“Sunday night under the lights in the Premier League!” yelled the Chelsea stadium announcer, as if that were a thing.
At this time of year, these evenings are meant for watching Macaulay Culkin nail bad guys, not Marc Cucurella play hero and villain in one piece. And yet, at Stamford Bridge, there was no sense of anyone having anywhere better to be.
Few now are in denial that something of substance is happening here and all are desperate to be part of it, leaving Enzo Maresca increasingly isolated in his insistence that his Chelsea team are not yet ready to compete. Turn this, a fifth straight Premier League win, into a sixth at Everton next Sunday and they will, however briefly, go top of the Premier League.
Chelsea fans, Maresca cedes, are allowed to dream and many are going a step further: they are starting to believe. The celebrations of his players at full-time here, several hitting the deck in split joy and relief at having held on to a 2-1 victory over Brentford, were not those of men who see the battle for fourth as a ceiling either.
The Blues had played three times on the road since beating Aston Villa here at the start of the month and it is in that period that the dial has moved, a team just making a good start to the season confirmed as a genuinely good one, and a nine-point gap to Liverpool trimmed to just two.
In the interim, the most significant development has been one of connection, the chants of Maresca’s name heard with novel force in the away end at Southampton carried on to Tottenham, Kazakhstan and then here, for a first wholesale rendition at home. Mauricio Pochettino never felt such love.
There was a bit of ‘We’ve got our Chelsea back’, too, no doubt to external eye rolls, but, hey, it’s not for you. There was a raucous ovation for Nicolas Jackson, who had found just enough time to atone for the miss of the season with a fierce low strike before he was replaced in a feel-good exit.
Unifying force: There was a real sense of togetherness during Chelsea’s post-match celebrations against Brentford
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For Cucurella, who had by then scored the opener and would later be sent off after the final whistle, there were several - the Spaniard not exactly one to shy away from the limelight.
When Maresca later said he missed the latter incident while in an embrace with his bench he was not lying. Cucurella, even once dismissed, hung around by the Chelsea dugout to join the mass of plain-clothed absentees hailing victorious team-mates.
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“We work every day to have that kind of moment,” Maresca said of the full-time celebrations. “It is just because of the players. The spirit they showed was unbelievable. Until the end, the desire, they were hungry to get three points. This is the right way.”
Team wins, fans happy, manager happy, players happy. This is not unique or revolutionary stuff. But atmosphere and harmony can be powerful things in these scenarios, particularly when flooding what had been a void, a sudden collective force springing from a place of division and low expectation to power the surge.
There are parallels with the transformation of the atmosphere at Arsenal two seasons ago
There are parallels, perhaps unwanted, with the transformation of the atmosphere at the Emirates Stadium two seasons ago, when a young Arsenal team ahead of schedule challenged for the title and took long-starved supporters on an unforeseen ride.
A flat atmosphere and blunt performance on the same ground against Everton on Saturday was a reminder of how quickly that energy can be lost when results dip and expectations rise. These, then, are nights and times to savour for Chelsea fans, even when they fall on the fringes of a football calendar fit only to burst.
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