Jaidi's bolt from the blue floors Chelsea

Chelsea 2 Bolton Wanderers

Chelsea's first new record under Jose Mourinho will have to wait. A ninth successive victory in all competitions for the first time in the club's history was snatched away yesterday when Bolton, the set-piece specialists, recovered from two goals down to earn a draw from two free-kicks, the second of them three minutes from the end. So the noisiest roar of the afternoon, which greeted the news that Arsenal had mysteriously failed to see off West Bromwich Albion at Highbury, was eventually followed by 40,000 groans. Even this supposedly predictable championship retains the capacity to surprise.

Chelsea's first new record under Jose Mourinho will have to wait. A ninth successive victory in all competitions for the first time in the club's history was snatched away yesterday when Bolton, the set-piece specialists, recovered from two goals down to earn a draw from two free-kicks, the second of them three minutes from the end. So the noisiest roar of the afternoon, which greeted the news that Arsenal had mysteriously failed to see off West Bromwich Albion at Highbury, was eventually followed by 40,000 groans. Even this supposedly predictable championship retains the capacity to surprise.

The encouraging bulletin on Chelsea's London rivals arrived well before the finish at Stamford Bridge, where traffic and transport chaos had delayed the kick-off by half-an-hour. Chelsea then showed their impatience to go about their impressive business by scoring after 36 seconds through Damien Duff. An almost equally early goal at the start of the second half by Tiago seemed to have extended their advantage at the head of the table to four points, but Kevin Davies and then Rahdi Jaidi did Arsenal and their own team a huge favour.

It is a measure of Bolton's effectiveness with their uncompromising style that they have now met last season's top five Premiership teams and remained unbeaten. Sam Allardyce rightly praised the "resilience, belief and team spirit" that kept them in contention while admitting: "We've nicked a point."

Mourinho was dignified in his disappointment. "I don't think many people like the way Bolton play, but they're effective and dangerous," he said. "I'm happy we only have to play them once more." He also felt that Chelsea had enough opportunities to kill the game when 2-1 up, but overall the visitors were never in danger of being swamped.

Being forced to delay the start was hardly the best advertisement for London's Olympic bid, the District Line, Circle Line and A4 all having been closed. Chelsea must have been champing at the bit in the dressing-room, where Mourinho had been showing them videotapes of Bolton's set-plays, for within barely half a minute they were ahead. Arjen Robben fed Frank Lampard for a shrewd through pass to Duff, just about onside. A first touch seemed to have taken the ball too wide but the little Dubliner used the wet surface to slide forward and knock it into the empty net from an angle.

The early breakthrough should have negated Mourinho's complaint in the match programme that "every team is playing the same way, stopping the game when they can and using defensive tactics to make things difficult". In fact, Allardyce had plenty of attacking players in his side, with Henrik Pedersen and El-Hadji Diouf supporting Davies, and Jay-Jay Okocha returning in central midfield. The difficulty was getting them into positive enough positions to threaten the parsimonious Chelsea defence.

Okocha hurled in his long throws, despite the best efforts of Duff, who stood in front of him and once took a bang on the head while doing so. But for a long time the only scare for the home side was self-inflicted, Ricardo Carvalho almost running the ball into his own net as it bounced awkwardly at him from a free-kick by Bruno N'Gotty.

Bolton held out until the interval, only to be undone again two minutes after it, before quickly hauling themselves back into the game. In the home side's first attack of the second half, Duff controlled Robben's corner from the right and laid it back to him for a cross that Tiago met with a vicious low volley past Jussi Jaaskelainen. Against less spirited opposition, that might have been that. Bolton's self-belief, however, has been boosted by their unexpectedly good results, and a set-piece soon revived them, and their supporters - who had been reduced before then to complaining about the £40 admission.

Gary Speed, playing as one of the two holding midfielders, ventured far enough forward to swing in a free-kick that Chelsea's big goalkeeper Petr Cech did not get to, Davies heading it past him off the shoulder of Jaidi. It was only the second Premiership goal Mourinho's team had conceded on the ground this season, the first, by Southampton's James Beattie, was as long ago as 28 August.

Allardyce sent on Stelios Giannakopoulos and Ivan Campo from his cosmopolitan substitutes' bench, soon to be followed by Fernando Hierro, though the match might soon have been put beyond them. Jaaskelainen beat away Frank Lampard's fierce drive, William Gallas's shot from the rebound painfully struck a defender, and when Eidur Gudjohnsen met another Robben corner, the goalkeeper required two grabs right on his line to keep it out.

The same player was denied again with 12 minutes to play, this time by the crossbar, which shuddered after being struck by his shot from Duff's pass. It did not seem to matter until, with three minutes to play, N'Gotty pumped another free-kick forward and Jaidi latched on to Davies's knock-down to shoot past Cech. Having scored at Highbury in another 2-2 draw earlier this season, the Tunisian has been as even-handed in the championship race as the rest of his side. Having predicted that Chelsea could win their first title for 50 years a fortnight before the end of the season, Mourinho will also have noted the venue for that blue-letter day: the Reebok Stadium, Bolton.