Chelsea ignited by Zola's flair

Chelsea 4 Norwich City

Chelsea set up a tumultuous week of local derbies last night by easing past an under-strength and overwhelmed Norwich City into the fourth round of the FA Cup, where they will meet West Ham United at Stamford Bridge on 26 January. There is a dress rehearsal in the Premiership at Stamford Bridge on Sunday, followed next Wednesday by Chelsea's visit to Tottenham for the second leg of the Worthington Cup semi-final, in which they hold a 2-1 lead. Exciting times.

It would be a surprise if any of the three games was as remotely one-sided as this one. Norwich, who have now managed only one victory in the competition in seven years, suffered another of their periodic 4-0 drubbings, of which there have now been four this season, with goals by Mario Stanic, Frank Lampard, Gianfranco Zola and Mikael Forssell.

Zola's was far and away the most memorable, a flick with his back foot from Graeme Le Saux's corner that caused an even louder roar when it was replayed in graphic close-up on the big screens round the ground than when it first went in.

"Don't ask me how I did it," said the Sardinian hero of the hour. "I can't do anything with my left foot so I crossed my legs and hit it perfectly. Sometimes you have to try crazy things."

Lovely man that he is, Zola then dedicated the goal to Matthew Ashton, an eight-year-old boy he had recently visited in hospital, who subsequently died. Even Norwich's manager Nigel Worthington confessed: "I was just pleased to be here to see it, even if it was against ourselves. But over the two games, Norwich City's come out with a lot of credit."

Like Wycombe's Lawrie Sanchez down the road at Fulham the previous evening, Worthington must have known that his team's best opportunity of causing a shock had come in their own backyard. Denied in a goalless draw at Carrow Road by the Chelsea goalkeeper Carlo Cudicini, they barely managed to trouble him in a very different 90 minutes. To be fair, their cause was hardly helped by being without the first-choice strikers, Iwan Roberts, who was injured, and David Nielsen, who once played against Chelsea for FC Copenhagen in the European Cup-Winners' Cup but was ineligible here.

Zola, offering greater subtlety if less beef than the injured Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, was heavily involved as Chelsea, Cup winners twice in the past five seasons, dominated from the start. After Eidur Gudjohnsen failed with two early efforts, one beaten out and one lobbed fractionally too high, a scruffy goal materialised in the 11th minute. Although Stanic did not get a clean header from Le Saux's corner, the ball squirted over the line as Lampard, who wanted to claim the goal, kicked thin air and then the goalkeeper.

Towards half-time, Norwich did carry a greater threat and, as usual, Chelsea's manager, Claudio Ranieri, could not resist a half-time substitution.

As usual the introduction of Slavisa Jokanovic met with disapproval, but the home crowd's humour improved with two more goals in the space of seven minutes. Lampard was able to put his name to the first of them unequivocally, tapping in to the empty net when Robert Green allowed Stanic's low, swerving shot from 25 yards to slip from his grasp. The second illustrated the impish genius of Zola, running to meet Le Saux's inswinging corner at the edge of the six-yard box with his audacious little flick. Two minutes from time, Forssell, a substitute for Gudjohnsen, rubbed the Canaries' beaks in the dust with another shot that the unhappy Green should have held.

Chelsea (3-5-2): Cudicini; Melchiot, Desailly, Gallas (Zenden, 69); Stanic, Morris (Jokanovic, h-t), Lampard, Dalla Bona, Le Saux; Gudjohnsen (Forssell, 61), Zola. Substitutes not used: De Goey (gk), Keenan.

Norwich City (3-5-2): Green; Kenton, Fleming, Mackay; Nedergaard, Russell, Holt, Sutch, McVeigh (Llewellyn, 69); Libbra (Easton, 76), Notman (Rivers, 69). Substitutes not used: Crichton (gk), Blois.

Referee: P Jones (Loughborough).