In true Treasure Hunt style, the Russian entourage arrives at Dunstall Park in their helicopters. This is a mode of transport that I have been used to in my job but I don’t ever remember a posse of 10 bodyguards and an armoured limo to help me find my treasure.

Well, here we go again – third home match of the season and the weather is just gorgeous. The fans are in shirt sleeves and the attendance is over 29,000, apparently the largest for many years. The atmosphere before the game is simply electric and the visit of Chelsea is almost a case of ‘the circus comes to town.’

It was interesting to see which line-up both managers would choose; Wolves with Kennedy now back in the squad but also with Blake injured and Chelsea with Ranieri having such a multitude of footballing talent at his disposal, who would he leave out? When the teams were announced, you only had to look at Chelsea’s bench to realise that this could be ‘a difficult afternoon.’

I thought we played quite well for the first 20 minutes or so and whilst we weren’t threatening their goal, we looked quite comfortable. This then changed dramatically when Lampard scored with a great 20-foot drive. As the first half moved on, Duff started to get more of the ball and you felt that Chelsea were becoming more and more dangerous. I was thinking, if we could only get through to half time and be just one goal down, then perhaps we could regroup and maybe the manager could make some tactical changes which would set us up for the second half. Obviously this was not to be with Hasselbank scoring a second after 36 minutes.

The second half began with Chelsea looking as though they could almost score at will. In fact they did, with Duff who seemed to be involved in everything. Strangely enough it was only when we were 3 goals down that we looked like scoring. Gudjonssen went very close with a drive that just skimmed the post. Camera missed a great heading opportunity and then we hit the bar twice with successive headers. Then, just when we thought there might, just might be a glimmer of hope, Chelsea took control once again and sealed the game with two final goals from Crespo.

The truth is, we were totally outclassed over 90 minutes. However, when a team who has just been promoted from the first Division and have spent 4 – 5 million pounds on additional players plays a team who are already well established in the Premier League and have spent 120 million pounds, what result could you really expect?

The strange thing is, I still think losing 4-0 at home to Charlton was a worse result than losing 5-0 to Chelsea.

This result probably highlights just how much we need our squad to be at full strength and to include Lescott, Miller and Murray. Until we achieve this, we won’t know exactly what we are capable of.

At this point ‘Stop the clock’. Let’s put the Chelski result behind us and remember how close we got to beating Man United.