As the 2014/15 season kicked off, a familiar face was back in the Chelsea dugout for the start of the season, as José Mourinho, who had departed Chelsea under a cloud in 2007 had cleared out players he didn’t rate such as Juan Mata in 2014, had built his new squad with the crucial purchase of Diego Costa from Atletico Madrid for around £32m.

While Mourinho’s first season had been one of dismantling the work that had gone before him, Mourinho’s second season was – as it often was during the Portuguese’s early managerial career – highly successful and ended with his team as champions.

The set-up for Chelsea in the 2014/15 season was breathtakingly simple. Protecting his ageing back four with players like Nemanja Matic crucial. New signing Diego Costa was the battering ram, with Didier Drogba the returning hero who was the back-up plan. Cesc Fabregas, brought in from Barcelona and Eden Hazard were the creative players given reign to cause chaos at the other end, with Willian and Oscar both contributing on that front too.

Chelsea’s tactics were to push forward and score early goals, preferably getting two goals ahead, then lock up the shop and play with brutal efficiency on the counter-attack. It worked like a dream in the first half of the season, and in particular the first four games, where Chelsea won 3-1 at Burnley, 2-0 at home to Leicester, 6-3 at Goodison Park and 4-2 at home to Swansea. Of those games, the nine-goal thriller away to Everton was a classic.