“Everyone thinks they have the most beautiful wife at home,” Arsène Wenger remarked when Sir Alex Ferguson attempted to argue that, although Arsenal had won the championship in 2002, Manchester United had played the better football. Nobody ever called Chelsea beautiful. Even when José Mourinho shifted the balance of power in London to Stamford Bridge, his teams were still portrayed as the great clunking fist.

Arsenal might have missed out on the trophies, but they were still English football’s undisputed stylists, using it as a comfort blanket just as those bands whose record sales will never match those of an X Factor winner pore over their glittering reviews in the NME. No longer.

It is not just the sheer quantity of Chelsea’s goals – 29 in their past five league matches – that is remarkable, but their quality. The first against Wigan featured a beautiful, surprisingly delicate touch from Didier Drogba, pulled back by Ashley Cole for Frank Lampard, who brought it instinctively under control. His shot was saved, but Florent Malouda rolled the rebound into the net. It was Chelsea’s first attack of any note and the game was 33 minutes old.

“It is difficult to know why people think that Arsenal play the better football,” Malouda said. “Even when we finished top, people still said Arsenal played better than us. But you are seeing an evolution since the manager [Carlo Ancelotti] came in. We are scoring more goals and keeping more clean sheets and that is what it is all about if you want to win the league.

“You have to be efficient but, when you see a team like Chelsea scoring so many goals, I hope people recognise our quality. But we are not playing for glory; we are playing to win. You can say we have a killer instinct because we know that, if we have any kind of opportunity, we have to kill the game.

During France’s catastrophic World Cup, Malouda was the footballer most usually pushed in front of the cameras to explain the latest reverse – a role Lampard is usually given with England. Here, in the corridors of the DW Stadium, Malouda explained how Ancelotti encouraged his players to continually keep moving. How Drogba dropped deeper to release Salomon Kalou and Nicolas Anelka, who each scored twice as Wigan, having more than held their own in the first half, disintegrated.

Kalou, he said, “could feel where the ball was going to be”. It is, as Ancelotti pointed out, probably no coincidence that so many of his players returned early from the World Cup and spent the rest of the summer nursing their hurt.

“If you have character, then after a problem you must be motivated, but I think the English players are taking more motivation from the World Cup,” he said. “John Terry, Lampard and Cole are showing very good physical condition.” The first of that trio, however, may have been fortunate not to have been dismissed after becoming embroiled in a spat with Charles N’Zogbia while on a yellow card.

It is not essential to have come home early from South Africa to shine – Bastian Schweinsteiger, the surging force behind Germany’s campaign, scored Bayern Munich’s winner against Wolfsburg on Friday night. However, it probably helps. As does the fact that Chelsea are a team that not only go for the jugular, but look to tear the carcass apart.

Last season they scored four goals or more against 12 of their opponents and have begun this campaign with a pair of 6-0 romps. Roman Abramovich’s gripes about the lack of entertainment he got for his roubles seem very distant, although Ancelotti would know they contributed to the downfall of first Mourinho and then Luiz Felipe Scolari.

“We play for 90 minutes because people who come to the stadium pay to watch 90 minutes,” is how Ancelotti responded when asked why Chelsea do not ease off when the game is palpably won – something Arsenal were wont to do.

Wigan have negotiated heavy defeats before under Roberto Martínez and they were the better side for extended periods of the first half. However, their humbling by the supposed sacrificial offering that is Blackpool and the fact that on Saturday they travel to Spurs, where they lost 9-1 in November, have meant the first chimes of a crisis have begun to crackle through the DW Stadium. Titus Bramble suddenly seems a great, lost leader and should he and Sunderland win here on 11 September that crisis may be unmanageable.

Man of the match Didier Drogba (Chelsea)

Premier LeagueWigan AthleticChelseaTim Richguardian.co.uk

• Henrique Hilário and Ross Turnbull shaky in pre-season
• Cech should be fit for Premier League opener against WBA

Chelsea have expressed an interest in the Stoke City goalkeeper Asmir Begovic as the manager, Carlo Ancelotti, considers his options behind his injured No1 Petr Cech.

Henrique Hilário is Ancelotti’s current first-choice back-up ahead of Ross Turnbull and the Portuguese was given the starting nod at Wembley in the Community Shield against Manchester United.

However, both goalkeepers have made errors during the pre-season and have looked shaky at times, forcing Ancelotti to consider whether a new signing might offer more stability.

Begovic, 23, has the added advantage of qualifying as a home-grown player because, despite his Bosnian nationality, he moved to Portsmouth on a youth contract in 2003. That means that although he had loans spells at Macclesfield Town, Bournemouth and Yeovil Town before he turned 21, he has spent the required three years before that birthday training at the academies of English clubs.

Chelsea have only five home-grown players at present – John Terry, Frank Lampard, Ashley Cole, Michael Mancienne and Turnbull – meaning that, with the Premier League’s new regulations stipulating that clubs must name eight such players in a senior squad of no more than 25, Ancelotti stands to play the first half of the season with only 22 senior players.

With Ramires, Benfica’s Brazil midfielder, set to move to Stamford Bridge to replace Deco, who has signed for Fluminense, Ancelotti has his full compliment of 17 senior overseas players.

Were he to sign Begovic, he would have the option to loan out Hilário to free up a space for another overseas signing. Chelsea have been linked with a move for the Benfica defender David Luiz.

Cech tore a calf muscle last month and he was ruled out of the pre-season friendlies against Ajax, Eintracht Frankfurt and Hamburg. His total pre-season playing minutes amount to 30 in the opening fixture against Crystal Palace. Ancelotti says that Cech will be fit to face West Bromwich Albion in the Premier League opener at Stamford Bridge on Saturday.

Begovic cost £3.25m when he moved from Portsmouth to Stoke in last winter’s transfer window, a reflection of his ability and potential, but he was unable to dislodge Thomas Sorensen as the manager Tony Pulis’s first choice. He made four appearances at the end of the season, after Sorensen injured his shoulder against Chelsea.

Ramires’s proposed ¤22m move has been held up by red tape. The 23-year-old, who has had his Chelsea medical, is just short of having played the required 75% of his country’s internationals in the last two years and his application for a work permit might not be straight-forward. Chelsea believe that the process will begin on Thursday. Before that, Ramires has been selected to play for Brazil against the United States in New Jersey.

Chelsea have been cheered by the refusal of the Real Madrid manager José Mourinho to entertain a move for Ashley Cole, despite admitting that he would have liked to sign him. “Carlo Ancelotti was very, very clear and that’s the best way in football,” Mourinho said.

“He killed the story by saying, ‘No money can buy Ashley Cole, Ashley Cole needs to stay’. I think Ashley thought about leaving for personal and professional reasons. We thought about him because he’s a good player, who I enjoyed working with [at Chelsea]. But when a coach says no, it’s a no, and we have to accept that.”

Mourinho also admitted that Ricardo Carvalho’s age made it impossible for the Real manager to make an offer for the defender. “Ricardo is also a good player, but he is at an age that, if somebody is looking to build a team for the future, he cannot think of him,” he said. “Ricardo belongs to the current moment. He is a man with a great professional and private life, so he has no problem when it comes to playing at a high level at the age of 32.”

ChelseaTransfer windowDavid Hytnerguardian.co.uk