Chelsea 1 QPR 0:Come back at the end of the decade and this might be the sort of high-tension fixture that would have been expected when the likes of Peter Osgood, Rodney Marsh, Alan Hudson and Stanley Bowles roamed west London.
As things stand, it will be a while before Queens Park Rangers' new owners have made their money talk eloquently enough to restore the sultans of Shepherd's Bush to the Premier League, and Saturday's generally featureless tie clearly exposed the difference in status between the cup holders and a club which have failed to get beyond the third round for seven years in a row.
The underlying message, however, was equally plain, and it was that QPR are on the way back. "Gigi De Canio/Bernie and Flavio" was the chant, to the tune of La Donna e Mobile, and it will not be long before someone has found a way of extending the verse to include the name of Lakshmi Mittal, whose fortune of about €30 billion puts Roman Abramovich's into perspective. On the evidence of the past few weeks, Luigi De Canio - late of Napoli, Siena, Reggina and elsewhere - is quite capable of doing the sort of preliminary rebuilding job with which Claudio Ranieri paved the way for Jose Mourinho's arrival at Stamford Bridge.
Chelsea, minus six of Mourinho's "untouchables" plus Andriy Shevchenko, and with Didier Drogba making a surprise reappearance on the bench, played the sort of cautious game that has already become associated with Avram Grant. Their winner arrived, just before the half-hour, when Claudio Pizarro carried the ball across the edge of the area before unleashing a reverse-angle shot that took a slight deflection off the nearest defender, rebounded from the left-hand post, hit the raised right hand of the diving Lee Camp and rolled back across the line.
They came close to doubling their lead on the stroke of half-time, when Shaun Wright-Phillips made the most of a rare moment of lucidity and precision to find Salomon Kalou with a long diagonal ball which the Ivorian laid back to Steve Sidwell, whose 25-yard drive shivered the same post.
After fending off QPR's renewed assault in the first 10 minutes of the second half, Chelsea brought on a procession of big guns - Drogba, Michael Ballack and Joe Cole - in a successful effort to intimidate the visitors into submission.
John Terry limped into the press room at half-time with his right foot still in an orthopaedic boot, underlining the availability problems for Grant that are now exacerbated by the departure of Drogba and Michael Essien for the African Cup of Nations, with Mikel John Obi to follow after tomorrow night's English League Cup tie against Everton.
Like De Canio, Grant will be expecting reinforcements to arrive shortly but refused to be drawn on the question of Nicolas Anelka's possible arrival from Bolton.
