Carlo Ancelotti watched his Chelsea team brush aside Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium yesterday and then declared: “I believe we will win the title.”

The Chelsea manager thinks that they will remain on top of the Barclays Premier League until the end of the season, his confidence boosted by a stunning brace from Didier Drogba and an own goal by Thomas Vermaelen that gave the leaders a comprehensive 3-0 victory over their London rivals.

Victory re-established Chelsea’s five-point advantage at the summit and completed a clean sweep of wins over the other “big four” clubs in the past two months.

Chelsea were forced to grind out wins over Liverpool and Manchester United at Stamford Bridge, but were far too good for a disappointing Arsenal side, who now trail the pace-setters by 11 points.

Ancelotti refused to rule Arsenal out of title contention, as he did with Liverpool, but the manager’s belief in his own team is unshakeable.

“I believe we will win the title,” Ancelotti said. “When I signed a contract with Chelsea I believed we’d win something. We started the season believing that we could win. Our objective is to stay in all the competitions until the end of the season and then, if we can win, we will try to do that.

“I prefer to think that they can stay on top of the table, top of the list. It’s not so important for me if Arsenal can return to first position. For me it’s just important that Chelsea continue to play like today, with determination and with concentration.”

Ancelotti lavished praise on Drogba, who took his goal tally for the season to 14, and claimed that Chelsea can cope without the Ivory Coast striker during the African Cup of Nations in January. The Italian’s only concern was the recurrence of a hamstring injury suffered by Ashley Cole, who limped off with 18 minutes remaining.

“We played some matches without Drogba in the Champions League and won,” Ancelotti said. “He’s an important player, but today we had Ballack, Malouda, Deco and Kalou on the bench. They are top players who can play in any team. For this I’m not too worried. It was a very good performance. I think that if you win 3-0 at Arsenal, you have to do a good job.”

Arsène Wenger conceded that Arsenal’s title hopes had suffered a grave setback, but claimed that the margin of victory flattered the visiting team. He attacked Andre Marriner’s decision to disallow a second-half goal from Andrey Arshavin that would have brought the score back to 2-1, the referee ruling that Eduardo da Silva had been guilty of a dangerous challenge on Petr Cech in the build-up.

“At the moment our title race has taken a big blow,” Wenger said. “Chelsea are in a very strong position, but this team for me can still drop points. I’m convinced of that.

“The turning point came from the referee. How can he see Eduardo kicking the ball out of Cech’s hands when there was a Chelsea player in front of him? That was a big mistake by the referee.”A camera was thrown on to the pitch towards Frank Lampard, but missed the Chelsea midfield player.

There was also an own goal at Goodison Park, by Joseph Yobo, as Liverpool won the Merseyside derby 2-0 to return to fifth place and leave Everton hovering near the relegation zone.