Chelsea’s centre-circle ritual is becoming the most talked-about sideshow in the Premier League, and it is happening before a ball is even kicked – or re-kicked.

Under head coach Liam Rosenior, the Blues have added a deliberate twist to the familiar pre-match huddle: they form a tight circle around the match ball in the exact centre spot at the start of both halves. What began as a private show of unity in January has morphed into a lightning-rod for opposition supporters, players and even television pundits.

The flash-point arrived at Villa Park. Chelsea, trailing 2-1 at the interval, re-emerged and immediately congregated over the ball, prompting Aston Villa’s Ollie Watkins to race towards referee Jarred Gillett in protest while midfielder Amadou Onana gesticulated in disbelief. Douglas Luiz appeared to smirk at the theatre of it all, but the Villa crowd roared its disapproval, continuing a chorus that had begun before kick-off.

TNT Sports commentator Steve McManaman branded the routine “ridiculous” on air, arguing that modern football is drowning in “silly ideas” designed to manufacture psychological edges. Yet Chelsea’s players, led initially by Reece James and, in James’s injury-enforced absence, Enzo Fernandez, have stuck to the script with near-religious devotion.

Rosenior, appointed in January after Enzo Maresca’s departure, insists the ritual is entirely player-driven, though Willie Isa – the former Wigan rugby league star hired 13 months ago as a player-support officer – helped refine its delivery. The coach sees only upside. “They’re showing unity and togetherness,” he said after the Villa win. “Before tactics, you need a group willing to run and fight for each other.”

The numbers since its introduction are respectable, if not spectacular: ten competitive fixtures, six wins, two draws, two defeats. The huddle debuted in Naples on 28 January, when Chelsea clinched the 3-2 victory required to reach the Champions League last 16. Superstition took root: three days later they rallied from 2-0 down to beat West Ham by the same scoreline.

Since then the pattern has held through rain at Wolves, rotation at Wrexham and a cauldron Emirates Stadium, where Arsenal supporters mocked “north London forever” as the Blues locked arms. Referee Gillett has twice checked his watch, but Law 7 offers no remedy for a team huddling over its own restart position.

Opponents are searching for one. At the Vitality Stadium, Burnley’s squad ambled past the circle in apparent indifference; Leeds head coach Daniel Farke watched stone-faced as the exercise unfolded. Yet the more vehement the reaction, the more Chelsea seem to embrace the pantomime.

Next in line are Paris Saint-Germain at the Parc des Princes on Wednesday, a fixture already laced with edge after Chelsea edged the French side in July’s Club World Cup final. If recent evidence is any guide, the boos will begin long before the first whistle, and the huddle will proceed anyway, smack in the middle of the pitch, ball at the centre of 11 blue shirts.

Love it or loathe it, the ritual is working – at least in the currency of togetherness – and it shows no sign of disappearing.