At the end of this fevered, streaky, oddly inevitable 1-0 victory at Upton Park, John Terry could be seen limping around, holding his lower back and finally clearing the ball as West Ham launched another attempt to break through the apparently unbreachable blue membrane around Chelsea’s goal. Meanwhile, at the other end, Didier Drogba scrapped and fought and spoiled, a one-man time-wasting device. Looking up you half-expected to see Jiri Jarosik coming on, Paulo Ferreira covering at right-back, Sylvester Stallone abseiling down off the corrugated roof. Somehow, in the last two months of a title campaign launched in a flush of youthful attacking football, The Unbeatables have become something closer to The Expendables.
Chelsea kept on rolling along at Upton Park. The only goal of a thrilling match was scored by Eden Hazard in the first half, while West Ham were unlucky, Diafra Sakho missing a stream of chances. At the end of which it was a victory chiselled out of that champion resilience that runs though this team, given a familiar kind of ballast by Chelsea’s freshly re-contracted captain, a leader from the back whose presence continues to drive a relatively callow team on towards what would be a first league title for the rump of this Mourinho Mk2 Chelsea.
Terry had a genuinely shaky match at times, exposed to the pace of West Ham’s strike pair of Sakho and Enner Valencia without the triple-ply protection offered by Nemanja Matic. The captain might have been sent off for a second booking.
He was certainly exposed several times in a performance of weary limbs and accumulated strains. And yet somehow this still had the feeling of a very Terry kind of occasion, the sort of midweek cross-town derby win that tends to keep the engines thrumming towards a league title at this time of year. It has, of course, been a very Terry kind of week, with José Mourinho confirming the offer of a new one-year contract to take his captain into his third decade at the club. It will be a rare achievement too if Terry does win a Premier League title 10 years on from his first.
Seven managers and 20 different central-defensive partners down the line here he is, still leading the team, with his own loss of mobility – Terry was never quick – counterbalanced by fine positional intelligence and a simple winning spirit.
Terry is, of course, a local boy in these parts, a West Ham academician before he left for Chelsea aged 14. Not that there is any residual fondness at the Boleyn Ground for a player who, like Frank Lampard, has always been an object of venom.
Here the home and away sections spent a large part of the match trading Terry-based insults while Terry’s touches were heartily booed throughout. With 14 minutes gone he was booked for a horrible foul on Valencia – not malicious or violent, just embarrassingly rustic, Chelsea’s captain grabbing hold of his man as he passed like a middle-aged security guard in pursuit of the local skateboard crew. Terry trotted away, reflecting perhaps on the absence of Matic who is particularly expert in shielding his stately captain from marauding attackers several years his junior.
Here Kurt Zouma was asked to reprise his midfield-hustler role. He had another dogged match too although at times the differences between a fine, all-round defensive athlete and a genuine elite-level midfielder were clear once again as West Ham pressed Chelsea back, a familiar pattern in recent weeks for these gristly, resilient league leaders.
Poor old Chelsea, under the pump again but they just keep on running away with the league. The opening goal came against the run of play but was still somehow totally unsurprising. Cesc Fàbregas swivelled in midfield and played a nice pass out to Ramires on the right. His whipped cross found Hazard in the centre and he buried the header.
It was the first time since January that two of Chelsea’s attacking players have combined to create a Premier League goal. But this has been the trajectory of Chelsea’s season, a team that began in a flurry of attacking football but has spent the past few weeks in rear-wheel-drive mode, bolstered by a brilliant, match-saving goalkeeper and a defence that radiates an intangible, veteran assurance.
It is hard to overstate Terry’s influence even after a performance where he looked at times scarcely able to compete but still somehow entirely convinced of his team’s eventual victory. If Chelsea do win the league this season he will have a captain’s share in four of Chelsea’s five title wins and 15 of 25 major honours won in the club’s 109-year history. Little wonder Chelsea are so keen to hang on to a player who, for all his decelerating powers and physical travails, and whatever one’s opinion of his assorted non-footballing adventures, remains a specialist in how to win.