Key events
45+3 mins: Petrovic has some proper work to do, catching Johnson’s low cross after it deflects his way off Cucurella.
45+2 mins: A nice move from Spurs, but it ends with Johnson cutting the ball back to Sarr, whose shot deflects wide off Chalobah.
45+1 mins: Into stoppage time, of which there’ll be four minutes.
43 mins: Johnson wins a corner. These have been a better, if not exactly good, few minutes for Spurs. “As an Arsenal fan I should be enjoying this dreadful Spurs performance but I need them to find some form, as they’ll never take points off City playing like this,” writes Matthew Stephens. “COYS!”
41 mins: Mudryk cuts inside again, and shoots high again. He’s had a decent half, but he’s had a couple of poor shots.
38 mins: Chance! Porro curls the ball onto Romero’s head, and from just inside the six-yard area he heads wide! That is by a massive margin Tottenham’s best chance so far.
37 mins: Badashile fouls Richarlison on the right of the penalty area, and Spurs have a handy set-piece of their own. “It’s common in Latin American countries to give your child an anglophone name then change the spelling to make it make sense in your own language,” explains Simon Frank, helpfully. “David in Brazilian Portuguese would phonetically be written Deivid. See also Colombian Yohnnys, Yeris etc and my wife Natachard who has a Haitian mother.”
35 mins: Postecoglu is losing his rag on the touchline, screaming at any nearby player. It’s not a good time to be on Tottenham’s right wing.
34 mins: Kulusevski attempts a 40-yard wonderpass, and sends the ball bouncing through to Petrovic.
32 mins: Chelsea are very much the better side here, and a second goal is smelling imminent. Palmer executes a lovely skill move and passes to Mudryk, whose right-foot curler doesn’t curl enough. Goal kick.
30 mins: Madueke runs with the ball to the byline, and then keeps going. Goal kick.
27 mins: The goal stands! Postecoglou is shaking his head on the sidelines, but I think it’s a decent decision (but the issue of deliberate blocking does need to be more convincingly dealt with).
VAR is having a look at this. The question is whether Cucurella blocked Johnson, stopping him from challenging for the header. On the plus side the extra replays prove there was no deflection, just a really good header.
GOAL! Chelsea 1-0 Tottenham (Chalobah, 24 mins)
Spurs concede from a set piece again! It’s a lovely ball in from Gallagher, from a pretty central free-kick, and Chalobah heads in from 14 yards (ish)! I think he headed it straight into the back of Emerson Royal and it looped in from there, and it should probably be an own goal as the header was off target, but replays have been inconclusive.
23 mins: Madueke collects a long crossfield pass, cuts infield and shoots over the bar from the edge of the area.
21 mins: Mudryk goes on a run. It starts with a lovely nutmeg, almost ends a couple of times – voluntarily, with him trying to pass the ball – but the ball always hits a Spurs player and rebounds back into his path. Eventually he’s about six yards from goal, but with defenders all around him and one of them deflects his shot/whatever to Vicario.
18 mins: “Honest question,” writes Ben Gastel, “putting aside Moore and Austin for Spurs, has every other Spurs bench player have more EPL minutes than literally every Chelsea bench player combined? And I include Gil and Dragusin in that question.” Um, maybe? Chelsea’s bench is extraordinarily callow. The question that leaps to my mind when I see Chelsea’s bench is, who calls their child Deivid?
17 mins: Cucurella’s pull-back from the byline goes behind everyone but runs to the far edge of the area where Alfie Gilchrist runs towards it. The crowd bays “Shoot” and he sprints ballwards with nothing else in his mind. He thumps it over the bar.
15 mins: Chelsea have a corner, which Vicario doesn’t deal with convincingly. They get another corner, which Richarlison heads clear.
14 mins: Mudryk finds an excellent pass to release Cucurella, but by the time he works out what to do with the pocket of penalty-area space he’s found himself in Van de Ven has closed it.
12 mins: This is the opportunity that Palmer failed to convert:
10 mins: The ball is played ahead of Emerson Royal’s run into the Chelsea penalty area. He feels Madueke’s arm touch his left shoulder and collapses. I’ve seen them given – but they never should be, and this one is not.
8 mins: Brennan Johnson has had decently promising possession a couple of times so far. The first time he ignored the fact that Cucurella was blocking his path to goal and blasted a shot, well, straight at Cucurella, as if hoping he might just conveniently cease to exist. Then just now he had time and space to measure a cross, but sent the ball floating out of play.
5 mins: Chelsea go close! Jackson is played through, and Vicario half-comes, stops, and gets stuck in no-man’s-land. Jackson’s shot hits him but looks goalwards, until Van de Ven hools it clear but right onto the instep of Cole Palmer, six yards away from a completely open goal. It comes to him very quickly, and somehow ends up going over the bar!
4 mins: Vicario, the Spurs goalkeeper, has kicked the ball twice so far and has to a greater or lesser degree but not yet a disastrous one messed it up both teams.
2 mins: Not a lot has happened, and all of it hasn’t happened down Tottenham’s right/Chelsea’s left.
1 min: Peeeeeep! Chelsea have kicked off.
“A word on 16-year-old Mikey Moore on the bench for Spurs today,” writes Alexandra Ashton. “Won the Under-17 and Under-18 cups last season, played for the Under-21s at 15, and has trained with the first team for the past week after allegedly impressing Postecoglou and the coaching staff. A tricky winger, he may well develop into exactly the sort of player we’ve been missing in the last few months.”
The players are out and, as I type, doing performative hand-clasps.
I do like the way the home dressing-room at Stamford Bridge has a large-font reminder for any confused players of precisely whose ground they are in.
So five changes for Spurs, which seems quite a lot. James Maddison is on the bench, and Richarlison is back in the starting line-up. Here’s a bit of Ange Postecoglou:
Look, it’s about freshening up the team tonight. I thought in general our football was decent the whole game [against Arsenal]. We paid the price for a lack of focus but we fought back in the second half and have shown resilience all year and we’ll need that resilience tonight.
Mauricio Pochettino has given 20-year-old Alfie Gilchrist a second start, and has a terrifically young bench:
That is the reality that we are living for the whole season and today a higher expression. But we need to be positive and of course the kids are in the club because they want to have the opportunity to go through to the first team.
A reminder of what the league table looks like pre-match. Whatever happens tonight Spurs will end it fifth but Chelsea could go up to eighth with a point or more, or down to 10th if they lose by, um, 12 goals or more.
The teams!
The team sheets have been handed to the match officials, and the names scrawled upon them were these:
Chelsea: Petrovic, Gilchrist, Chalobah, Badiashile, Cucurella, Caicedo, Gallagher, Madueke, Palmer, Mudryk, Jackson. Subs: Bettinelli, Casadei, Deivid Washington, Tauriainen, Castledine, Acheampong, George, Dyer, Sturge.
Tottenham Hotspur: Vicario, Porro, Romero, van de Ven, Emerson, Bissouma, Sarr, Johnson, Kulusevski, Son, Richarlison. Subs: Skipp, Hojbjerg, Dragusin, Maddison, Gil Salvatierra, Lo Celso, Bentancur, Austin, Moore.
Referee: Robert Jones (Merseyside).
Well the managers seem to get on…
Preamble
Hello world! Tottenham away at Chelsea is it? All Spurs fans will know what that means: no chance of victory. To describe their record at Stamford Bridge as a heaving stream of effluent would be to massively overstate how good it is: in the last 38 visits they have lost 24 times, drawn 13 times, and won just a solitary, pitiful once. That was in April 2018, when Dele Alli scored twice in a 3-1 victory – the only people involved in that game who could be involved tonight are Son Heung-min and Mauricio Pochettino, Spurs manager then and in the Chelsea dugout now.
In the build-up to this game I have particularly enjoyed PA Media’s headline on their story detailing Pochettino’s pre-match thoughts:
‘REALLY GOOD’ CHELSEA FANS GIVE MAURICIO POCHETTINO TREATS WHILE WALKING HIS DOG
What’s really special here is the idea that the fans are not giving treats to Pochettino’s dog, they’re popping them into the grateful maw of the Argentinian himself. I’m picturing a series of exchanges in which strangers approach him to say something along the lines of: “Yeah I know we just lost the FA Cup semi-final and then let Arsenal put five past us, but I have discerned some kind of underlying quality behind these superficially hapless displays – have a fun-size Twix.”
And it is even more delicious because the article that follows mentions neither treats nor a dog. “When I am on the street the people are really good and appreciate,” Pochettino said. “They give us the credit [for] working in a project and a process that is so difficult.”
Spurs are seven points behind fourth-placed Aston Villa and their Champions League place, with two games in hand, but with Liverpool (a) and Manchester City (h) still to play after tonight, defeat here would make the prospect of winning seven more points look unlikely. Chelsea are five points behind seventh-placed Newcastle and six away from Manchester United in sixth, with a game in hand on both, and victory here would fuel their own European ambitions – and earn Pochettino a few more tasty goodies.
Sarah Wilson is your guide to the latest trends, viral sensations, and internet phenomena. With a finger on the pulse of digital culture, she explores what’s trending across social media and pop culture, keeping readers in the know about the latest online sensations.
