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LONDON. – When Thibaut Courtois dived to his left to repel Alvaro Negredo’s snapshot at Middlesbrough, the Chelsea goalkeeper might have been relieved to be part of the action again. That save, 78 minutes into Chelsea’s sixth English Premier League win on the spin on Sunday, was from the first shot on target their keeper had faced in four hours and 48 minutes of football. It is another measure of their dominance.

Top of the English Premier League and seemingly impossible to stop at the minute, Antonio Conte has found a solution that has provided comfortable victories over Hull City, Leicester City, Manchester United, Southampton, Everton and Middlesbrough.

It has not come easily after defeats at the hands of Liverpool and Arsenal, but 3-4-3-powered Chelsea are now the team nobody wants to face – a reputation built across their last six matches. Tottenham, at Stamford Bridge, are up next.

The Blues have scored 17 goals in their last six games – three more than closest rivals Liverpool.

A record of no goals conceded outstrips anyone else, too, with Boro and Stoke City closest on four surrendered in the same stretch.

The statistics show a huge transformation from the spluttering outfit that started the season to the polished, consistent unit Conte has built.

Chelsea shoot more, find the target more often, offer better-quality crosses, tackle more and snuff out their opponents far more in the latter half-dozen matches of the 12-game season so far.

From Courtois and his powerful back three of Cesar Azpilicueta, David Luiz and Gary Cahill, up to the prolific Diego Costa in attack, Chelsea are outperforming their rivals across the park in their current run.

Costa is the first player to reach double figures in Premier League goals this season after his instinctive strike at Boro and he has been ably supported by the men backing him up.

Eden Hazard’s form, as the Player of the Month for October, has been well-documented, while Pedro and Nemanja Matic have proven themselves as impressive creative outlets, too.

The former was among Chelsea’s poorest performers last season and opened up the new campaign with outings of inconsistent quality but, alongside N’golo Kante, he has been excellent. Five assists – a figure matched by Pedro – is second only to Kevin De Bruyne in the Premier League rankings, while his pass-completion rate on a tricky trip to the Riverside on Sunday was an impressive 97 per cent, the best of any starter.

Former Leicester dynamo Kante regularly ranks among the league’s top passers, too.

Chelsea might not have blown away Boro in the way the did with the likes of Everton in recent weeks, but the win showed an ability to capitalise on their dominance in another way.

“I’m pleased because we won a game in a different way if you compare it to our past five games,” Conte said afterwards. “We won only 1-0 against a strong team with good organisation. At the moment we had to suffer, we suffered, but we never lost our compactness. It’s very good.”

Spurs and Manchester City, Chelsea’s next two opponents, will provide more difficult tests for the 3-4-3 flanked by wing backs Victor Moses and Marcos Alonso. That pairing is likely to stay the same in Saturday’s powderkeg late kick-off at Stamford Bridge, the rematch of last season’s “Battle of the Bridge”.

Conte stuck with the same starting XI for the fifth game in a row at Boro – the first time Chelsea have found such selection consistency in the English Premier League era – and the trend is set to continue against Spurs.

The hope, against a higher class of opposition, is that the Chelsea dominance will continue to shine through as teams struggle to stop Conte’s new unit.

Chelsea’s Incredible Stats

Chelsea won 1-0 at Middlesbrough to move to top of the English Premier League

Antonio Conte’s side have now gone six games without conceding a goal

Last time Blues won six without conceding in the league was August 2010

Since switch to 3-4-3 they’re playing more through balls and long passes

Conte has been able to increase the team’s shots at goal by 0.5 per game

Chelsea are also conceding fewer shots per game in their incredible run – Mailonline.