FOOTBALL x-rays a man’s soul, examines him in a way that seldom happens in normal life, and when Middlesbrough’s players, coaches and manager reflect on this pale imitation of a football match, they will wonder what in the world they were doing. Before an expectant home crowd, against a Chelsea side without seven frontline players, it wasn’t that Boro were slaughtered by superior opponents but that they played like dead sheep.

Nothing became the nature of the match as much as slow deceleration down to the 90th minute. Chelsea’s travelling support chanted “We want six” but it was half-hearted and, by then, their team were whiling the minutes away with strings of pretty but purposeless passing. Why hurt Boro any more? By then most of the home fans had left the stadium and Boro’s resistance, not nearly fierce enough in the first place, had withered completely.

Gareth Southgate spent some time in the changing room with his team after the game. What do you say to young players who have been brutally outplayed? Can you criticise a man for not having as much talent as his opponent? And how do you see the positives when there aren’t any? Most of all, how can you make sense of a performance when the 5-0 scoreline barely tells the story of how awful it was?

“I told them they had to leave here hurting because our fans have left hurting,” said Southgate. “Physically, fitness-wise, tactically, they were better than us and these are some of the things I have to look at. We looked like we were caught in the headlights and have to talk about why that happened. But it was a humiliation. And when you lose like that, it is a very humbling experience. I don’t think they had to be at their best and yet they annihilated us.”

Because Chelsea have been playing well recently, most particularly in the 2-0 victory over Aston Villa, there will be a temptation to laud this latest demonstration of quality and describe it as the best of Luiz Felipe Scolari’s reign. The temptation should be resisted. Middlesbrough were woeful and so Chelsea looked very good.

But that is not to detract from a job well done. Chelsea couldn’t pick the injured Petr Cech, Ashley Cole, Ricardo Carvalho, Michael Essien, Michael Ballack, Joe Cole and Didier Drogba, and chose not to start Deco, who is returning from injury. Even though Boro were without Robert Huth, Emmanuel Pogatetz, Julio Arca, Tuncay and Justin Hoyte, it did seem a good time for Southgate’s side to to get at their rivals.

But that assumed Boro would be ready for the battle. Alas, they were not. They turned up not to bury Chelsea but to admire them. They were diligent and earnest but hopelessly tame. Their wide players, Stewart Downing and Adam Johnson, were too conscious of how Chelsea’s overlapping full-backs could hurt them and rarely did they even try to get behind the Chelsea defence.

With three very young players in their back four, Boro got themselves into all kinds of tangles defensively, especially on the flanks, and if there was anything remarkable about the first half it was that Chelsea managed to score only one goal, on 14 minutes.

A Wayne Bridge cross from the left was tamely headed away by David Wheater and, when Juliano Belletti drove the ball back in, it ricocheted off Wheater and on to left-back Andrew Taylor before dropping to Salomon Kalou. He swept it past Ross Turnbull and Chelsea more or less cruised through to half-time, seeming only half-interested in killing off meek rivals.

You wondered if they might pay for their casualness. Boro began the second half with greater urgency and ambition but in no time they were back in tentative mode, only much worse off. Downing fired a long-range shot over the bar before the second goal arrived in the 51st minute, a brilliantly struck effort by Belletti.

Receiving the ball 30 yards from goal, the Brazilian took one step forward and smashed a rocket into the top right corner of the net. Poor Turnbull moved towards the ball and, as he did, it moved further away from him. Unstoppable. Belletti is a squad player at Chelsea, unlikely to be in the team when the big boys are fit.

Kalou got the third, two minutes later, from Florent Malouda’s pass, but the real magic was delivered in an exceptional 50-yard pass struck by Bridge to the French international. Bridge is another squad player and a distant second in the race for the left-back position when Ashley Cole is fit. It’s hard for managers when opponents’ second-choice players are better than your first-teamers.

The fourth goal was a fine Frank Lampard header from an excellent Kalou cross. Malouda got the fifth after Turnbull failed to deal with Nicolas Anelka’s shot. There was still a quarter of the game to run and if Boro had been allowed to throw in a towel it would have been hard to resist.

MIDDLESBROUGH:Turnbull 5, Grounds 4, (J Johnson 54min, 5), Wheater 4, Riggott 5, Taylor 4, Aliadiere 4, Shawky 5 (Digard 65min), O'Neil 6, A Johnson 4 (Alves 65min), Downing 5, Mido 4

CHELSEA:Cudicini 6, Bosingwa 6, Terry 6, Alex 6, Bridge 7 (Ferreira 65min), Belletti 7, Lampard 7 (Deco 73min), Mikel 8, Kalou 7, Anelka 6 (Sinclair 78min), Malouda 6