Chelsea 2 Leicester 1In the old Intourist days visitors to Moscow were offered a simple choice by way of entertainment: the state circus or the Bolshoi ballet. Chelsea, their finances healthily blackened by a Russian oil gusher, now have to decide whether they want to be dancing bears or dying swans.
Manager Claudio Ranieri will face a dilemma in trying to keep the big names happy while striving to maintain the consistency which a more settled side achieved last season.
This fitful win against Leicester suggested neither of these aims will be easily met. In fact newly-promoted Leicester made out a stronger prima facie case for remaining in the Premiership than did their conquerors for staying in the Champions League.
Chelsea's Adrian Mutu, the Romanian striker signed from Parma for £15.8 million, overcame a nervous introduction to the Premiership's pace and bustle to prove himself an astute joiner-up of movements before scoring a stunning winning goal.
He thumped a 35-yard free-kick against the wall with his right foot before his left met the rebound with a low 30-yard drive past an unsighted Ian Walker.
Overall, however, Chelsea's was not so much a team performance as a series of turns. Their supporters must be thankful that Ranieri, has left his impressive defence largely untouched.
That said, John Terry and Marcel Desailly were beaten in the air by James Scowcroft and Brian Deane respectively, Scowcroft bringing the scores level five minutes before half-time and Deane, a substitute, clipping the bar with five minutes left.
In midfield and attack Chelsea were strong on improvisation but showed a tendency to lose touch with the plot.
Damien Duff's willingness to reach the byline, on the right in the first half and the left in the second, allied to a strong rapport with Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, lay behind their better moves and nearly produced an outstanding goal on the hour when Hasselbaink's return pass found Duff a fraction too far forward to do anything more than shoot over.
Otherwise Chelsea's football became disjointed. True, Walker was beaten from close range in the third minute but the scorer was new team-mate Lilian Nalis whose intended header away, from Juan Sebastian Veron's corner, flew into his own net.
Veron began impressively but faded. Ranieri had the Argentinian playing left, right and centre as he shuffled and reshuffled his team, first to let Duff switch wings, then to shore things up after Geremi had been sent off for a two-footed but hardly malicious lunge at Riccardo Scimeca. This was the first of three red cards shown by Rob Styles in a match which did not produce three bad fouls.
Television replays suggested the two yellows, followed by a red, that Scimeca received for a routine sliding tackle on Frank Lampard which did not make contact and a challenge from behind on Joe Cole, barely warranted free-kicks.
To be fair to Styles and his linesman, Alan Rogers did appear to kick out at Jesper Gronkjaer after pushing him to the ground near a corner flag. In fact Rogers was trying to get the ball, half-lodged under the Dane's body.
A late point, from Deane's header, would not have flattered a Leicester team lacking the injured Matt Elliott and Les Ferdinand but making the best of the Muzzy Izzet's experience, the width Keith Gillespie added to their game in the second half, and the overall sum of the used parts which are all they can afford.
