Jacob Steinberg on Conor Gallagher
And with that, I’m off. Here’s that match report again. Bye!
Micky Van de Ven admits that a Champions League places is looking distant for Spurs:
Today was not a good performance for us. I think we can do much better, play much better football. In the first half we didn’t even come out and when we came out we didn’t push forward. In the second half we wanted to play, and I think we tried to play, but there was not that confidence. I don’t want to say our confidence is gone. It’s important we recover well and bounce back for the weekend.
On set pieces:
We know what to do, but every ball goes in at the moment. Of course, it' can’t happen, two goals again coming from set pieces. But it’s not that every time when they have set piece I think, it’s going to be a goal.
David Hytner has filed his match report from Stamford Bridge:
Ange Postecoglou says he does not care about the questions being asked about Tottenham’s inability to defend securely from set pieces. The manager believes he will get it right. But he could not avoid another hail of them as his team slumped to a third defeat on the spin, their season in increasing danger of fizzling out.
It was Chelsea’s night, this a victory to fire their hopes of a Europa League finish to a remorselessly testing season. They were excellent in the first-half, Spurs so poor that Postecoglou howled in frustration on a number of occasions. It was difficult to remember seeing him so unhappy.
Much more here:
Pochettino: 'It's the first time this season that I feel so happy'
Mauricio Pochettino turns up now:
We have some positive things. Not too many, but we believe and trust in our players. We really believed it’s an opportunity to show that we believe in what we are doing, in our ideas, our philosophy. Facing a team like Tottenham is never easy, and it’s a derby, but today was fantastic. Full credit to the players, the way they approached the game, the way we tried to play, I think it was fantastic. I think it’s the first time in the season that I really feel so happy. It’s the moment, after 10 months, that the team start to realise how we need to compete. I don’t know if it’s the best performance but the most important is the feeling. With all the circumstances, that showed we were doing things well. I think the whole team was, in both phases, was connected.
Trevoh Chalobah has a chat with Sky:
I’ve been working on my headers, and we’ve worked a lot on set pieces. It was a perfect ball for me to attack. I’ve been working a lot in training, just on my own, and that’s what hard work does.
For me, I’ve been through a lot in my career. It’s important just to stay focused. I know my abilities. And just to keep working. I’ve been training well and the manager’s putting me in, and every time I pull the shirt on I want to do my best and give it my all.
The types of players we have, the ability we have, the moment we get that consistency we’ll be flying. We just need to stay grounded, stay humble.
The league table now looks like this. Spurs need to beat one of Liverpool or Manchester City, plus their two other games, to have the slightest chance of qualifying for the Champions League (Villa play Brighton (a), Liverpool (h) and Crystal Palace (a), and you’d have thought they’d probably get three points from those). Chelsea are three points away from sixth place with better goal difference, and they have much kinder fixtures than Manchester United, who still have to play Arsenal and Newcastle.
| Pos | Team | P | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Arsenal | 35 | 57 | 80 |
| 2 | Man City | 34 | 50 | 79 |
| 3 | Liverpool | 35 | 41 | 75 |
| 4 | Aston Villa | 35 | 21 | 67 |
| 5 | Tottenham Hotspur | 34 | 13 | 60 |
| 6 | Man Utd | 34 | 1 | 54 |
| 7 | Newcastle | 34 | 19 | 53 |
| 8 | Chelsea | 34 | 6 | 51 |
| 9 | West Ham | 35 | -9 | 49 |
| 10 | AFC Bournemouth | 35 | -8 | 48 |
| 11 | Wolverhampton | 35 | -7 | 46 |
| 12 | Brighton | 34 | -5 | 44 |
| 13 | Fulham | 35 | -4 | 43 |
| 14 | Crystal Palace | 35 | -12 | 40 |
| 15 | Everton | 35 | -11 | 36 |
| 16 | Brentford | 35 | -8 | 35 |
| 17 | Nottm Forest | 35 | -20 | 26 |
| 18 | Luton | 35 | -29 | 25 |
| 19 | Burnley | 35 | -32 | 24 |
| 20 | Sheff Utd | 35 | -63 | 16 |
Final score: Chelsea 2-0 Tottenham
90+7 mins: It’s all over, and Spurs have flopped at Stamford Bridge yet again.
90+5 mins: Gil’s cross from the left bounces across the edge of Chelsea’s six-yard box, without any Spurs player getting anywhere very close to it.
90+4 mins: Jimi Tauriainen replaces Jackson. To answer your question, yes, those are a lot of vowels.
90+2 mins: Spurs win the ball just inside their own half and break; Son tees up Bentancur, who sidefoots wide.
90+1 mins: The ball eventually falls to Hojbjerg, beyond the far post. He’s in all sorts of space but takes a touch and suddenly has none at all.
90+1 mins: There are going to be six minutes of stoppage time, and they’ll start with a Spurs corner after Maddison’s shot is deflected wide.
89 mins: Bentancur’s 25-yarder is mishit and dribbles apologetically into Petrovic’s arms.
87 mins: Palmer’s free kick looks to be curling over, but Vicario makes sure. Corner.
86 mins: Chelsea have another tasty set-piece, this time just to the right of the penalty area. Lo Celso comes on for Emerson Royal.
84 mins: Gilchrist goes down, and Chelsea’s physios come on to have a look at him. It seems his night is over. It’s been a pretty positive one – I wouldn’t say he hasn’t put a foot wrong, but he hasn’t looked out of place. Josh Acheampong comes on to make his Premier League debut.
83 mins: Spurs continue to hog possession, and continue to do nothing with it.
80 mins: Spurs are seeing much more of the ball these last few minutes, but they still have no idea what to do with it. “I was full of righteous indignation today about England having four Champions League places to Germany and Italy’s five, but frankly watching Spurs tonight there’s no way the deserve to be in the European elite,” fumes Felix Wood. “Clueless at the back, clueless going forward. The Chelsea ful-lbacks basically just have to stand still and either have Johnson kick the ball into them or have a cross field pass woefully underhit onto their head.”
78 mins: Bryan Gil comes on for Johnson, who has not been very good.
77 mins: Romero is inside the Chelsea penalty area, rolling around and clutching his face. Turns out Casadei jumped into him.
74 mins: Chelsea bring Cesare Casadei on for Mudryk.
74 mins: What a miss! Spurs send in an excellent low centre from the right. It runs to Johnson beyond the far post, and he skews it wide!
GOAL! Chelsea 2-0 Tottenham (Jackson, 72 mins)
And Chelsea double their lead! It’s a wonderful but not quite good enough free-kick from Palmer, which dips onto the crossbar with the keeper helpless, bounces down and back to Jackson, who sends a header over two defenders and into the far corner!
Updated
71 mins: Chelsea win a free-kick five yards or so outside the D, and Cole Palmer is eyeing it up hungrily.
68 mins: Son passes to Johnson, who slides a low ball too far in front of Emerson Royal to be turned in. Turns out Son was offside at the start of the move, so it didn’t matter.
67 mins: Chelsea break from the corner, and Jackson is in the centre circle when Van de Ven runs up from behind him and bowls him over. That’s the night’s first yellow card.
66 mins: Johnson kicks the ball into Gilchrist this time, and it goes behind for a Spurs corner.
64 mins: Johnson is now on the left so has a new full-back to kick the ball into. Son is down the middle, and Kulusevski on the right.
63 mins: Probably Spurs’ best two minutes of the game, but they can’t find a way through the Chelsea backline and it ends with a long-range shot that goes wide. And with that, a triple change: Richarlison, Bissouma and Sarr go off; Bentancur, Maddison and Hojbjerg come on.
60 mins: Madueke runs into the area, but tries to pass to Palmer when he should just have thumped the ball into the roof of the net.
58 mins: The ball is played right to Johnson. Richarlison is unmarked in the middle. Johnson kicks the ball into Cucurella. Pedro Porro literally has his head in his hands.
56 mins: Johnson is putting in a frustratingly guileless display on the Spurs right. He can run and he can kick, and if anyone’s standing in his way he’ll run into them, or kick the ball into them.
52 mins: From a quick throw-in Madueke is found in space and he passes to Palmer, just inside the area and with space to measure his shot. His shot, however, is rubbish.
50 mins: Son has run with the ball twice this half already. He was almost entirely absent from the first half. The second run ends with his heel being clipped by Gilchrist, and a free kick.
Updated
48 mins: Spurs win a corner. Cucurella goes down clutching his face (he was pushed a bit by Van de Ven, but nothing happened to his face). Chelsea fre ekick.
47 mins: Spurs on the front foot. Petrovic does a full-length dive to push away a cross from the right. “Is there any way for Spurs to start each game 1-0 down?” asks Phil Moseley. “Basically (a) it’s inevitable anyway, and (b) they don’t wake up until they do. I think Ange would be fine with this, just like he’s fine with conceding from set pieces.”
46 mins: Peeeeeep! Spurs start half two.
The players are back out. Neither manager appears to have made any half-timely changes.
Half-time listening: Yes, it’s Angry Angerson. Suddenly you’re seeing him just the way he is.
Sky are talking about “Angry Ange”, saying he was absolutely incandescent at some points in the first half. The issue is that even when he’s angry he seems to look pretty cheerful:
Updated
Half time: Chelsea 1-0 Tottenham
The corner is sent in, headed behind, and the whistle sounds. Chelsea deserve to be ahead and are ahead, but Romero should really have equalised for Spurs.
45+4 mins: Ten seconds of stoppage time to play, and Chelsea win a corner. This’ll be the last action of the half, you’d have thought.
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.
Updated
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.
Updated
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.
Updated
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:
— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) May 2, 2024
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!
Updated
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.
| Pos | Team | P | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Arsenal | 35 | 57 | 80 |
| 2 | Man City | 34 | 50 | 79 |
| 3 | Liverpool | 35 | 41 | 75 |
| 4 | Aston Villa | 35 | 21 | 67 |
| 5 | Tottenham Hotspur | 33 | 15 | 60 |
| 6 | Man Utd | 34 | 1 | 54 |
| 7 | Newcastle | 34 | 19 | 53 |
| 8 | West Ham | 35 | -9 | 49 |
| 9 | Chelsea | 33 | 4 | 48 |
| 10 | AFC Bournemouth | 35 | -8 | 48 |
| 11 | Wolverhampton | 35 | -7 | 46 |
| 12 | Brighton | 34 | -5 | 44 |
| 13 | Fulham | 35 | -4 | 43 |
| 14 | Crystal Palace | 35 | -12 | 40 |
| 15 | Everton | 35 | -11 | 36 |
| 16 | Brentford | 35 | -8 | 35 |
| 17 | Nottm Forest | 35 | -20 | 26 |
| 18 | Luton | 35 | -29 | 25 |
| 19 | Burnley | 35 | -32 | 24 |
| 20 | Sheff Utd | 35 | -63 | 16 |
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).
Your Chelsea side tonight! 🫡@ParimatchUK | #CFC | #CheTot pic.twitter.com/EdC9vKEVSz
— Chelsea FC (@ChelseaFC) May 2, 2024
Team news is in! 🤍 pic.twitter.com/GyabI5dTTQ
— Tottenham Hotspur (@SpursOfficial) May 2, 2024
Well the managers seem to get on…
— Tottenham Hotspur (@SpursOfficial) May 2, 2024
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.
