Giles Smith was there last night in the Vicente Calderon stadium, which is more than can be said for some people. He reports in this week's column.

Lovely day in Madrid yesterday. Cloudless blue sky, 20 degrees of bright sun warming the glass on your café table - that kind of thing.

Though one doesn't want to go on about it, of course. Because that could sound like gloating, which is always ugly.

It could especially sound like gloating if - let's say this just for example - the friend you were travelling with to Madrid mislaid his passport the day beforehand and had to sit at home instead.

Who would want to seem to be gloating in circumstances like those? It would be inhuman, wouldn't it? By text, I mean. Every five minutes or so?

Obviously, the most loyal and sympathetic thing to do, when a misfortune of this magnitude strikes someone you know - the thing that anyone with even a grain of fellow-feeling would do - is to pull out of the trip, too, in solidarity.

So, naturally, I went on my own.

Well, not quite on my own. There were about 3000 other Chelsea fans there. But you know what I mean.

And at least, from my friend's point of view, it was on the telly. Not the blue sky and the warm sun and the café table, etc., that is. But the match.

In all honesty though, much as it pained my friend to skip yesterday's experience, there were aspects of it that I know for a fact he won't have missed at all.

The post-match lock-in for instance. We're all aware now of the basic rule for lock-ins after Champions League games on the continent, which is that they must last a minimum of 30 minutes, plus an additional 15 minutes for each goal scored by your side, with a further discretionary period of 10 minutes to be applied as he sees fit by someone in a helmet carrying a stick.

Last night's lock-in fully lived up to contemporary expectations and was then capped by the release of 3000 spectators through one solitary and inconveniently positioned gate, leading one to suppose that those Drogba strikes must have gone down even worse with the people in helmets than one at first imagined.

And good job, in a way, that Alex didn't do better with that final free kick. We'd all still be there.

The other thing my friend won't have missed was getting caught in a small, but nevertheless undeniably alarming, downpour of glass and beer bottles along the road to the stadium - a greeting, it would appear, from our hosts in the bars along the other side of the (dark, unpoliced) street.

When a full bottle broke on the pavement beside my left foot, I began to wonder whether mislaying one's passport might not be the best way forward for me, too, in the future.

Still, good game, wasn't it? Or certainly at the end. In fact, I'd say the switchback drama of those last 10 minutes was worth running through a bit of broken glass for. And we qualified at the end of it, making the whole thing worthwhile. European trips almost always are. But that's not to say they don't have their hassles and, sometimes, their extreme discomforts and, indeed, perils. And I'm not just saying that to make anyone who didn't get there yesterday feel any better.

Anyway, it's back to Premiership matches now. And you don't need a passport for those.

Who have we got at the weekend again?

Oh, yeah. Them.

They're quite good, as far as I remember. But they've been better, they seem to be having one or two problems with central defenders (as CSKA Moscow pointed out pretty emphatically last night), and some people say they lack a little inspiration up front since cashing in on loverboy. So this might not be such a bad time to be playing them and aiming to continue our 100 percent home record this season against clubs supposedly within the 'big four' (by which I mean we beat Liverpool).

Mind you, if Rooney plays, it could go either way. He could be so befuddled by new-fatherhood, plus a sizeable dash of sleeplessness, that he fails to recognise one end of the pitch from the other. Or he could be more than usually bursting to score in order to unleash some pre-planned, baby-oriented goal celebration.

Please not the baby-rocking one. Anything but the baby-rocking one.

In either case, I think it would be sensible to keep an eye on him. But I'm sure our coaching staff will have thought of this and be working on the situation.

It won't have escaped your notice that it's been more than 13 hours since anyone scored against us at Stamford Bridge. Thirteen hours! You could fly all the way to Hawaii in that amount of time. Assuming you wanted to.

Now, I enjoy these kinds of long-run records as much as the next supporter, but it's also my feeling that they can turn into a bit of a burden eventually. Witness the way the giant undefeated home streak under Jose Mourinho gave rise to some bouts of nervously deep, protective defending in the last 10 minutes of games near the streak's end, occasionally with disappointing consequences.

So it's probably worth keeping in mind (before this current streak, too, starts to weigh unhelpfully on people's minds, leading to unnecessary heart-sinkage when one finally goes in) that these things don't actually count for very much, in the final analysis, and that the point of the game is still scoring more goals than you concede.

Nevertheless, 13 unbroken hours is, undeniably, pretty special, and if the team agreed to add just one final 90 minute segment to it on Sunday, I don't suppose any of us would complain.