Consider this. Comes in at 75th minute. Rain soaked pitch and resurgent relegation battlers waiting for him. Match evenly poised at 1-0 with more signs of a morale-dampening equaliser around the corner. Makes a smart run and collects a pass inside the box, loses the defender with a quick turn and slams the ball with an exquisite finish. That was Game, set and match Chelsea.

At 1-0, we were living very dangerously. It could have gone any which way. We weren’t going to finish this match at 1-0. West Ham were coming at us. They wanted the equaliser very badly. We had to score to put the game to rest. So the Torres goal (wow, there’s such a thing!) was extremely important in the context of the match, and probably of the season. Not just the goal, he made the assist for the third goal and also created a few clear cut chances. His night could have been even better if we had understood his runs and positions better. Anelka missed an opportunity to pass to Torres and Malouda too ignored Torres but redeemed himself with a great finish. Nevertheless, Torres’ late show has won me over. He is my man of the match.

All those tabloids that reported unrest in the dressing room, Carlo losing the dressing room etc only need to look at the footage of Chelsea players’ celebration of Fernando Torres’ debut goal. Enough said.

This was a very pulsating match, especially in the second half. The first half played out like the first halves that we’ve been playing all season. We had the possession, we had the opportunities. West Ham didn’t bother much, because the one thing we didn’t have was a goal. And then the first goal happened.

With 40 minutes of slow build-up and play style routines having been well negotiated by West Ham, we had to do something different. Drogba’s quick ball to Cole and Cole’s hurried low cross and Lampard’s trademark ‘arrive and blast on the run’ meant West Ham were trailing before they could see what hit them. More of that please. The slow build-up style just doesn’t work for us anymore. We need to be quick and clever and devastating – the first goal is the best example. There are occasions where we would try to execute the same attacking move in half the pace and fail. We should do more of these blitzkreigs.

Good performance all around. We did miss numerous opportunities but that’s normal. If all teams net all their opportunities, scores like 10-8 would be normal. Out of all the opportunities, if we can convert 2 or 3 more than the opponent, we’ve done a very good job. The weather and pitch conditions did not make it easy for us. Luckily for us, this was our home game. An away game in such conditions would have been quite tricky.

Special mention to Mikel who had a fantastic game. I made a remark that Chelsea play much better football when Mikel is our defensive midfielder. I think he gives this assurance to his colleagues so they can go looking for goals. He doesn’t need support. He’s able to hold his game on his own. His distribution has also improved very well. When Ramires is back, Carlo has a decision to make.

Drogba has been in supreme form ever since we made a British record transfer for a world class striker. The competition for places always bring the best out of the players. Despite usually being a lone striker, when Shevchenko came in, we saw the best of Didier Drogba is 06-07. Similarly now, I think Drogba is on fire, like he has a point to prove. Amidst all this, he remains to be a great team player, creating chances for others and working hard for the team. By the way, he is the official man of the match.

I wish all other positions in the team also had such competition for places. All season, we’ve had some players who have mostly been picked as long as they’re fit. The lack of competition for their places has not really helped them. It helps to sit out – to rest, to go back to the drawing board, to come back like a wounded animal – it does help.

Now this leaves with a 6-point and 2-goal gap with 4 games to go. It’s all quite simple calculations from now on. If Chelsea and Arsenal beat Man Utd, we’d have not only bridged the gap but also probably taken care of the goal difference.

In the premier league, now we are on a 4-match winning run. We just need another 4-match winning run. Man Utd have got champions league semi finals. We’ve got this and only this. The question is, can Chelsea win 4 matches in a row? One way to answer is, we’ve just managed that. Another is, we are ‘in form’, Cech remains to be the wall, Torres has found the net, Mikel looks assured, Lampard’s got 2 in 3 games, Drogba is in great touch – why not?

Tottenham (home), Man Utd (away), Newcastle (away) and Everton (home). Tottenham match is important for either sides. I don’t need to say much about the Man Utd match. Interestingly, two of these four matches – Newcastle Utd and Everton – have far less significance for the opponents. Newcastle Utd and Everton may not have much to play for while we could be going at them gung-ho.

Next weekend would be the biggest weekend of this season. We play Tottenham at home. And Man Utd play Arsenal at Emirates. If we don’t match or better Man Utd’s result next weekend, our game against Man Utd will not be as big as it looks right now. Meanwhile, if Schalke can get a good result at Old Trafford in the mid-week, Sir Alex might have to call his doctors.

Some great football matches coming up in the next couple of weeks. Firstly we have the last laps of this exciting premier league. Secondly, the champions league. Barca would try to avenge their Copa del rey defeat. They’re fully capable of beating Madrid home and away. Madrid may not be so capable but will certainly be well prepared. The prospect of these fantastic football matches are already making me wonder what I’d do in the off-season.

For now, let’s enjoy the football, wait for things to unfold and hope you get to see what you want to. Just like the Fernando Torres goal.

This is the way it was supposed to be.

Chelsea suffocating and demoralizing.  The central defense oppressive. The midfield unruffled and in control. The fullbacks daring.

And the Golden Boot, Didier Drogba, terrorizing his enemy into submission.

For reasons we’ll get into, the promise of Chelsea’s season was dashed by the reality.

But for a day we could dream of what might have been.

Ancelotti fielded Chelsea’s favorite 4-3-3. An “old school” midfield of Lampard, Essien and Mikel. A frontline that blended old with new, Kalou getting a start with Malouda and Drogba.

And backing them up, a massively powerful bench waiting to fill in the holes. Anelka and Torres to score. Benayoun and Zhirkov to support the attack. Ivanovic to defend and a youngster ready for some experience.

Just like in our pre-season dreams, it all went perfectly. Drogba was once again the Man of the Match, fearsomely strong, quick and daring. In the 3rd minute his backward head flick sent the ball to Malouda at the far post, who only had to push it in for Chelsea’s first goal. John Terry began the move with a beautiful cross pass to find Ferriera.

Then the profligate Kalou stunned everyone with a brilliant individual display, running the ball across the top of the box then unleashing an unstoppable shot into Foster’s bottom left corner.

Later, with the game comfortably in control,  a youngster is blooded and plays well, just as Chelsea’s brass had planned when they assembled this squad last summer. In this case it was left back Ryan Bertrand, in for Ashley Cole, who lofted a pinpoint pass to find Malouda in between two defenders, a simple header giving the Frenchman his second score.

David Luiz made the kind of silly over-aggressive play that is beginning to define his defending, to concede a penalty.

But other than that blip, this was how Chelsea’s season was supposed to be. A comfortable 3-1 win and everyone happy.

With such promise, how did it all go so horribly wrong? Carlo Ancelotti answered that question on Tuesday.

“I don’t think the squad was good enough this year.”

The plan for this season, a plan Ancelotti says he supported, was to replace old players with young ones and gradually give them playing time. It was assumed that the veterans would be strong enough to carry the load while the kids learned on the job.

But as we’ve found out, that was a wildly optimistic plan. Injuries, age and illness exposed Chelsea’s squad as thin and inexperienced.

Ancelotti again:

“But at the start of the season we couldn’t have envisaged having very important players all out at the same time.”

“We struggled to manage this – without Lampard, Drogba, Essien, Terry, Alex. It was very difficult to move on without these kind of players – not just their technical qualities but their personality and character. We missed them in November and December when we didn’t play well. I think it cost us quite a few points. Before the ‘difficult moment’ we’d used our younger players, like [Gaël] Kakuta and [Daniel] Sturridge.

“We’d done it gradually but it was harder to put the responsibility on them when the difficult moment came.”

Perhaps the signature game of the “difficult moment” was the shocking 3-0 home loss to Sunderland in November.

Who could Ancelotti turn to for help when his starters struggled? Let’s look at Chelsea’s bench for that match: Sala, Bruma, Kakuta, Van Aanholt, McEachran, Turnbull and Kalou.

A bunch of inexperienced kids and Kalou.  Not exactly as strong as Wednesday’s bench of Torres, Anelka, Zhirkov, Ivanovic  and Benayoun.

That, ladies and gentleman, is the story of Chelsea’s season.

The midfield has been a mess. Lampard just isn’t the same player. He’s been slow and off form since his injury and I think he’s too old to ever be the player he was just a season ago. Ramires is the best midfielder but he’s a runner/tackler, not a creator. There’s nobody in the midfield to run things. Hard to believe this, but journeyman Yossi Benayoun’s season-long injury was a huge blow.

Midfield/attack is also a problem. Malouda went off the boil a couple of months into the season. Without Zhirkov (injured) he played too many games. He’s 30 years old and can’t do that. Drogba’s malaria visibly sapped his strength and speed. Only in the last 2 weeks does he seem to have recovered. Torres needs a full off-season to recover both mentally and physically from the last 18 months. He should never have played in the World Cup.

The result is that Chelsea have had no finishing for most of the season. Kalou is the very definition of a wasteful player. And they blundered with Sturridge. He came to life in a reserve match on January 6th but Carlo never gave him a chance in a Premier League match and eventually loaned him out. Huge mistake.

The defense has been good. But there’s no right back. Ferreira is just awful. Bosinga has only slowly recovered from a long-term knee injury and he was never a star anyway. At left back Ashley Cole has played almost every single match and is completely worn down. Center-back has been a strength. Terry’s actually had a good season since coming back from his back injury. Ivanovic, Alex (when available) and Luiz have been pretty good.

But I look to personnel management last summer as the real problem. For depth, they placed ridiculous expectations on young players like Bruma, van Aanholt, Kakuta and McEachran. The squad is old, thin, injury-prone and suffering from World Cup exhaustion.

None of this is lost on the players themselves. Since recovering his health Drogba is playing like a man possessed — and like a man at risk of losing his job. Florent Malouda just gave himself a mohawk, possibly an emotional response to his precarious status for next season.

This has been a season of turmoil for Chelsea.

And yet there’s still a glimmer of hope. 5 games to go and 6 points behind.

Hope. A tease. Just enough to tempt a fan into wondering what might have been.

“Let me tell you something my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.” This is a famous quote from my most favourite movie of all time – Shawshank Redemption. It’s true hope can drive you insane but that’s also what makes the impossible possible. While hope drives me insane, let hope drive Chelsea to do the impossible.

Will I ever learn? This is what I’ve been doing. I think this season belongs to us. Then I think no it’s not. Suddenly something infuses some hope. I’m waiting for the winning streak to begin. Then I think this is not going to work. And then something happens. I think we’re in it again. I don’t know what to really make of this. One thing for sure – I know I’m not alone. This has been such a season. All teams have dropped points. No team has been very dominating. Exactly why I think this is a league that we could have wrapped up early April. But then we are also in the inconsistent mix ourselves.

So what’s happened now? After last wave of title charge died down, it was all for Man Utd to complete the formalities, especially after Arsenal drew in the last minute in a very comical fashion. The new card from the deck has opened the game up again. Man Utd have been held by Newcastle Utd.

Where does this leave us? Well, in the land of hope, once again. Here are the numbers. We have 61 points from 32 games. We have 6 more games to go, where at best we can win all 18 points. This would leave us at 79 points. That’s the maximum we can get.

Man Utd are on 70 points now with 5 games to be played. They need to get 9 points from these 5 games that would put them on 79 points which would be enough for them to win the title as they have the goal difference advantage.

For Chelsea, 4 out of the 6 matches are at fortress Stamford Bridge. We would play West Ham who would fight to stay above. And also Birmingham who might not want to leave anything to chance. The two away matches are at Old Trafford and Goodison Park. Granted not the most friendly of places. It’s great that we get to play Man Utd. A win at Old Trafford would just kick the fuss! That game should require no additional motivation. And it should be fine at Goodison on the last day of the season as Everton wouldn’t be playing for anything. They have no chance in hell for a Europa spot. So these two away games are fine. Our last game of the season is not at home.

Meanwhile, Man Utd play 3 out of those 5 games at home. They play Everton, Chelsea and Blackpool at home. The games against Chelsea and Blackpool may not be very easy. And the two away games are against Arsenal and Blackburn. So, basically, 4 out of their 5 games are very crucial for their opponents – 2 against their title rivals and 2 against relegation battlers. Their last game of the season is at home. But anything can happen.

Two important things though: (a) Chelsea need to win 6 matches in a row. (b) I’ve discounted Arsenal.

Chelsea winning 6 games in a row is possible. As I’ve been saying we have a near full squad to choose from. Let’s use our resources cleverly and somehow engineer a 6 match winning streak and let’s what Man Utd comes up with.

One thing’s for sure. In the game at Old Trafford against Chelsea, Man Utd would play for a draw. Every single time Fergie comes with a plan to get a draw against us, we have beaten them.

I don’t want to raise your expectations but I can’t help but think about this and not talk about this. This is how things stand. The opportunity is knocking our door yet again. Let’s try to open it.