It is dangerous to assume too much from pre-season encounters, particularly when a club's newly appointed manager is still gauging the strengths and weaknesses of his recently inherited squad. Yet, after comfortable wins against Seattle Sounders and now Internazionale, some insights have been gleaned into Carlo Ancelotti's thinking for the season ahead.
The slick passing in Pasadena caught the eye, an apparent willingness to use a passer like Deco rather than merely a tackler at the foot of a midfield diamond also noted, yet most intriguing of all may be his apparent willingness to begin games with a pair of strikers. That is hardly a revolutionary concept, but it still represents a move away from the 4-3-3, 4-1-4-1 or 4-5-1 combinations that have steadily crept more and more into a Premier League where failure, either at top of bottom, is simply not an option. For all that the defensive midfield shield remains, whether it be Deco, Michael Ballack or John Mikel Obi, Ancelotti's forward thinking feels almost bold.
Admittedly, either the Major League Soccer side overcome on Saturday nor Jose Mourinho's Inter, a team who laboured behind Chelsea in their pre-season preparations, offered much defensive surety to frustrate a paired strike force or bite deeper on the counter-attack. Whether Ancelotti begins with two up top in the Premier League remains to be seen, yet the Italian, hardly a regular selector of two out-and-out forwards while with Milan, seems set on the idea. "I would like to play with two strikers because we can put more zonal pressing," said Ancelotti. "I want to follow this way."
To that end, three combinations of strikers have been used to date. The Sounders were pierced twice while Daniel Sturridge and Nicolas Anelka, perhaps not the most natural pairing but full of slippery running, strutted their stuff in front of a midfield diamond. Franco di Santo and Claudio Pizarro replaced them at the interval, with Andriy Shevchenko employed on the right of midfield. Neither the Peruvian or the Ukrainian is likely to start the new campaign at Stamford Bridge, while Di Santo may yet move elsewhere to gain first-team experience.
Then came the forward-line against Inter. Didier Drogba and Salomon Kalou have spent their summers on World Cup duty with Ivory Coast, preventing their participation earlier for their club side, but they linked up cleverly here against Mourinho's Inter. The Italians may have been off the pace with their fitness yet their snarl remained, but neither forward had his focus blurred. Drogba's curled opener 11 minutes in, the ball fizzing through Vid Belec's weak flap, offered a reminder of his quality. Kalou has never scored the goals initially anticipated of him, particularly after his prolific spell in Holland, but he linked up cleverly and drifted wide when required, providing width when neither full-back could spring up the flank.
Sturridge, a player of clear ability, won a penalty from Ivan Cordoba just four minutes after joining Anelka in the fray, the spot kick dispatched by Lampard who revelled again at the tip of the midfield diamond. "These matches are used to try new situations," offered Ancelotti as a reminder that this is a period of fitness work and experimentation, and not necessarily a true indicator of things to come. Regardless, to have beaten his arch rival Mourinho, a manager who worked with 10 of Chelsea's starters during his three-year spell in west London and invariably employed his trusty 4-3-3, must have offered the Italian some private satisfaction. So far, so good.