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Key events
21 minutes: Mudrik runs away. Starts with a lovely nutmeg, almost finishes a few times – willingly as he tries to pass the ball – but the ball always hits a Spurs player and bounces back into his path. He ends up about six yards from goal, but with defenders around him and one of them deflects his shot/whatever to Vicario.
18 minutes: “Fair question,” writes Ben Gastel, “Moore and Austin aside for Spurs, does any other player on the Spurs bench have more minutes in the EPL than literally anyone Chelsea bench player combined? And I include Gil and Dragusin in this matter. Um, maybe? Chelsea’s bench is extremely empty. The question that comes to my mind when I see the Chelsea bench is who calls their child David?
17 minutes: Cucurella’s end-line pull goes behind everyone but runs to the far end of the area where Alfie Gilchrist runs at him. The crowd shouted “Shoot” and he sprinted to the ball with nothing else on his mind. He swings it over the bar.
15 minutes: Chelsea they have an angle that Vicario doesn’t handle convincingly. They get another corner which Richarlison heads home.
14 minutes: Mudrik finds an excellent pass to free Cukurella, but by the time he knows what to do with the pocket in the box he finds in Van de Ven, he closes it down.
12 minutes: This is the opportunity that Palmer failed to realize:
10 minutes: The ball was played before Emerson Royal’s shot Chelsea penalty zone. He feels Madueke’s hand touch his left shoulder and collapses. I’ve seen them given – but they should never be, and this one isn’t.
8 minutes: Brennan Johnson has had some pretty promising possessions a few times so far. The first time, he ignored the fact that Cucurella was blocking his path to goal and fired a shot, well, straight at Cucurella, as if hoping he would simply cease to exist comfortably. Then just now he had the time and space to measure a cross but sent the ball floating out of play.
5 minutes: Chelsea come closer! Jackson is played, and Vicario comes in halfway, stops and dunks in no man’s land. Jackson’s shot hits him but looks on target until Van de Ven heads it cleanly but just wide of Cole Palmer’s goal six yards from a wide open goal. He does it very quickly and somehow ends up going over the bar!
4 minutes: Vicario, the Spurs goalkeeper, has kicked the ball twice so far and has more or less, but not yet catastrophically, confused both teams.
2 minutes: Not much happened and not everything happened on Tottenham’s right/Chelsea’s left.
1 minute: Peeeeeep! Chelsea have started.
“A few words about 16-year-old Mikey Moore on the Spurs bench today,” writes Alexandra Ashton. “Won the under-17 and under-18 cups last season, played for the under-21s at under-15s and has been training with the first team in the last week after reportedly impressing Postecoglou and the coaching staff. A complex winger, he could develop into exactly the type of player we’ve been missing over the last few months.”
Players are out and as I write, I make performative clasps.
I like the way the home dressing room at Stamford Bridge has a big-print reminder for any confused players of exactly whose ground they’re on.
Five changes for Spurs, which seems quite a lot. James Maddison is on the bench and Richarlison returns to the starting line-up. Here’s some from Ange Postecoglou:
Look, it’s about refreshing the team tonight. I thought our football was generally decent throughout the game [against Arsenal]. We paid the price for our lack of concentration, but we fought back in the second half and have shown resilience all year and we will need that resilience tonight.
Mauricio Pochettino has given 20-year-old Alfie Gilchrist a second start and has a great young bench:
That’s the reality we’ve been living all season, and it’s a higher expression today. But we have to be positive and of course the kids are at the club because they want to have an opportunity to break into the first team.
A reminder of what the league table looks like before the match. Whatever happens tonight, Spurs will finish in fifth place Chelsea they can climb to eighth by a point or more or drop to 10th if they lose by, um, 12 goals or more.
The teams!
The team sheets have been handed out of the match officials and the names scratched on them were as follows:
Chelsea: Petrovic, Gilchrist, Chalobah, Badiashile, Cukurela, Caicedo, Gallagher, Madueke, Palmer, Mudric, Jackson. subtitles: Bettinelli, Cassaday, David Washington, Taurijainen, Castledine, Acheampong, George, Dyer, Sturge.
Tottenham Hotspur: Vicario, Porro, Romero, van de Ven, Emerson, Bissuma, Sarr, Johnson, Kulusewski, Son, Richarlison. subtitles: Skip, Hoiberg, Dragusin, Madison, Gil Salvatierra, Lo Celso, Bentancourt, Austin, Moore.
Referee: Robert Jones (Merseyside).
Well, the managers seem to be doing well…
Preamble
Hello world! Tottenham as a guest at Chelsea Right? All Spurs fans will know what that means: no chance of winning. To describe their record at Stamford Bridge as a rising tide of sewage would be to exaggerate how good it is: in their last 38 visits, they have lost 24 times, drawn 13 times and won just one, pitifully. It was in April 2018 when Dele Alli scored twice in a 3-1 win – the only people involved in that game who could be involved tonight are Son Heung-min and Mauricio Pochettino, Spurs manager at the time and in the chelsea hole now.
In the build-up to this game, I particularly enjoyed PA Media’s headline in their story detailing Pochettino’s pre-match thoughts:
‘REALLY NICE’ CHELSEA FANS GIVE MAURICIO POCETINO TREATS WHILE WALKING HIS DOG
What’s really special here is the idea that the fans aren’t giving treats to Pochettino’s dog, they’re shoving them into the grateful mouth of the Argentine himself. I imagine a series of exchanges where strangers walk up to him to say something like: “Yeah, I know we’ve just lost the FA Cup semi-final and then let Arsenal overrun us by five, but I understood some sort of underlying quality behind these superficially miserable displays – have a fun-sized Twix.”
And it’s even tastier because the next article doesn’t mention treats or a dog. “When I’m on the street, people are really nice and appreciate me,” Pochettino said. “They give us the credit [for] working in a project and process that is so difficult.’
Spurs are seven points off fourth-placed Aston Villa and their Champions League spot 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 victory even more seven points seems unlikely. Chelsea are five points adrift of seventh-placed Newcastle and six adrift of sixth-placed Manchester United, with a game in hand on both, and victory here will fuel their own European ambitions – and earn Pochettino some more tasty extras.
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