The pendulum swung to and fro throughout an enthralling afternoon before coming to rest firmly in Manchester United’s corner. Chelsea will strive with all their considerable might to get it moving again, but know they missed their last chance in the Stamford Bridge sunshine, conceding two priceless points at home to half-strength Bolton and leaving themselves five adrift in a title race which should now become a triumphant procession for Sir Alex Ferguson and his charging front runners.

Just after 1.20 at lunchtime, with United losing 2-0 to Everton and Chelsea 2-1 up, the odds had shifted towards the defending champions, but an hour later Kevin Davies had equalised to earn Bolton a draw, United had rattled in four at Goodison Park and the Premiership was all over bar the shouting.

It can scarcely have enhanced the Bolton players’ morale to breakfast over headlines screaming at them that their manager, the estimable Sam Allardyce, planned to quit at the end of the season, but they applied themselves with their usual muscular commitment, which was good enough to thwart opponents whose battle-weary look does not augur well for their pursuit of the European and FA Cups. Yesterday, Jose Mourinho felt obliged to rest his two main goalscorers, Didier Drogba and Frank Lampard with Tuesday’s decisive second leg of their Champions League semi-final against Liverpool in mind. Some rest.

Lampard was on after 29 minutes and Drogba at half-time. Too late? Not really.

In fairness to the Chelsea manager, it has to be said that his team selection was not to blame for this desperately damaging result. Chelsea scored twice, which is usually more than enough to guarantee maximum points. Their problem here was not in finding the Bolton net but in keeping the ball out of their own, and in this respect Mourinho was culpable. When Chelsea lost Ricardo Carvalho, the man he has lauded as his best defender, midway through the first half he chose to replace him at centre-back, not with Khalid Boulahrouz, who was on the bench, but by moving Michael Essien from midfield. His intentions were positive, he was looking for Essien to play the ball out from defence, but Boulahrouz is not only four inches taller but a specialist centre-half, and would have been better suited to combat the set pieces from which Bolton scored both their goals.

For the capacity crowd it was an emotional roller-coaster from the start. They erupted after 14 minutes, when the electronic scoreboard revealed United had fallen behind, but the cheers choked in 40,000 throats five minutes later when, from a free kick on the left, Andranik Teymourian crossed and Abdoulaye Meite nodded the ball down for Lubo Michalik to score from five yards. It was a bad goal from the defensive viewpoint, the marking conspicuous by its absence, but Chelsea were soon making encouraging progress down their own left flank, where Wayne Bridge profited from the absence of Nicky Hunt, which forced Allardyce to deploy Ivan Campo out of position, at right-back. Campo is a central defender or midfield anchor-man and his vulnerabilty allowed Bridge the time and space in which to deliver crosses like an orthodox winger.

Chelsea drew level from one of them in the 22nd minute, Salomon Kalou heading powerfully into Jussi Jaaskelainen’s left-hand corner from nine yards. Another Bridge cross would have produced a welcome goal for Andriy Shevchenko but for the reaching save with which Jaaskelainen tipped the Ukrainian’s volley over the bar. At this stage, Carvalho had just limped off, but his loss seemed unlikely to affect the outcome when, in the 34th minute, Lampard’s corner from the right was met at the far post by Kalou, whose header unhinged the Bolton defence. In attempting to clear off the line, Idan Tal succeeded only in nodding the ball against the underside of the crossbar, from where it bounced down and in via Jaaskelainen’s leg.

Mourinho sent on Drogba in place of Shevchenko at the interval, in search of the two-goal cushion that would have made the game safe, but nine minutes into the second half Bolton were level, when another free-kick and right-wing cross from Tal was headed in, unopposed, by Davies. Cue mounting desperation among Mourinho and company. Drogba was tantalisingly close with a 25-yard free kick, but even with Joe Cole on, for Lassana Diarra, and the crowd imploring “attack, attack, attack”, Chelsea were unable to respond cohesively. They have a habit of pulling irons from the fire at the death, but it never looked like happening, and seven minutes from the end Mourinho wandered across his technical area and patted Allardyce on the shoulder in a gesture that said it all. “Big Sam” had ruined not just his day this time, but possibly his whole season.