LONDON — After Chelsea’s elimination from the Champions League last month, the team’s owner, Roman Abramovich, is said to have confronted the team into which he has sunk a billion dollars and asked: “Are you good players, or just highly paid?”

There is only one place players can answer that: on the field. Chelsea’s last three performances have been a 5-0 away victory at Portsmouth, a 7-1 home thrashing of Aston Villa, and an even more impressive 2-1 victory on Saturday at Manchester United’s stadium, Old Trafford.

The team is responding the way the legendary golfer Arnold Palmer once said that his father told him to answer critics: “Don’t tell them how good you are, son, show them.”

Chelsea is showing them. The victory in Manchester continued the marvellous form of Florent Malouda, and included a goal from Didier Drogba so clearly offside that the only people in a stadium containing 75,220 fans who did not see the infringement were the referee and his linesman.