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Chelsea got spanked by Manchester United over the weekend, 3-0. This morning, the soccer media took predictable shots at them.

Chelsea are done. Toast. Dried up. Scolari is a failure, and a hack. They’ll be lucky to finish third.

“The Blues’ era of prominence has passed,” declared Jorge Moran, of FoxSoccer.com.

Maybe it has. But how can so many professional analysts write off a team of this caliber? In no other league besides the Premiership does the media collect such fickle judgments and try to pass them off as certainty. Like stink clouds clinging to bathroom air, the consistency of these judgments will dissipate and guilty analysts will pretend they never made them.

If Chelsea had won this past weekend, everyone would be talking about United’s demise.

With 17 league games to play, none of the top three juggernauts is out of the race. Any of the three teams could run the table for the rest of the year. And any of them could lose more than a few games given the increased parity of the league this year, with Aston Villa, Everton, and, of course, Arsenal, still knocking on the Top Four door.

Chelsea still possess the best goal differential in the league. This stat doesn’t automatically translate to league titles, but it has for the last five league campaigns.

Maybe Chelsea’s scoring is drying up, as many Chelsea fans feared. Anelka couldn’t possibly maintain his streaky start. And Chelsea’s reliance on two one-dimensional strikers has been exposed of late.

But the Blues have too many explosive weapons to bend over. Drogba hasn’t even gotten started yet this season. And many of their attackers have underperformed (Deco, Mallouda, Ballack, and Kalou).

Chelsea’s dismal performance against United is definitely cause for concern. They have problems. But they haven’t failed yet.

What’s Wrong?

I think my girlfriend might have said it best: “Chelsea’s problem is that they’re all pansies … They don’t try hard enough.”

She’s right. Only United seemed capable of reaching a higher gear. They dug deeper. They wore their grit on their uniforms and their faces. While Drogba whined to the Referee after he lost the ball, Rooney would turn and give chase all the way back to his own box. While Deco hid in the shadows and threw up his hands when he didn’t receive a ball, Giggs and Fletcher slid in front of passes and runs to win the ball. Even Ronaldo, the Pretty Boy’s Poster Boy, dug in, won 50/50 balls, and tracked back.

Compared to Chelsea, United have grittier players. Evra, Vidic, Fletcher, Giggs, Park, Evans, and Rooney, (and Ferdinand and Scholes, when playing) all appear to bleed their colors. This is a testament to the type of passion that Sir Alex inculcates at his club. Somehow you don’t feel the same exuberance from the Chelsea players. Only a few fit into this category.

In the last few years, Chelsea’s superstars have developed a languid spirit that gets exposed in big games. Against lesser teams, this spirit can masquerade as style. Ballack and Deco glide around the pitch, never taxing themselves too much, or risking injury on tackles.

Maybe this is the way these gifted athletes play the game. They play with professional calmness and finesse, naturally making difficult movements look easy. But against a team as passionate as United, their fluidity appears more listless by comparison.

United’s passion won them the game. They were first to balls in both boxes. Park Ji Sun’s hustle on the left flank opened up Chelsea’s defense and produced valuable free kicks. On the attacking end, Chelsea’s front men stopped moving. They didn’t stand a chance of cracking United’s defense.

Blaming effort sounds like a childish and oversimplified diagnosis of Chelsea’s failure. It’s the type of criticism that youth and high school coaches heap on their teams because they don’t know any better. This is true. But when teams of world-class talent lock horns, sometimes passion is the only thing that separates them. To me, it seems the only real obstacle that Chelsea has to winning the title.

Are Chelsea really not trying hard enough? Is this absurd? Can Chelsea still win the league?

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