For a quiet prediction for Saturday's Cup Final from a man not known for his predictions, see the end of Giles Smith' s latest column...

I don't know about you, but among the people I talk to a consensus is beginning to form that this was the best title win of the lot, the one that ticked the most boxes, pleasure-wise, the dreamiest and creamiest of them all.

Obviously 2005 was special because it was, for the great majority of us, the first. (People will feel the same way about 1955, too, one appreciates.) And the retention in 2006 had all sorts of things going for it, too. (It's very hard to mark down a title secured with a 3-0 victory over Manchester United.)

And, of course, the immediate aftermath of anything at all isn't necessarily the best time to get a proper historical perspective upon it, and it could just be the euphoria talking. Yet the feeling grows that something about this latest triumph sets it apart. The manner of it - the at home-ness of it, the last day-ness of it, the 8-0-ness of it - just seems to lift it into its own category, in terms of plain peachiness.

I mean, just to recap: we won the league 8-0. I'm not sure how often one can reasonably expect that kind of thing to happen in one's lifetime.

Hark at us, though - leafing through a selection of title-winning experiences as though it were an Argos catalogue. There was a long period in my life as a fan (let's call it roughly a 20-year-long period in fact) when I would have laughed darkly at the idea of seeing the title arrive once, let alone three times in six seasons. Now no matter how you cut it and rank it, this truly is a golden age - and one which has involved more gas-propelled confetti and streamers than many of us dared even dream.

What also sets 2009/10 apart is that it was a season defined by dizzy football. 7-2, 7-1, 7-0, 8-0… As Avram Grant observed this week, Chelsea's football this season has occasionally approached the condition of basketball. More than 100 goals in a record-shattering season? The only shame is that Roy Castle wasn't around to witness it.

The experts point out that what made the difference, in the end, was the 100 percent record in the games involving teams regarded (at the start of the season, anyway) as 'Big Four' clubs. Our record again: played six, won six, for 12, against 1. And that one in the 'against' column was handball, by the way.

This was staggering and unprecedented. But equally so, surely, was the run of three games that clinched the title: the 7-0 demolition of Stoke, the 0-2 victory at Anfield and Sunday's grand-standing 8-0 finish. Given three games to win the league, and under the kind of pressure that could have caused lesser players to let out one final squeak and then explode into a thousand tiny morsels, our team produced 17 goals and conceded none.

Amid all this - and spoiled for choice - the fans' player of the season was Didier Drogba, and the players' player of the season was Florent Malouda, all of which seems perfectly reasonable to me, although my player of the season was going to be Michael Essien, until he got injured. And then it was going to be Ashley Cole, until he got injured. And then, although I thought about it being Nicolas Anelka, it ended up being Frank Lampard, who, from midfield, scored four more goals than Fernando Torres, only four goals fewer than Wayne Rooney, and was worth four more goals than Steven Gerrard and Dirk Kuyt combined.

Extraordinarily, 22 Premier League goals from midfield and a medal doesn't automatically earn you a place in the PFA Team of the Year. But that's voted for, before the season has even finished, by footballers - and what do they know? In any case, I don't suppose Lampard minds. The only thing you can do in the face of such oddities is to smile, raise an eyebrow and then go out and win the things that matter. The league, for instance. And, possibly, the FA Cup.

The best place to be on Sunday was in the ground. But, obviously, that wasn't a privilege open to everybody. Some people, for instance, had jobs to do. Like my friend Jim, who is a bus driver in California. (Jim is also a life-long Chelsea supporter whose passion for the club partly expresses itself in elaborate, Chelsea-themed jumpers, which he knits himself. I wrote about him in a Blog earlier this season. You can see pictures of his work there.)

So, on Sunday, while Chelsea were busy winning the league, Jim was driving the number 19 through Marin County. His son, back at home, was primed to phone him with the score. You have to picture a bus, then, motoring dutifully through the North San Francisco Bay Area, with the driver's phone beeping: '1-0'. And beeping again: '2-0'. And beeping again: '3-0'. And again ('4-0'), and again ('5-0), and again and again and again…

I'm grateful that I was in the ground and saw it happen. But say I hadn't been able to be there, and say I had been granted my pick of anywhere else in the world to experience this victory - then I think I would have chosen to be on Jim's bus.

And so now we all get blown up Wembley Way in a gust of jubilation for the FA Cup final, which some would describe as 'the cherry on the cake', but which we, taking the maturer view, regard in all earnestness as 'more cake'. (We hope the players think of it in this serious manner, too.)

And only the sincere desire not to jinx the thing prevents one from suggesting that it is all set up to be something spectacular, even record-breaking. We don't much go in for bold predictions here, partly because that's a mug's game and also because we're not very good at it. (This is the column that told you, quite late in the season, that Liverpool would finish fourth. It sometimes seemed as though only Rafa Benitez and I truly believed that - and even Rafa probably didn't believe it as truly as I did.)

But if someone were to offer me a quiet fiver at 4,000-1 that Saturday's Cup Final will be a dour, cagey, goal-less affair, running to extra time and penalties, would I take it? In a season where we just won the league 8-0? No, I wouldn't.