Chelsea boosted their Champions League qualification hopes on Thursday with a Premier League win over London rivals Tottenham Hotspur at Stamford Bridge.
Enzo Fernandez’s second half header proved decisive in the end, with a goal for each later disallowed following two lengthy VAR checks that resulted in more than 100 minutes being played overall.
How the game unfolded
Not even a full minute had elapsed when Chelsea struck the post in the first sight of goal. A long ball over the top took the Spurs defence out of the game, but while Nicolas Jackson wasn’t quite able to take the ball in his stride, a recovering Micky van de Ven’s attempted clearance ricocheted off the Chelsea frontman and – fortunately or unfortunately – onto the woodwork.
In a fast start for the Blues, plenty of home fans inside Stamford Bridge soon thought Malo Gusto’s drive into the side-netting had crept just inside the post. A combination of Destiny Udogie and Guglielmo Vicario later prevented Enzo Fernandez from converting Cole Palmer’s low cross.
Half an hour in and with Chelsea continuing to dominate the chances, Jackson fired off target after chasing a hooked punt forward and outmuscling Van de Ven.
Spurs had hardly troubled the Chelsea goal until late in the first half when Son Heung-min beat Malo Gusto with a stepover and fired a low cross into the middle that Robert Sanchez parried, not exactly to safety. But the visitors couldn’t take advantage of the loose ball.
Right at the end of the first 45, Jadon Sancho was left in space at the far post, but his curling shot towards the top corner was expertly tipped over by Vicario.
The Spurs goalkeeper made a good but comfortable save from Palmer early in the second half, but as Chelsea recycled the ball there was no stopping Palmer again. His perfectly flighted cross was met by the head of Fernandez, who had ghosted into the box between defenders.
Moises Caicedo lashed in a powerful volley a few moments later, only to see it chalked off for a marginal offside in the build-up – the VAR review took four minutes to reach a conclusion and the semi-automated offside technology coming later this month cannot get here soon enough.
Chelsea’s Ecuador international was soon at the centre of another key moment when Spurs thought they had equalised out of nowhere. Caicedo was dispossessed by Pape Sarr, who proceeded to lash home from distance, but the home side were rightly incensed and replays showed a clear foul from Sarr to win the ball. A VAR check ruled out the goal and also spared the blushes of Sanchez, onlu recently restored to the team after being dropped, who was beaten far too easily.
But having almost been embarrassed by that moment, Sanchez redeemed himself in the last minute of the 90 with a huge save to prevent Son equalising at the far post. After Brennan Johnson’s low cross, the Spaniard launched himself across goal to get in the way of the close-range shot.
Check out the player ratings from Chelsea vs Tottenham here.
With eight games left to play, Chelsea have displaced Manchester City, victorious over Leicester City 24 hours earlier, in the Premier League top four.
It is likely that the top five will get a place in next season’s Champions League due to the strong performances of English clubs in Europe. But Newcastle United are also in the mix and have a game in hand against Crystal Palace yet to be played, so every point is not vital.
Just two points separate Chelsea in fourth, with Newcastle in sixth. Aston Villa are still only two points further back in seventh, making it super competitive.
Chelsea haven’t competed in the Champions League since 2022/23 and returning to Europe’s elite stage is huge not only for prestige, but also the finances.
For the first time in a Premier League season, Spurs have lost 16 of their first 30 games – more than half. After a 15th defeat last month, Ange Postecoglou labelled it “unacceptable”, but his team have now surpassed that to make it their most league losses in a season since 2003/04.
On that occasion, Spurs lost 19 times and finished 14th, their worst on both counts in a 38-game campaign. There is still time left to match or even sink below that.
This game was also an unwanted club record for Ange Postecoglou, becoming the first Spurs boss to lose each of his first four encounters with Chelsea.
In the build-up to this game, Enzo Maresca suggested that Jadon Sancho’s output this season hasn’t been good enough and that the winger, who remains a regular starter, needs to “shoot more”.
He was generally involved in Chelsea’s attacking play and forced an excellent save out of Guglielmo Vicario in the closing stages of the first half. But it was his only effort in a performance that lasted just 68 minutes and lacked much in the way of a final ball.
Sancho’s future beyond this season remains uncertain. His loan from Manchester United includes an obligation to buy, but Chelsea can get out of that by paying a £5m penalty fee. Even if the Blues do take the former England winger permanently, they are tipped to sell him on anyway, and rumour has it that Sancho would ideally like to rejoin Borussia Dortmund for a third spell there.
Nicolas Jackson was back in the Chelsea lineup for the first time in two months after recovering from a hamstring injury. It’s certainly a boost considering that the Blues lacked a striker altogether in his absence, but he went eight Premier League games without a goal before getting injured and that drought was extended to nine in this outing.
It could have been very different given that a ricochet off him from an attempted Spurs clearance struck the post in the first minute, while he seemed to have the beating of the two opposing centre-backs, at least in the first half, wthout making the most of it.
But Jackson remains stuck on nine league goals from the campaign and it won’t help his cause, given that Chelsea are very much in the market for a new ‘number nine’ this summer.
There was only one goal in the final score-line, but in truth Chelsea’s performance would have justified a bigger margin of victory.
Tottenham’s disallowed equaliser was against the run of play and, Robert Sanchez’s important late save aside, the visitors never really looked like scoring.
Against his former club, Dominic Solanke was starved of service. His 21 touches of the ball was the fewest of any outfield player to complete the full game and just one of those was in the Chelsea box.
It wasn’t an all-time classic and certainly fell short of the fiery-tempered ‘Battle of the Bridge’ from 2016, but there was still an element of derby spice that ensured the game retained some edge.
Cristian Romero and Trevoh Chalobah were both booked in first half stoppage time and a few other hard challenges and other potential flashpoints threatened to boil over at various times.
Pape Sarr and Moises Caicedo had a little spat and verbal exchange just moments before the former’s would-be equaliser was ruled out for a foul on the latter.
In a world where top level professional football can sometime tip into the vanilla, it was refreshing to see the grit and character that existed in this one.
