A colourful season is drawing to a close with the possibility of a very bright conclusion. Wednesday columnist and supporter Giles Smith investigates.

To get straight down to the important issue - that new Petr Cech goalkeeping kit. Scientists are now asking whether this is the first time a Premier League 'keeper's jersey-and-shorts combo has been visible from space.

We're not sure, and it could be a while before the definitive evaluations are in on this one. But early reports from Sunday suggest that Cech was at least visible from Streatham, which is like space, in many ways, but a bit closer.

Also, motorists on the Hog's Back near Guildford that day allegedly picked up an orange glow in the sky to the north east that can only have been attributable to the new shirt on its first outing.

The theory - as explained in the match programme - is that that particular, intense shade of tangerine spreads faster than any other colour in the vision of a striker bearing down on the goal. It means that Cech appears, cunningly, to be bigger than he already is.

Point proved. He wasn't exactly small to start with. In the new strip he looked positively monumental.

Imagine if this technology had been available, back in the club's earliest days, to the legendary Willie 'Fatty' Foulke. Had the club's 22-stone shot stopper, and inaugural captain, had access, in 1905, to the requisite amount of punishingly bright Clima-Flo material? well, talk about parking a bus in front of the goal. Oppositions wouldn't have bothered coming out of the dressing room.

Still, it's good to see Chelsea once again leading the way, strip-wise. We cornered the market in football-related day-glo with this year's electric yellow change strip. We're pushing it even further with the new goalkeeper's outfit. It's all part of the fearlessly hi-tech quest for excellence which has always defined this club and always will.

It's one of the reasons I was both surprised and disappointed to see Bolton grab that late equaliser. I had thought we were pretty much impregnable, with Cech wearing the orange. For 90 minutes on Sunday, I could see it taking us all the way through to the title in 2008-09 without conceding a solitary goal. It seemed to offer us a scientifically guaranteed, striker-repelling force field.

So much for that. The shirt has its limits, it turns out, and we still need to be able to rely on defensive headers properly clearing the penalty area. Still, there was no harm learning this now, in a match of no consequence (as it happened), rather than discovering it at some point next season when it might really matter.

I'm assuming the team knew at that point - from the atmosphere in the ground, presumably - that Manchester United had all but beaten Wigan. Otherwise, that would have been a title-conceding goal that we shipped in injury time there, and players would have been flinging themselves to the ground and trying to roll under the turf in despair and agony. Instead of which, everyone seemed to troop in a more or less matter-of-fact manner back up the pitch for the restart.

Mind you, we'd done our best to mislead the players during the match, twice celebrating Wigan goals which turned out, on closer inspection, to be completely phantom.

The first was the one, mid-way through the first half, which apparently put Wigan ahead - the news spreading from the Shed, along the West Stand and thence into the Matthew Harding, where it found many willing takers. The second was the one after about 65 minutes which apparently made the score 1-1.

I was suckered on both occasions - though only briefly, because I was able to take a reading from the baffled expression on the face of a friend a couple of seats along who had a radio plugged into his ear.

Rumours, eh? There's a very good book called 'The Wisdom of Crowds' which (the title explains itself, really) points out the ways in which, contrary to prejudice, the majority often get things right which the minority get wrong. I used to recommend it to people. After Sunday, though, I won't be bothering. 'The wisdom of crowds,' my backside.

Anyway, it was hard to be downcast. Let's face it, the team's achievement was in taking the fight to the last day. Anything else would have been a highly comical bonus.

So, that's it. Another season draws to a close.

But hang on - no! How could I forget? There's a Champions League final still to come! With us in it!

Over? The biggest and the best is yet to come.