Chelsea shows its championship qualities in 1-0 win over Man United

What Chelsea needed from its game in hand, more than anything, was not to lose to Manchester United at home on Saturday.

A loss would have brought United within five points of the Premier League summit – albeit with an extra game played – and kept Arsenal within seven. With a half dozen games left to play for the Blues, they'd have risked squandering the title, after ending every single match day of the season so far in first place.

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But the Blues eked out a 1-0 win at Stamford Bridge. And now, with a 10-point lead over second-place Arsenal, their title is safe.

There's a reason Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho has won seven league titles in his 11 full seasons as a head coach. His Chelsea is capable of playing sparkling soccer, like most all of his teams were, but he's quite happy to shove any aesthetic fancy into the freezer when a certain outcome is necessary. He sometimes leaves it in there for months at a time. That's when Chelsea can become a ruthless results-machine.

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The major difference between his team last season – his first year back with the club – and this one is that ruthlessness. Mourinho said then that his team wasn't ready to compete for the title yet. This year, the playing style and the starting lineup is mostly the same – save for the addition of the hugely important playmaker Cesc Fabregas and occasionally fit striker Diego Costa – and the playing style often looks the same. It's just that this team knows just how to pour cement into the opposing teams' gears and lock up the game.

On Saturday, that's mostly what Chelsea did. United's Wayne Rooney had an open look in a cutback from a breakaway in the fourth minute, which he should have put on frame but didn't. But other than that, Chelsea gave very little away in the first half, while forging just enough possession to keep United from overrunning them.

In the 38th minute, having absorbed all that pressure, Chelsea struck. In spite of producing little of note by way of chances up until that point – if anything at all – they had lulled United into a moment of inattentiveness. Fabregas muscled his way through the left, found Oscar in midfield, who cut back and dispatched Eden Hazard – surely the best player of this Premier League season – with a gorgeous backheel.

The zippy Belgian scurried through a gaping hole in United's defense, took a few soft touches and dinked his finish through David De Gea's legs.

Chelsea almost doubled the score in the 54th minute, when Drogba got away on a horrid Ander Herrera turnover and saw his effort loop just over De Gea. Hazard managed to keep the ball in, but had so little space and angle left that he could only tap it off the upright.

Around the hour mark, United had a few attacking spasms. But Thibaut Courtois denied Paddy McNair and the roof of goal rebuffed Juan Mata. Then, in the 77th minute, Radamel Falcao smacked a shot off the outside of the post. United pressed and pressed, while Chelsea absorbed, but the Blues never seemed to feel terribly uncomfortable at their Stamford Bridge fortress, no matter how close United got. They've been doing this all year, after all.

So Chelsea got what they needed – not to lose – plus two bonus points. Soon enough, Mourinho will make it eight league titles in a dozen full seasons, an astonishing success rate.

As ever, it wasn't always pretty. But it was invariably effective.

Leander Schaerlaeckens is a soccer columnist for Yahoo Sports. Follow him on Twitter @LeanderAlphabet.