Joe Cole scored from a near-post header against two Bordeaux giants; Florent Malouda collected his first goal of the season and Nicolas Anelka his first in the Champions League for Chelsea. It was that sort of night. Easy street. Chelsea did not need Didier Drogba to progress comfortably through what Uefa’s marketing arm calls Matchday One in their European season. Perhaps later. Matchday Nine or Ten, maybe.

There is a gulf in class between the Barclays Premier League and much of the rest of the Continent, and it is not going to be bridged by a team who finished runners-up in the French league. Laurent Blanc, one of France’s greatest defenders, is coach of Bordeaux, but his team were lucky not to go down by double this margin. Ricardo Carvalho hit the crossbar with minutes remaining and Frank Lampard missed a sitter. There were other good opportunities for Anelka, Joe Cole and John Terry and even when Bordeaux enjoyed greater possession at odd intervals in the second half, there was no evidence of a cutting edge.

This was Luiz Felipe Scolari’s debut as a Champions League manager and he will know it gets harder than this. It may come as a surprise, however, how long it takes before his players are required to break sweat. Perhaps this was behind Scolari’s criticism after the game. If Chelsea are not going to be challenged, they will have to challenge themselves and certainly there does not appear to be much to worry them in this group, considering that Roma were beaten in the Olympic Stadium by first-timers CFR Cluj, of Romania, last night. Chelsea travel to Transylvania next but are unlikely to need garlic, crosses or stakes to protect them. Roman Abramovich’s £300 million investment in a squad that is the envy of the world should be enough.

With the result comes the hope that the tournament that ended in tears for Chelsea last season may be crowned with redemption at the final in Rome. There is immense potential in this group of players and only a hint of it was required for three points here.

The efficiency with which Bordeaux were dismissed - Chelsea had the game won within 29 minutes and the flurry at the end merely gave the score-line a deserving forcefulness - suggested that the early stages of this competition will contain few terrors for Scolari’s men, or any of the strong English clubs. Chelsea were a different class from Bordeaux, who barely had a scoring opportunity of note all night and were no match physically.

The goals came in two bursts, a 15-minute spell in the first half, during which Chelsea could have scored seven, and a ten-minute period at the end of the game as Bordeaux tired, having held the fort for more than an hour. When Joe Cole can score from a near-post header, marked by two men half a head taller, it is clearly not shaping up to be the most arduous contest of the year and while Michel Platini, the Uefa president, will no doubt see this as further evidence that the wealth of the Premier League has made for an uneven playing field in Europe, there is no justification for a team to defend as meekly as this.

That Blanc is the coach merely adds to the mystery. He must have been aware of Chelsea’s attacking strengths, the movement, the width provided by the full backs, Lampard’s runs from midfield, the inventiveness of Deco, but he did little to stop the debacle unfolding. Chelsea will have been thankful for such a light workout with Manchester United the visitors on Sunday.

Bordeaux’s full backs were woeful, Diego Placente, the Argentina player, in particular treating José Bosingwa as if protected by an exclusion zone, while Souleymane Diawara, the central defender, looked every inch the player who could not make it at Charlton Athletic in a relegation season. It did not help that Abou Diarra, a World Cup finalist for France in 2006, did a poor job as the midfield screen and his performance served only to highlight the strides made by John Obi Mikel in that position for Chelsea, even if one pass in the ninth minute allowed Wendel, Bordeaux’s Brazilian wide man, to shoot from range.

There was little time to glory in this false dawn, however, as, from the next attack, Chelsea scored, Lampard, meeting a cross from Bosingwa with a header, the ball driven into the pitch and low past Ulrich Ramé, the goal-keeper. The execution was excellent, but that Lampard had been allowed to travel from central midfield to deep inside the Bordeaux penalty area without an escort said much about French vulnerability.

The breakthrough achieved, Chelsea set about pummelling their opponents into submission with a succession of chances. The last, a pass from Joe Cole that caused such consternation in the Bordeaux ranks that Fernando, desperately covering, almost turned the ball into his net, forced a furious recovery from Ramé, who was at full stretch to save face as well as ball.

It could not last for ever and soon a Lampard corner from the left was met by Joe Cole at the near post, somehow getting in front of Franck Jurietti, the full back, and the imposing Fernando.

Lampard squandered a chance to put the outcome beyond debate in the 33rd minute, missing from six yards with only Ramé to beat and many in the crowd already celebrating in anticipation, but Bordeaux were reeling and only the occasional diversion of a long-range shot or free kick from Yoann Gourcuff - known as le petit Zidane, although how many times have we heard that - broke the relentlessness of Chelsea’s superiority.

Late in the game, the resistance crumbled. Mikel surged through Bordeaux’s lame midfield, laying the ball to Lampard, whose exquisite backheel set up Malouda for a left-foot finish that allowed no hope for heroics from Ramé. To complete a fine night’s work (despite the views of Scolari), Anelka tapped into an unprotected net after a 35-yard shot from Juliano Belletti, a substitute, had thundered off the Bordeaux bar via Ramé’s finger-tips. It was a dramatic conclusion, but only for show. The real drama is months away yet.

Chelsea (4-1-4-1): P Cech — J Bosingwa, R Carvalho, J Terry, A Cole — J O Mikel — J Cole (sub: J Belletti, 73min), Deco (sub: M Ballack, 60), F Lampard, F Malouda (sub: S Kalou, 83) — N Anelka. Substitutes not used: Hilário, F Di Santo, P Ferreira, Alex.

Bordeaux (4-1-4-1): U Ramé — F Jurietti, M Planus, S Diawara, D Placente — A Diarra — Y Gouffran (sub: G Obertan, 65), Fernando (sub: P Ducasse, 73), Y Gourcuff, Wendel — M Chamakh (sub: F Cavenaghi, 65). Substitutes not used: M Valverde, Henrique, D Bellion, A Traoré.

Referee: P Vink (Netherlands).