Never usually one for understatement, Didier Drogba this week urged his Chelsea team-mates to set aside any talk of a title challenge and instead concentrate on winning two games in a row.
It shows the depths the champions have plummeted to in recent months that such remarks aren’t being taken as derogatory. Indeed, the last time they managed to string together consecutive league victories was at the end of October, before their winter of discontent sent them spiraling ten points adrift of current leaders Manchester United.
Less than a month ago Bolton Wanderers provided the opposition for Chelsea to end a dismal sequence of six league outings without a win and it is the same opposition that present the Blues with the previously rudimentary task of clocking up back to back victories.
Following Florent Malouda’s solitary strike against Bolton prior to the new year, Carlo Ancelotti’s side had ample opportunity to string a run together yet contrived to pick up just a point from meetings with the relegation threatened midlands duo of Aston Villa and Wolves.
After that, the 7-0 FA Cup pasting of Ipswich was supposed to be the catalyst for resurgence yet for over an hour of last weeks hosting of Blackburn, Chelsea once again failed to fire until a pair of bundled set-pieces eventually gave them the three points.
The last twenty minutes or so of the Rovers game saw Chelsea finish with a flurry of fluidity and bravado, albeit against a despondent Rovers with the game up. A much sterner test of where they stand at present will await at the Reebok Stadium, with the champions form on the road currently the worst in the Premier League.
Not since a late Branislav Ivanovic header at Ewood Park in October have Chelsea won away from the confines of Stamford Bridge, a run encompassing seven games, five defeats, two draws and just three goals - one a deflection, one a goalkeeping howler and one from a set-piece.
With five of their next six trips on the road - including visits to Everton in the FA Cup and Copenhagen in the Champions League - Chelsea need to immediately curtail their travel sickness if they hold out any aspirations of genuinely putting a run on Manchester United.
If they are going to get the ball rolling then they have the opportunity to do so at a home from home. Chelsea have won on their last seven trips to this part of Lancashire, scoring fourteen unanswered goals in the process.
Previously the Reebok has been a ground where Chelsea have demonstrated fully their championship credentials. Last season a smooth 4-0 coast provided an early season glimpse of what was to come and in 2006 the Blues weathered a ferocious hail of Allardyce-esque long balls and set-plays to grab a 2-0 win and fend off the pursuit of Manchester United en route to defending their league crown.
The year before that of course was the seminal moment of the Mourinho era, another 2-0 win which secured the Londoners first title in fifty years, and it is these memories the current crop will have to evoke to form the first steps of rehabilitation towards emulating past glories.
Chelsea prepare for the clash still unsure as to the fitness of influential pair John Terry and Frank Lampard. Skipper Terry took a knock to the ribs and missed a few days training this week but is expected to shrug the knock off whilst midfielder Lampard has a calf strain and will be assessed over the weekend.
Probable line up (4-3-3): Cech, Bosingwa, Ivanovic, Terry, Cole, Ramires, Essien, Lampard, Anelka, Malouda, Drogba
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