Chelsea - 2 Fulham - 1 Should Chelsea get their act together it is just possible, if still highly improbable, that they and not Arsenal will be England's representatives in the last four of the Champions League.

The problem lies in identifying precisely what their act is. For all the millions spent on new players since Roman Abramovich bought the club, Chelsea remain not so much a team as a series of turns.

When these are collectively on form the result can be impressive, as Lazio discovered. Otherwise it is more a case of being reminded why music hall died. Saturday's beating of Fulham was a mixture of both.

Claudio Ranieri, whose time as manager is widely assumed to be running out, may leave Stamford Bridge at the end of the season still not knowing what his best team might have been.

His best chance of beating Arsenal in the Champions League quarter-finals would appear to lie with Damien Duff, back in the side after a two-and-a-half-month absence. The Dubliner's ability to produce the unexpected trick, turn of pace or sudden shot galvanised Chelsea before half-time, especially after he had switched wings with Jesper Gronkjaer.

Enter the tinkerman. For the second half Duff was moved into a position behind the strikers, Eidur Gudjohnsen and Hernan Crespo, while Gronkjaer did not reappear, which seemed a bit hard on the Dane.

Ranieri's explanation was not convincing. Duff, he said, needed a calf massage at half-time and with Wednesday in mind he did not want to take any risks. Fair enough, but why move him to a position where he came up against Sylvain Legwinski, Fulham's weighty midfield anchor, who within two minutes of the resumption was booked for bringing Duff down?

His reason for substituting Gronkjaer was even more bizarre. "We needed to close up the midfield more because we were fighting a lot of Fulham players in there and I thought we needed Scott Parker," Ranieri explained. So Parker, an attacking midfielder, played in front of the back four while William Gallas and Wayne Bridge struggled to compensate for the loss of the width provided so effectively by Duff and Gronkjaer.

Saturday's absentees - Adrian Mutu and, if fit, Claude Makelele and Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink - may all figure at some stage in Chelsea's latest attempt to beat Arsenal. Makelele, Geremi and Frank Lampard are surely going to be crucial to their hopes of nullifying Patrick Vieira.

Gudjohnsen's recent form and the alacrity with which he scored Chelsea's opening goal in the seventh minute, gathering a pass from Marcel Desailly and exploiting the space allowed by Ian Pearce to beat Edwin van der Sar from 25 yards, should at least keep him in the attack.

Chelsea's best hope of beating Arsenal over two legs may lie in their ability to deny them an away goal. John Terry will be crucial here along with Ranieri's choice of goalkeeper: Neil Sullivan, on the bench against Fulham, or Marco Ambrosio, who has done little wrong in his two appearances as a stop-gap.

Fulham barely tested Ambrosio on Saturday. With the exception of the free from Mark Pembridge that took a deflection off the wall to level the scores after 19 minutes they scarcely achieved a shot.

"It was disappointing because I thought Chelsea were there for the taking," said the Fulham manager Chris Coleman.

The winning goal, which arrived on the half-hour, was also the best moment of the match. A long-range Lampard shot was parried by van der Sar; Pearce slipped as he went to clear the ball, which gave Duff an extra fraction of time and space to control it at a touch and send a low drive past the goalkeeper.

The rest seemed designed to lull Arsenal into complacency - they are unlikely to be fooled.