SERENDIPITY works in many different ways. Having spent the week grappling with just how their team of all talents might combat Stoke City’s blunderbuss weapon of choice, Rory Delap’s long throws, Chelsea arrived at their first league fixture in the Potteries since 1988 to find Delap had been waylaid by a hamstring injury sustained at the very end of Friday’s training.

As it was, so dominant were Chelsea that Stoke had to wait 72 minutes to earn a throw-in in what would have been Delap territory. Then, predictably, Danny Higginbotham’s long but comparatively short effort was meat and drink to Alex and John Terry, the unyielding homunculuses of Chelsea’s rearguard.

Even so, Chelsea had to contend with a Stoke buoyed by last week’s heroic point at Anfield, the Premiers League’s most cacophonous crowd (including the unlikely figure of Sugar Ray Leonard, who tried the red and white stripes for size before kick off) and the growing belief that Tony Pulis’s band of artisans might embarrass the naysayers and actually warrant their place at the top table.

Chelsea’s week of heading practice might have been in vain, but they had done other homework. From first to last, they out-Stoked Stoke, eschewing width on the Premier League’s narrowest, most long-throw-friendly pitch and, seeing if the clothes of the underdog fitted, they harassed and harried their hosts.

Frank Lampard, John Obi Mikel and Michael Ballack, midfield terriers who were not too proud to graft, snapped at the heels of Stoke’s startled midfield, while Chelsea’s defence refused to cede territory.

When they rolled forwards, Chelsea’s labourers reminded us that they are, in truth, artisans and only Thomas Sorensen’s left boot foiled Didier Drogba in the 14th minute after Lampard’s majestic through ball had unpicked Stoke’s defensive locks.

“A difficult game,” admitted Chelsea manager Luis Felipe Scolari. “First I want to win and second play beautiful football, but it’s impossible to play beautiful football when the other team is just waiting for you to make a mistake.” For all Leon Cort and Abdoulaye Faye’s trojan defending, the home side struggled to cross the halfway line and, as Chelsea shots rained in, the bursting of Stoke’s dam was inevitable.

When the opener came, it was sublime. Irony of ironies, it began with a long throw, albeit a giant hurl from goalkeeper Petr Cech. Jose Boswinga linked with Salomon Kalou and kept on running into the penalty area where he collected another glorious Lampard ball on his chest, before belting home his first Premier League goal with the insouciance of a born executioner.

“Their defence made a mistake,” noted Scolari. “They didn’t expect Boswinga to be in that position.”

After the break, Chelsea continued where they left off. Soon, Sorensen was stretching out a hopeful hand to tip Florent Malouda’s piledriver onto the underside of the bar. Ricardo Fuller — confined to the bench by a virus — had replaced Dave Kitson but Stoke’s problem still lay with their inability to serve their strikers in the face of Chelsea’s whiplash sortees forwards and ferocious midfield toil.

Yet, football’s immutable laws dictated that somewhere along the line, a chance would fall to Stoke. Said chance fell in the 61st minute. Liam Lawrence floated in a corner.

Cort leapt above the pack to make a firm headed connection, only to look back in anguish as Mikel strained every last neck sinew to nod off the line.

They would not come closer, but such was Stoke’s indomitable spirit that they began to threaten, albeit gingerly, and without being in severe peril, Cech twice had to move swiftly to foil Fuller. Chelsea’s response was to crush such impertinence at once.

Boswinga whizzed down the right with coltish enthusiasm. His low cross cannoned off Cort, a doughty presence all afternoon but who had had slipped at precisely the wrong moment and fell kindly for the typically mercurial Nicolas Anelka, who showed no mercy. There would be no glorious reprieve for Stoke and Chelsea cruised home with neither fuss nor ado.

Indeed, there might have been further Chelsea goals for Ballack and Lampard, but a combination of Sorensen’s exemplary positioning and marginally wayward finishing kept the score decent.

“Defending against Chelsea is like defending against the Red Arrows,” sighed Pulis. “They suck you in and then they drag you all over the shop. We could have pushed on more in the first half, but I’m pleased at how we competed in the

second. The important thing now is that we don’t get down in the dumps.”

For Chelsea, who will face the Romanians of Cluj in the Champions League on Wednesday without the injured Joe Cole, Ricardo Carvalho and Deco, further indication that there is iron aplenty in their soul. For Stoke, no disgrace, but a sobering warning that a giant heart is sometimes not enough

STOKE: Sorensen 7, Griffin 5, Cort 6, Abdoulaye Faye 7, Higginbotham 5, Lawrence 5 (Tonge 65min), Olofinjana 6, Diao 7, Cresswell 5, Kitson 5 (Fuller 52min, 6), Sidibe 6 (Amdy Faye 81)

CHELSEA: Cech 6, Bosingwa 7, Terry 6, Alex 6, Cole 6, Ballack 7 (Ferreira 89min), Obi Mikel 7, Lampard 7, Kalou 6 (Anelka 46min, 6), Malouda 6, Drogba 6 (Belletti 73min)