Norwich City 1 Chelsea 3: match report - Telegraph.co.uk

Or, as he expressed it in his ever-eccentric English: "I have feelings. I smell things. And when that easy goal was missed, I had a smell."

His senses had not deserted him, as Chelsea let slip all the momentum generated by their fine early goal. All it required was a direct ball over the top to Ba, who controlled it with the neatest of touches to tee up the onrushing Oscar, making sure to place his shot comfortably beyond Ruddy and into the far corner.

Gradually, however, Tettey and Leroy Fer began to carve out greater possession, and Petr Cech needed the quickest of reactions to tip Jonny Howson's snap shot over the bar. Ba miscued a chance early in the second half to drag his shot fractionally wide, and Mourinho's body language on the touchline suggested he did indeed detect an ominous odour.

Norwich, just as he forecast, pounced for their equaliser. Martin Olsson hared down the left to supply a fine cross for Ricky van Wolfswinkel, who rose at the far post to head back across goal for Pilkington to nudge the ball past Cech.

Pilkington was culpable, however, in the unravelling that ensued. His poorly-taken corner was the cue for Chelsea to hit back with interest, David Luiz and Willian combining beautifully for Hazard to apply the coup de grâce. Despite the Belgian's cultured finish, it had arisen from an end-to-end catalogue of Norwich errors.

Manager Chris Hughton, increasingly under pressure, said: "It's our corner, and you can look at it as a process from there. We needed to clear the ball, be stronger. That's why Chelsea spun it around. But this is no time to apportion blame."

Norwich slipped into the bottom three last night as Hughton faced up to a familiar arduous struggle to safeguard his team's Premier League status. In mitigation, Norwich's signings over the summer added up to a good deal less than Chelsea's game-changing substitutes: a fearsome trium­virate of Willian, Hazard and Samuel Eto'o. Mourinho said: "The situation had become difficult at 1-1. We all knew that a point here would be a bad result for us, but I think the team coped well with the pressure. We could gamble and risk a bit to try and bring something different to the game to see if Norwich could cope."

They could not. If they had been unsettled by their litany of lapses in the build-up to Hazard's goal, then Willian's intervention, the most delightful curler from 20 yards out, poleaxed them to extinguish any hope of recovery.

The profound contentment could not have been written any more starkly across Mourinho's face. Another stumble here, and those lingering anxieties about the wisdom of his Chelsea comeback would have resurfaced. Instead, he marched into the quieter times of international week looking quite the most relieved man in Norfolk.