James Lawton: Drogba becomes the ultimate banker for Chelsea's ambitions

Didier Drogba ran second to Cristiano Ronaldo in the popularity parade of the PFA Player of the Year award but in the harder calculation of who truly shapes a season, rather than perhaps ultimately decorates it, he remains an awesome contender for the highest prize.

Long before the end of this latest battle of tactics and attrition between Jose Mourinho and Rafael Benitez, Drogba had announced himself once again a huge factor in a story that could yet be the most dramatic in the history of English football. The man who was once so widely despised as a cheat anywhere beyond Stamford Bridge has come to represent something quite different.

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He has become one of the ultimate bankers in a game of shifting form and fortune. Mourinho's desperate ambition was to shake the psychological hold of Liverpool over his team in the Champions League and now he must believe he has taken a major step forward. He can point to a team of tremendous motivation but mostly last night one served by the most vital of assets - a player who keeps playing, and with maximum impact.

Drogba did not score a goal but his menace and his power was sustained throughout a tense contest that served, more than anything, to illustrate again the ability of Chelsea to storm back from an occasional and maybe inevitable lapse in energy.

Liverpool came to Stamford Bridge with the almost coy demeanour of those who are convinced that they have some compelling reasons to fancy themselves. But soon enough they were pinned against the grill of Chelsea's relentless desire.

As usual, Benitez had won the pre-match verbal battle quite easily with his impeccable formula of decent manners and a smattering of rational thought. But then, in this season of all seasons, Mourinho will not be judged on his ragbag of points-scoring and the crudity of his attempt to influence referees. What will count most, both for his own future and his club's, is his ability to maintain an extraordinary rhythm of commitment on the widest front ever maintained by an English football club.

Last night, Mourinho's work, his priority of aggressive control in the most potentially hurtful area, has rarely been more eloquent.

Indeed, in the 29th minute it reached an early climax of hard perfection. As it happened, it made a nonsense of his elaborate concern that Drogba's place in the second leg might be endangered by a Liverpool conspiracy to make sure he received another yellow card. Drogba, in the moment of breakthrough, looked about as vulnerable as Lennox Lewis faced by some refugee from the boxing graveyard. This is not the football status of Liverool's normally excellent young Dane, Daniel Agger, but he was utterly outclassed, and outmuscled, when the man from the Ivory Coast picked up the pass which flowed from Ricardo Carvalho's superb surge out of defence.

As Drogba won the battle on the right, Joe Cole engulfed a dawdling Alvaro Arbeloa and Benitez's careful strategy was suddenly in danger of ruin.

It meant that he was obliged to perform major surgery early in the second half, bringing on Peter Crouch in place of Craig Bellamy. In the circumstances a heightened Liverpool effort was inevitable and came almost instantly when Steven Gerrard, a largely peripheral figure up till then, provoked a fine save from Petr Cech.

Xabi Alonso and Javier Mascherano, a midfield combination which brims with potential for a coherent mixture of artful passing and clean ball-winning but one which sat with an almost indolent passivity in front of the back four in the first half, took this as a signal for sharply increased participation and the result was the beginnings of a real contest.

Still, Carvalho, particularly, remained immense in Chelsea's defence and whenever the ball came near to Drogba, Liverpool had the most legitimate reasons for concern.

On the touchline Benitez's frustration was exceeded only by Mourinho's smouldering conviction that his team should already have created a comfortable cushion for next week's ordeal at Anfield. There was a familiar Mourinho performance when Drogba, after 70 minutes of mostly ferociously disciplined commitment, lapsed into one of his more theatrical moods, crumbling into a heap after falling down almost completely unaided.

But it was only the faintest glimmer of past chicanery and soon Drogba was again at the heart of the battle. He provoked the ire of Agger again, this time for alleged sharp practice, but you could be sure where the real hurt was located. It was in the unanswerable fact that Chelsea had one foot in their first European Cup final - one that had been put there by the continuing glory of Didier Drogba.