Ah, the Big Four play each other and, for one of two or three weekends in the year, the Premier League has a meaning to it. A cynic might argue that you could have settled the season in the first three weeks of August, with the right scheduling.

It was always a sweet idea that Manchester City or Portsmouth might gatecrash the party, cunning and commitment overcoming cash; but I don’t think anybody ever took it seriously. Not Sven and certainly not Harry. Come May, we all know where we will be and, frankly, we knew even before the grouse looked up one morning and saw a whole bunch of Hooray Henrys trying to blast their heads off. I had vague hopes that Spurs might excel themselves, that Arsenal might be on a slightly downward trajectory; that, it turns out, was a combination of stupidity and wishful thinking. Spurs are busy doing what Spurs do best - looking with bitter envy towards Islington; Arsenal are being Arsenal, or maybe an even more exaggerated version of the Arsenal we know and sort of love, all speed and grace and nuance. My guess is that they were only kidding at Boro last week; it was part of one of those quasi-blips all the top teams succumb to after a while. Arsenal’s immediate record is poor - a draw against dull and useless Newcastle; a defeat and a draw in the Champions League and then defeat by a team I fear won’t be in the Premier League next season, much as I admire them. That’s relegation form, I suppose – but, as I say, they’re only kidding. At Middlesbrough, Arsenal looked bored and distrait and ineffectual, an effete team of synchronised swimmers overcome by a fat drowning man. You assume that’s got the mid-season hubris out of their system and that normal service will soon be resumed.

However, if Chelsea win 3-0 at the Emirates and other results go their way, they will be top for the first time this season – which I suppose is as close to a surprise as one might get from this horribly preordained league. Chelsea’s record in the past couple of months or so has been nigh-on impeccable: 16 games without defeat in the Premier League, League Cup and the Champions League, of which 12 have been won. Not a single goal conceded in the past five games. Chelsea do not look as if they are going to win every game; the whole business seems to be, for them, a bit of a struggle, when matched against the effortless pomp of Manchester United, Arsenal and even Liverpool. But win they do, week after week, under that grimacing, stone-faced Israeli, Avram Grant. Chelsea have climbed their way to within an ace of the top largely without the services of possibly the best striker in Europe, Didier Drogba. For Jose Mourinho the loss of Drogba would have excused his side – and indeed himself – a multitude of sins (and particularly, that cardinal sin of failing to win games). He would have intimated that Chelsea were without even the slenderest vestiges of good luck – that it wasn’t just the referees, the FA and Fifa who were against them, but that partisan bugger God, too. The absence of John Terry provoked similar lamentations. But Grant has simply shuffled the pack, quietly, encouraged his midfield to push up so that “Frankie” Lampard looks a half-decent player again – and even injected life into that ageing, woebegone streak of Ukrainian discontent, Andriy Shevchenko. As many have commented, Chelsea are playing more attractive football and were doing so even before Drogba got himself crocked (and was therefore no longer able to hold the ball up for several hours while his one or two teammates made their way to the penalty area). Furthermore, they are winning. There is no way of getting around it: Avram Grant is doing a better job with Chelsea than did his predecessor. You would suspect that if Chelsea do win today, Mr Grant will make his way home muttering to himself: “Ha. Not that special, then, mate.”

Avram Grant has done us all a favour, those of us at least who still, despite decades of bile and disappointment, take an interest in England’s performances. By all accounts, or at least his own, Mourhino was the manager elect for the national team, a candidate so far ahead of the rest of the pack that it was almost insulting to even ask him to do the job. Although, that being said, he clearly wanted to be asked, wanted the interest to be shown. For once, Brian Barwick, the Football Association’s chief executive, showed a degree of resolve and dignity and, effectively, told Jose to get stuffed. I have little in the way of an opinion on Fabio Capello, save for the fact that he didn’t think too highly of David Beckham as a player, which suggests an element of good judgment. But we should all be glad that we have been spared Mr Mourinho. Yes, Jose won stuff for Chelsea; but given the money he had to spend, was that so much of an achievement, in the end? Mourinho was playing a sort of fantasy football of a kind which might be constructed by a newspaper with only one reader: you can have whoever you want for your team and money is no object. Jose’s biggest encumbrance was having to accommodate two of the best players in the world, somehow – Ballack and Shevchenko. And he failed in that task, succumbing once again to petulance and hubris. God alone knows how he would have dealt with England. Avram Grant, meanwhile, has not yet been allowed to choose from the entire pack; he had to play the hand he has been dealt. But he has done so with enormous aplomb.