Today’s piffle is high on Berocca

How proud Gary Cahill must have felt when he woke up this morning. Not just in the “HELLO LADIES!” sense, either. Cahill could not have felt prouder had he been knighted, revealed as the second coming, been referenced in a Half Man Half Biscuit song, found a pound on the underground, and been the subject of some frisky tweets from Sabine Lisicki. For our snout tells us that Cahill has achieved something even more precious: he has earned the respect of John Terry.

Terry, the Chelsea manager and the world’s first player-manager-referee, has apparently told his assistant André Villas-Boas to sign Cahill. Chelsea are also looking at human beard Daniele De Rossi to replace habitual knack-sufferer Michael Essien, although that doesn’t affect their attempt to woo Luka Modric by whispering sweet nothings while discreetly shoving obscene amounts of cash down his pants.

Modric may not be the only part of Spurs’ spine to sprint through the door marked “Done One. Sorry. Bye!”. In the latest episode of Daniel Levy’s Charm School, he has reportedly offered the club captain Michael Dawson a pay rise of only £5,000 a week, taking his wages to just below £40,000 a week. Dawson didn’t swerve off the road at the news, but is apparently radged off at an offer he called “derisory”. Players always use the word “derisory” in these instances. What’s wrong with Roget’s: “laughable”, “preposterous”, “cockeyed”, or “an effing disgrace you little slug I’ll stove your face in”.

Whether Modric and Dawson leave or not, Harry Redknapp will be spending some money this summer. Redknapp has gone shopping to world football’s great summer bargain house, Real Madrid, and is keeping a twitchy one on Lassana Diarra and Esteban Granero.

Wesley Sneijder was once available from the Real Madrid shop for GBPnotmuch, but now he will cost Manchester United around £35m. The Sun reckon a deal is imminent and, in a new spin on the age-old “WE TOLD YOU SO” journalistic backslapping, have congratulated themselves for being the first to say that a potentially imminent deal was potentially imminent.

Aston Villa boss Alex McLeish has idly filled in the last ever News of the World crossword with the words Rodallega, Given, N’Zogbia, Hutton and Parker. It’s either a devilishly subtle criticism of Rebekah Brooks – our multi-lingual cousin reckons N’Zogbia roughly translates as “lamentable wench in dire need of a haircut and/or a moral compass, either will do” – or he hasn’t done it properly.

Liverpool want Wayne Bridge.

We’ll give you a second to compose yourself before we continue.

José Mourinho wants Carlos Tevez. Trouble is, Tevez wants to be closer to his children in Argentina. That said, Tevez might just be thick enough to believe Madrid is closer to Argentina than São Paulo, where Corinthians are based, especially if Mourinho draws him a map to prove it.

Any other business? There’s something about Cesc Fábregas and Barcelona, but we don’t have the energy.

ChelseaTottenham HotspurManchester UnitedAston VillaRob Smythguardian.co.uk

“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