It is worth reliving those final few seconds at Stamford Bridge on Sunday, a panicked microcosm of Frank Lampard’s nascent Chelsea reign.

A booming Jonny Evans header upfield is flicked on fairly aimlessly by Youri Tielemans on the halfway line: a manageable state of affairs. Suddenly, Kurt Zouma is rearranging his limbs to gallop back as Leicester’s Marc Albrighton races past him into the green expanse of the Chelsea half.

45 yards from goal, with Jamie Vardy free to his left, Albrighton appears to be about to launch a thousand back-page, crisis-club, cracked-crest graphics. Then, out comes Kepa Arrizabalaga - 40,629 hearts leaping into mouths - to slide-hoof the ball away with a yard to spare.

Unless you are blessed with the memory of unlikely right wing-back Robert Huth careering upfield like a driverless Eddie Stobart lorry in Monaco in 2004, this current Chelsea incarnation may be the furthest away the Roman Abramovich era has ever been from the defensive chain gang of Jose Mourinho’s first title-winning vintage. This latest spectacle, as their old manager's punditry from Old Trafford last week barely managed to conceal, was distinctly anti-Mourinho. Anti-anti-football.

If their current tidal range between rampant attack and desperate defensive back-pedalling persists, Chelsea may finally be on the verge of achieving the impossible under Abramovich and earning the ultimate back-handed Premier League compliment: becoming the neutral’s favourites. Lampard’s new philosophy has yielded more shots at goal than anyone bar the freakish Manchester City, while conceding - after just two games - precisely a third of the goals that Mourinho’s unit allowed in their entire 2004/05 league season.