As the ska sound of Madness reverberated around a joyous Stamford Bridge yesterday, the beat was almost too much for John Terry to resist. Having taken his team not only one step but five points beyond Manchester United, the Chelsea captain looked ready to burst into dance, but instead he settled for a broad grin, a swagger and a couple of kisses blown to someone special in the crowd.

Forget the £151,000-a-week wage. It is moments like this that make it all worthwhile for a man such as Terry. Having woken, not for the first time, to unedifying headlines about his family on the front pages, with allegations that his father had tried to sell class A drugs to an undercover reporter in an Essex nightclub, Terry needed a pick-me-up of his own and there could be none sweeter than a winning goal against United to establish his team as clear favourites for the Barclays Premier League.

Was it his goal? Put it this way: no one at Chelsea argues with Terry these days, since his decision in the summer to commit the rest of his playing days to the club.

Nicolas Anelka laid a strong claim to the goal at the time, reeling off in celebration after they both rose to meet Frank Lampard’s free kick with 14 minutes remaining, but the forward’s post-match interview seemed to indicate that nobody dared to stand between Terry and his goal — and that, by the look of it, might apply to the Premier League title race, too, given the way that Chelsea are building up momentum under Carlo Ancelotti.

United’s players knew that this was a significant setback, not to mention a painful one. When Sir Alex Ferguson claimed that his team had “dominated the game”, it was a mild exaggeration, but it was by no means the stuff of fantasy. They had been the more assertive team throughout, defending diligently and attacking with purpose when the opportunity arose, and would surely have claimed something from the game, quite possibly a victory, had not the two big refereeing decisions gone in Chelsea’s favour.

Had the match ended goalless, Martin Atkinson, the referee, would have ended up with a stern rebuke from Ferguson for refusing to award United a penalty in the fourteenth minute, when Antonio Valencia tumbled after appearing to be impeded by Terry. As it was, the United manager was left in a fury, deeply unhappy both with Atkinson’s award of a free kick, for what looked like a fair tackle by Darren Fletcher on Ashley Cole, and with the manner that Wes Brown was obstructed by Didier Drogba when the ball was whipped in from the left-hand side by Lampard.

Ferguson said that “you lose faith in refereeing sometimes”, which, given that he has never been one to worship at the altar of match officials, no doubt raised a few laughs among Atkinson and his colleagues in the adjacent room.

The United manager was entitled to feel hard done by, though, given that his team, without Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic in central defence, had coped admirably to that point with the threat of a Chelsea side who have been in prolific form in recent weeks.

Looking at the two line-ups beforehand, it was hard to avoid the feeling that this was a great opportunity for Chelsea to extend their lead at the top of the table. Yet United made by far the more purposeful start, Fletcher closing down Chelsea’s midfield players at every opportunity, Valencia asking questions of Ashley Cole and Wayne Rooney leading the line intelligently, while Jonny Evans and, in particular, Brown excelled in the centre of defence.

When Ferguson claimed, though, that his side had “great chances to win the game”, not too many rushed into the consciousness. Rooney struck the side-netting from a tight angle early on and tested Petr Cech with a clever, curling shot from 25 yards, but otherwise they had little to show for the way they competed in defence and midfield.

While the performance was vastly improved on that in the 2-0 defeat away to Liverpool a fortnight earlier, the failing that Ferguson mentioned on that occasion, their lack of penetration, was again in evidence.

This, though, was a game of few chances. Chelsea briefly threatened through Branislav Ivanovic early on, while Drogba should have done better with a header before half-time, but it seemed that neither side were willing to gamble in pursuit of three points. Only when Ancelotti sent on Joe Cole in place of Deco and, in a more subtle change, swapped Michael Essien with Michael Ballack, allowing the former more freedom to maraud forward, did Chelsea hint at an ambition to go for the win.

The game was transformed, though, when Fletcher was penalised for his challenge on Ashley Cole. As Lampard swung in the free kick, Terry and Anelka attacked the ball with greater conviction than any of United’s defenders, although Brown had an excuse, having been felled, deliberately or otherwise, by Drogba.

United never truly threatened to find a way back into the game after that. Ferguson sent on Gabriel Obertan, the French youngster, and Michael Owen, but by now there was a fierceness about the resolve of Terry and his colleagues in the Chelsea defence. Even as the fourth official indicated that there would be five minutes of stoppage time, it seemed inevitable, for once, that United would fail to get the goal they required.

Rooney walked off the pitch mouthing the words “twelve men” into a television camera — a comment that, it is fair to assume, related to the help Chelsea had received from the referee, rather than the Stamford Bridge crowd. If there was a little bit of that, there was also the decisive contribution of Chelsea’s first man.

It has been a difficult few years for Terry since he last got his hands on the Premier League trophy in 2006, but he and his team-mates are determined that they will be dancing to a different tune at the end of this season. This was only one win, but, as Terry’s expression said, it was also the biggest three points of the campaign so far.

Chelsea (4-3-1-2): P Cech 6 B Ivanovic 6 R Carvalho 7 J Terry 8 A Cole 6 M Ballack 6 M Essien 6 F Lampard 6 Deco 5 N Anelka 7 D Drogba 5. Substitutes: J Cole 5 (for Deco, 63min), S Kalou (for Drogba, 83), Alex (for Anelka, 90). Not used: Hilário, P Ferreira, J O Mikel, F Malouda. Next: Wolves (h).

Manchester United (4-5-1): E van der Sar 6 J O’Shea 7 W Brown 8 J Evans 7 P Evra 7 L A Valencia 6 D Fletcher 6 M Carrick 6 Anderson 6 R Giggs 5 W Rooney 7. Substitutes: G Obertan (for Giggs, 85min), M Owen (for Anderson, 85). Not used: T Kuszczak, N Vidic, Fábio Da Silva, D Gibson, P Scholes. Next: Everton (h).

Referee: M Atkinson. Attendance: 41,836.