Though neither is the other's biggest rival club, Chelsea and Tottenham always seem to put on fascinating matches, at least for neutrals. Tottenham has the ability to play up to any competition—or, as it may be, play down to any competition; sorry about that jinx, Spurs—and while Chelsea has been on a relative tear this season, emerging as dark-horse title contenders at absolute worst, the Blues are always good for some shenanigans. The two clubs clashing at this point in time, with Spurs reeling after a swift downturn in form following its statement win over Manchester City and Chelsea with the opportunity to get the Premier League lead gap down to four points following the storm-aided postponement of Liverpool-Everton, promised to be entertaining. What it did not promise but joyfully delivered was a mess slamming face first into a disaster.
Let's start with Chelsea, and more specifically with Marc Cucurella, and even more specifically with Marc Cucurella's soccer cleats. In the fifth minute of Sunday's match, Cucurella had the ball at the left back position when a touch took just a bit too far away from his foot. As he tried to catch up to the ball, he slipped to the ground, allowing Brennan Johnson to pick up the ball and slot a cross to Dominic Solanke in the center, and the summer signing for Tottenham made no mistakes about giving his new side an early lead against one of his former clubs.
You might want to feel for Cucurella; a slip is nothing to laugh at, and it happens to everyone at some point. However, six minutes later, the slip went from bad to hilariously worse, as Cucurella received the ball under light pressure and went to clear it. Unfortunately, he slipped again, and again Johnson was there to scoop up the loose ball. Though the ensuing goal, a low roller by Dejan Kulusevski, wasn't an immediate reaction to the slip, Chelsea was all out of sorts from losing the ball in that dangerous area, and 11 minutes in, it was 2-0 to the hosting Tottenham, while Cucurella ran off the pitch to change his cleats, which is just an embarrassing thing to experience in a top-level soccer match.
On the other hand, Tottenham capitalized on the mistakes with deadly efficiency, and this felt immediately like a rout akin to the club's win over City. Yeah, about that. One should never underestimate Tottenham's ability to be maximum Tottenham at all times, and Sunday was a prime example. Credit to Chelsea, and specifically Jadon Sancho, for getting the gears back in motion after Cucurella's duo of calamities, as the former Manchester United cast-off received the ball on the left wing and drove it into a shooting position from just outside the box in the 17th minute. His own low roller slotted in the back of the net, making it 2-1, which is how it would stay until halftime.
The promised Spursy behavior came on the other side of the break: In the 59th minute, Sancho hit a through ball to Moises Caicedo inside the box, although not particularly in an imminently dangerous position. Tell that to Yves Bissouma, though, who recklessly slid into a tackle and completely whiffed, bringing Caicedo down to concede a penalty. Cole Palmer hit a cracker of a spot kick, and suddenly the match was tied, after it looked so promising for Tottenham early on.
There's no blame to be thrown around for Chelsea's third, though: After Palmer lost the ball to a bounce inside the box following a nifty run, it fell to Enzo Fernández, who hit a volleyed left footer past Fraser Forster.
At this point, the match had completely lost the plot that it looked to have early on, which is a bit of an issue for Tottenham this season. While Ange Postecoglou's style is thrilling, it also leaves a lot of room for comebacks of this sort, and it doesn't help when his side concede not one but two stupid and avoidable penalties. The second of those came from Pape Sarr, who clattered into Palmer as the Chelsea man was seemingly dribbling outside of the box. In other words, there was absolutely no need to make a challenge there, and no reason to do so, except that Sarr momentarily lost his head. Palmer rubbed salt in this particular wound with his ensuing penalty kick, a Panenka right down the middle.
While a lesser match would have exhausted all potential storylines at this point, Tottenham-Chelsea can never burn out, and it didn't this time. Thanks to the two penalties, there were an additional seven minutes of stoppage time, and in the sixth of those minutes, Heung-min Son scored from a nifty corner play, in which James Maddison and Lucas Bergvall played a one-two before Maddison drove at the touch-line and cut the ball back. This was Chelsea's first conceded goal of the season from a corner kick, and in fairness to Tottenham, it was a worthy one to break that seal:
Unfortunately for the hosts, that's how it would end, and though both teams made two disastrous errors that led directly to goals, Chelsea came out ahead by virtue of individual brilliance from Sancho and Fernández. In a battle of mistakes and debacles, it was an even draw, but given the timing of the errors, I'd have to give the loss to Tottenham, on top of the actual loss the club suffered as it now sits 11th on the table. Chelsea, meanwhile, will probably want to teach Cucurella a new method for testing his boots pre-match, but the second-place side on the table will take the three points all the same.
