The Blues have seen their excellent start to the season ruined by a poor spell over Christmas and, with Arsenal holding an 11 point lead over us the title would appear to be out of reach.

But before the start of the season, did anyone truly believe that we would win the title this year? No... It was only due to us surprising people that we were mentioned as serious title contenders. Champions League qualification would still be a fantastic achievement this year.

And Mario Melchiot agrees, whilst also getting in Chelsea-Mad's good books by slating Man United: "Arsenal are maybe just a bit too much ahead, showing everyone they are a good side. But if I look at Manchester United, they are not the Manchester United of when I arrived here, so that's maybe why we had so much confidence against them.

"If we keep playing how we have so far, we have a good chance of catching them.''

But Melchiot then shot himself in the foot by, shock horror, praising Ryan Giggs... "I'll never meet anyone better than Ryan Giggs. When you look at what he's capable of, he can make you look silly or dribble past you - he can do anything. He's going through a difficult moment but there should be no worry that he will come out of it.''

Finally, Melchiot reveals his aims for the rest of the season, "We just want to do better than last year and reach the Champions League. If there's one thing I really want, it's that. Why should we not believe in that? I want to win the FA Cup but I also want to qualify for the Champions League as that's the creme de la creme.''

And his comments were backed up by our Captain Supreme, Marcel Desailly. The Frenchman said, "We'll try our best to qualify for the Champions League and finish second or third, but firstly we must forget about the Man United defeat by concentrating on our Cup game at Shrewsbury.''

And speaking about the United defeat, he added, "We wanted to show at Old Trafford that we have a quality team and that we can rival the top teams, but our loss of realism and inability to hold onto a result cost us dearly."

A bit harsh from Marcel, but we must set our standards high in order to play against, as Mario puts it, the creme de la creme...