What sweet reading it made. We had just beaten Middlesbrough 5-0. 'Chelsea were, quite simply, beautiful to watch,' wrote The Independent, under the headline 'Chelsea Burst Into Bloom'. 'Their passing, movement and respect for possession were exceptional. The finishing was impressive, too.'

Ring any bells? We're talking about the best part of 13 years ago - February 1996. A bitterly cold but clear afternoon at Stamford Bridge. Goals for the legendary John Spencer, the much pilloried Paul Furlong and a hat trick for Gavin Peacock - who thereby became the first Chelsea player for nearly six years to score three times in a single match (just one small indication of the nature of the drought we had all been enduring).

The West Stand was about a quarter of the height that it is now and considerably less populated by Russian billionaires. Ruud Gullit, completely over the culture shock and general disbelief that coloured his very earliest performances in England, was at his imperious, dreadlock-flicking best.

We had five across midfield and the tireless Steve Clarke was part of an ambitious back three completed by David Lee and Frank Sinclair. Makes me slightly nervous to think about that now, but it seemed to work on this occasion.

Kevin Hitchcock was in goal, keeping out both Boro and (perhaps the greater achievement) Dmitri Kharine, who was only sub. Jody Morris came off the bench for the last 20 minutes and didn't get booked, or sent off or upbraided by the chairman for consuming fast food in public or anything. Incredible.

It seems only fair we should mention that Boro didn't have Juninho that afternoon. In the absence of his diminutive Brazilian brilliance, the burden of coming up with the creativity rested on the trembling shoulders of Nicky Barmby. Golden days.

Afterwards, Glenn Hoddle, our then manager, said, 'If we can produce that week in week out, there is no limit to what we can achieve.' Being Hoddle, he also added the gnomic remark, 'The game is played in the mind first.' Tell David Lee about it.

A friend of mine chose that game to bring his son along for the first time. He was anxious afterwards - worried that the boy would think it was always like that. You turn up, sit down, watch the team bang in five and then go home dancing.

Inevitably, though, this being football, and Chelsea in the mid-1990s, a brutal education was quick to follow. A week later we lost 1-0 at Coventry. A week after that - unthinkably - we lost 1-2 at home to? West Ham! Come the end of the season, we were 11th for the third time in four years, Manchester United had turfed us out of the FA Cup at the semi-final stage, and Hoddle was off to manage England, thus effectively signing the death knell for his career in top-flight management.

History teaches us, then, that it's best not to get too carried away on the back of a 5-0 thumping of Middlesbrough - even if, like last Saturday's, it was away from home, featured football of a devastatingly inventive nature, was achieved with the best part of £100 million-worth of talent unavailable through injury, and tempted you to get very carried away indeed.

On the other hand, an Arsenal fan emailed me first thing on Monday morning to concede the title. 'You've won it,' he wrote. (Actually, what he wrote was 'you've bought it', but a) that's his perfect right, as an Arsenal fan and b) let's not be tempted into that tiresome old argument again here, shall we?)

No concession yet from Liverpool fans, though. We may have to work on that this Sunday. In the meantime, Liverpool continue to cling on to the back of our shirts like a hard to remove stain, and for as long as those last-minute goals keep going in against sides controversially reduced to 10 men, I suppose they can't be entirely discounted.

The Times, my newspaper, put its legendary stats man, Bill Edgar, on the case, and if the last quarter of an hour of Liverpool's league matches this season didn't count, they would currently be 14th in the table, just above Wigan. Now, if we could only get the rules changed?

Or maybe we won't need to go to the trouble. What was it Hoddle said? If we can produce that week in week out?

The game's pragmatists will tell you that you get nothing for beating Boro 5-0 in October. Nor in February, for that matter. You do, though. You get an enormous amount of pleasure. And - much though one does one's best to fight it - a huge injection of optimism.