Germans salute the supremacy of Drogba

Three-one and Chelsea would have been history. Yet when Drogba was offered this rare chance, thanks to Bayern defenders watching gormlessly as Joe Cole collected the ball near the corner flag and had time to pick his spot with the cross, he converted it with such power and precision that it made a nonsense of the idea that he can't be a clinical finisher.

It was his 16th of the season which, even if a goal machine like Greavsie isn't impressed, isn't too bad for a player who missed nearly two months with injury before Christmas.

Yet you couldn't help contrast the goal with what had gone earlier. For apart from the good, we got the bad - his slow, cumbersome attempt to finish when put through on goal by Frank Lampard just before half-time - and the ugly with some familiar woe-is-me amateur dramatics.

Drogba really is compulsive viewing because you never know what you are going to get. Sometimes, his holding of the ball and distribution is almost visionary; at other times, clumsy and prosaic. Naturally, his strength is his strength and he can be bruising but there's also an artist's delicacy of touch on occasion.

He clearly does not impress everyone. Ronaldinho noted this week that if Chelsea had a weakness, it was that "maybe they don't have a clinical European striker" which seems a bit of a backhander to a man who illuminated the continental stage at Marseille.

Maybe he will do it at the Bridge too, becoming the ultimate answer to Chelsea's recent vain quests to find their very own Shevchenko or Henry instead of landing another Crespo or Mutu. After all, as a late bloomer at this level, he's only now entering his prime at 27 and beginning to feel 100 per cent sharp after the injury woes.

Last night may have again been a distance from his virtuoso best but he's much more the ensemble player than the soloist since he left Marseille and discovered Jose Mourinho's 'all for one and one for all' philosophy. His was a typical Chelsea performance par excellence - tireless, battling, selfless. Robert Kovac, the defender he'd embarrassed in the first leg, kept roughing him up but Drogba ploughed on - and through - his assailant for the goal.

"Didier's a very important player for us," said an admiring Eidur Gudjohnsen. "Dangerous, he has a physical presence, can hold the ball up or play, so he can give us a good mixture." Yet Drogba himself may well be right when he says "you've seen only a glimpse of what I can do". Those glimpses are getting ever more tantalising as Istanbul looms.