Tottenham ended an agonising away day record at Chelsea’s expense, scoring twice in the space of ten minutes as the hosts’ afternoon fell apart in the rain at Stamford Bridge.
For long spells of a scrappy, rain soaked London derby, it looked as though Chelsea and Tottenham were heading for the sort of goalless draw nobody would remember by Monday. Then, in the space of ten chaotic minutes, the whole afternoon turned on its head. Chelsea’s stand in goalkeeper, Mike Penders, making just his second Premier League appearance, punched a corner into his own net. Cole Palmer picked up a second yellow card and an early bath. And Mathys Tel ran half the length of the pitch to settle it, sending Tottenham home with a 2-0 win and, more significantly for Roberto De Zerbi’s side, their first win at Stamford Bridge since 2018.
It was a result few would have predicted at half time, when Chelsea had looked the more composed side without ever threatening to break the deadlock, and Tottenham had managed only one real sight of goal through Omar Marmoush, straight at the goalkeeper. But Premier League football has a habit of being decided in moments rather than patterns, and this game found all of its drama crammed into the final quarter of an hour.
A nightmare ten minutes for the hosts
The breakthrough, when it came in the 77th minute, was about as unwelcome as it gets for a home crowd. Penders, deputising for the injured Emiliano Martinez, was put under pressure by Jan Paul van Hecke as he rose to claim a corner from Mateus Fernandes, and succeeded only in punching the ball into his own net. It was a cruel moment for a young goalkeeper thrown into a tricky derby through circumstance rather than choice.
Worse followed for Chelsea three minutes later. Cole Palmer, already booked in the first half for a foul on Fernandes, caught former teammate Conor Gallagher late and high, and referee Chris Kavanagh had little hesitation in showing a second yellow card. Chelsea, already behind, were suddenly down to ten men with a quarter of an hour still to play.
Tottenham made sure there was no way back. In the 87th minute, Mathys Tel picked the ball up inside his own half, drove past a tiring Chelsea defence and buried a low finish into the bottom corner to make it 2-0. It capped a man of the match display from the young forward, who finished the afternoon with the most touches in the opposition box of any player on the pitch and two created chances to go with his goal.
Tottenham’s revival keeps gathering pace
For a club that went into the international break with just a single point from their opening six league games, this is becoming a genuinely interesting turnaround. Monday’s 3-1 win over Coventry City, built around James Maddison’s first Premier League start in 536 days and Dejan Kulusevski’s long awaited return from injury, had already given De Zerbi his first league win since taking charge. Four days later, and without the benefit of the short preparation time that usually follows a midweek fixture, his side went to Stamford Bridge and beat a Chelsea team that had won four of their previous six league games and arrived fourth in the table.
Back to back wins have lifted Tottenham up to 12th, still some distance from where a reported £237 million summer outlay on the likes of Sandro Tonali, Savio and Marmoush was supposed to have them by late October, but a world away from the side that looked destined for a relegation battle a fortnight ago. There is still a long way to go before anyone talks seriously about European qualification, but the pieces that were meant to make this Tottenham side competitive, Maddison’s creativity chief among them, are finally starting to appear on the pitch together.
Chelsea’s afternoon unravels
Chelsea will look back on this as a missed opportunity rather than a true crisis. They arrived at Stamford Bridge on the back of a 2-0 win at Everton and a thumping 5-1 victory over Bournemouth, and a win here would have sent them above Brighton into the top three. Instead, already without Joao Pedro and relying on Penders in goal while Emiliano Martinez recovers from jaw surgery following a collision at Everton earlier this month, they found themselves undone by a mistake from the one position supposed to offer certainty.
Palmer’s dismissal will draw most of the attention. Two needless fouls on opponents he knows well, Fernandes in the first half and Gallagher in the second, turned a tight contest into an uphill one, and Chelsea’s response once reduced to ten men amounted to very little. Morgan Rogers, the club’s record summer signing from Aston Villa, was introduced in search of an equaliser but picked up a late booking of his own rather than a breakthrough. Xabi Alonso’s side remain fourth on 13 points, but a weekend that began with the chance to close on the top two instead ends with questions about squad depth in Joao Pedro’s absence and discipline in the final third of games.
What it means from here
Both clubs now turn to midweek Carabao Cup football, with Chelsea making the trip to Anfield to face Liverpool and Tottenham, already out of that competition, left to focus on bedding in their recent momentum before a home game against Crystal Palace. For Tottenham, the challenge now is proving that beating a wounded Chelsea was the start of something rather than a one off. For Chelsea, it is about showing that one chaotic ten minute spell in the rain does not undo the form they had built over the previous month.
It was the kind of afternoon that reminds you why nobody in London ever takes a Chelsea versus Tottenham fixture for granted, whatever the respective league positions suggest beforehand. For more results like this one, and the stories behind them all season long, It Was Always… Football is well worth subscribing to.