IN THE Reebok Stadium press room — whereas at Arsenal there are bagels — you get meat pies, gravy and chips. Outside, the wind howls down on to the pitch from nearby hills and the locals howl at visiting footballers. The home team comes at you wielding the forgotten weaponry of this island’s football, long passes, high crosses and a 100mph pressing of the ball. It is as English a battlefield as Hastings or, indeed, Stamford Bridge. A fitting place to take the English crown.

Jose Mourinho and Roman Abramovich are conquerors from abroad but their English triumph has been built on Englishmen. John Terry and Frank Lampard couldn’t be more Anglo. John and Frank. Cheese and pickle, fish and chips. It was no surprise that, when Chelsea were running on empty, it was John and Frank who towed them across the line.

It was Terry who provided the most memorable image of the day when, re-emerging from the dressing room he walked out with his arm round a champagne-soaked Abramovich to perform a lap of honour. It was Lampard who demonstrated the ethos upon which this first Chelsea championship in 50 years was built. His two goals secured the title but he refused to take personal credit. “You can see it for yourself. We’re all together. This championship was not about a few individuals winning it but the whole squad, management and backroom staff,” he said.

Chelsea came into the match exhausted, with four players who had taken part in more than 4,000 minutes of football this season. John and Frank were naturally among them. Lampard completed his 4,570th minute of play at the Reebok and Terry his 4,650th, which amounts to 77Å hours of solid game time. Bolton, as expected, tested their visitors. Sam Allardyce’s side stretched the play wide across the pitch and pinged passes high and hard over long distances, leaving Chelsea to chase across big green expanses in search of the ball. The long throws, corners, diagonal balls, free kicks, and goalkeepers’ hoofs Bolton rained into Chelsea’s box were like the missiles from a catapult of a medieval army storming a city. Somehow Lampard and Terry stood strong.

Lampard is a physical marvel. Sir Alex Ferguson calls him “freakish” for his ability to play on, season after season, never missing a Premiership game, and whereas many footballers lose the zip in their legs as they leave their early 20s, Lampard, at 26, seems to be getting bigger, faster, stronger. His second goal said everything about him. After all that hard work, all those playing minutes, he still charged on to a pass upfield, outstrip the Bolton markers and plant the ball into Jussi Jaaskelainen’s net.

His first goal was the most “English” moment of the game. Preceded by a long kick from Petr Cech, flick-ons from both Chelsea strikers and Jiri Jarosik thumping an opponent beyond the referee’s eye, it was almost Crazy Gang stuff. Lampard simply battered Ben Haim aside before thrashing a shot past Jaaskelainen. So much vigour, so much force.

Where he summoned it from was a mystery, given how off the pace he had been. He was hurting after just 40 seconds, when he pulled up and clutched his tender parts after striking a volley. At first, it looked like a groin injury. It turned out he was merely sore after the ball had hit a vulnerable area, but this eye- watering moment seemed to take its toll. Until Lampard played a fine ball through to Didier Drogba in the 39th minute, he had not made a serious contribution to the game.

And yet he ended the day as Chelsea’s top scorer in the Premiership with 12 goals and the remarkable total in all competitions of 18. Nigel Spackman, among other pundits, has proclaimed him the best midfielder in Europe. He is not that. There is much Lampard could learn about short passing and tactical play from Claude Makelele, whose presence means the Englishman may not even be the best midfielder at Chelsea. But, this season, Lampard may have been the most effective footballer on the continent. Nobody contributed more towards Chelsea’s triumph.

Terry was just as stout. He has been playing on despite a serious toe injury, for which he has postponed surgery, and left Stamford Bridge after Wednesday’s game against Liverpool with a heavy limp. At half-time at the Reebok he went in ashen, groggy and unable to see out of his left eye after taking an elbow in the face from Kevin Davies.

Somehow he was still standing as the game finished an hour later, heading ball after ball away from the Chelsea box. When teammates jigged in front of supporters at the end they had changed into special commemorative T-shirts but not Terry. Nobody was getting him out of the blue jersey, the one with the Chelsea badge over the heart.

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