How's that for irony? Following our recent results, it has just been announced that Carlo Ancelotti has been awarded the Castrol LMA Performance of The Quater Award. The award was given for our performances during August, September and October, which only serves to emphasise how dramatic our recent dip in form has actually been:

ANCELOTTI AWARDED

Carlo Ancelotti has received an award for the Castrol LMA Performance of the Quarter after our scintillating start to the season, and shared his thoughts on the accolade with the club's in-house channel.

The award recognises our performances from August, September and October, at which point we had suffered just one league defeat and were five points clear in the Barclays Premier League.

Since then we have experienced a testing November, enjoying just one league win in four and being caught in the title race by Manchester United and Arsenal.

'We started with good motivation after the victory of the Double, so we started well and had good results with fantastic performances,' the manager said.

'Now is a different moment but I think that we have to look at what we did at the beginning and come back and move on from this period.'

There is good news on the horizon however, with Ancelotti telling Chelsea TV he expects captain John Terry and Michael Essien to return for this weekend's visit of Everton.

'They trained today, John Terry and Essien didn't have a problem after training,' he said. 'Yury [Zhirkov] had a little problem again so we have to wait, but Lampard is not able to play and we have to wait again.'

Additionally, Alex has travelled to Brazil for his knee surgery, which will keep him out for between six and eight weeks, and he is expected to stay in South America for a further 10 days before travelling back to London.

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A thoroughly deserved accolade for King Carlo.

Let's hope that after a turbulent month things are more like the first few months of the season. Maybe this award goes in reverse in comparison to manager of the month award, the winning manager usually suffers defeat after winning it. In this case you suffer before.

Great to hear that JT and Essien are due back. I hope Lamps isn't too far behind.

Well deserved.I think Carlo has been a brilliant manager and why he didn't win manager of the year is beyond me.I really hope he stays as we need someone like him long term.

Had no faith in Carlo when he arrived. Was more sad because of the loss of Guus than happy about the arrival of Carlo.

But Carlo has really proved himself and this prize is well deserved. Take a bow Carlo.