CHELSEA’S doctor has already lost his job over Arjen Robben’s broken foot. Would Chelsea’s manager lose his grip on the championship because of it? It was always going to be a vain hope for Arsène Wenger and Sir Alex Ferguson, and Jose Mourinho had dashed it by the end of lunchtime yesterday.

Chelsea’s response to their supposed mini-crisis was to establish the biggest lead a team at the top of the Barclays Premiership has enjoyed all season, moving 12 points clear of Manchester United. Even without their Robben, they keep bob, bob, bobbin’ along.

Mourinho’s team may be less watchable shorn of their coruscating winger — in the League they score almost two goals fewer per game without him — but they are no less redoubtable. They have simply too many strengths to weaken fatally just because they have lost one player.

“We knew it was going to be difficult but we also knew that if we kept our shape, the chances would come,” said assistant manager, Steve Clarke — and that was the key. Mourinho, a man of statistical and video analysis, devourer of obscure coaching manuals from far-flung sources in South America, has established, above all, a method of playing. It is too powerful to depend on individuals to make it work.

Chelsea did not need Robben for their midfield to move the ball so quickly and accurately into counter-attack and nor was he required for their forwards to be full of such clever, constant movement that they ran Everton’s poor defenders into the ground. Above all, Robben is irrelevant to what is this team’s defining quality, their spirit-sapping meanness. Marriages have lasted shorter than the 16 hours Mourinho’s men have gone without conceding a League goal.

Mourinho carries with him another attribute that prospers regardless. Like all successful people he is lucky. His club’s supporters may feel a sense of misfortune about being without Robben but he will know it is nothing compared with the personnel losses rivals have suffered this season. United have missed Ruud van Nistelrooy for most of the campaign and did not have Gabriel Heinze, Wayne Rooney and Rio Ferdinand available until mid-September. Injuries have robbed Arsenal of Sol Campbell, Gilberto and Patrick Vieira at significant stages.

Even Chelsea’s curses on the night of Robben’s injury were tempered by a blessing. Blackburn Rovers had a penalty that, given the tightness of the game, may well have earned them a draw. But Paul Dickov missed it.

Providence smiled on Mourinho again yesterday. James Beattie’s lunatic action in head-butting William Gallas to get himself sent off after only eight minutes was like a lottery win to Chelsea. Beattie’s deed was so randomly stupid that even his teammates made only the most half-hearted protests after Mike Riley flashed the red card.

David Moyes knew very well how gormless, not to mention selfish, his £6m club-record signing had been. But Moyes is a keen admirer of Sir Alex Ferguson. How else could his post-match comments be explained? “I was a centre-half in my time and I would have been ashamed to go down as easily as that. Never in a million years would you have seen John Terry doing so,” he said of Gallas’s tumble after Beattie ’s forehead caught him on the back of the crown.

Beattie has Scottish heritage and owns a kilt. His tartan is that of his clan, the Macbeth, but, unlike his famous ancestor he cannot be regarded as a tragic figure. The sheer banality was the thing. Beattie became frustrated because Gallas blocked his path to the ball but there was nothing illegal about what the defender was doing.

So why react like that? To butt the Frenchman achieved about as much as Macbeth would have had he decided to plant a Glasgow kiss on Banquo’s ghost.

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