A slip is supposed to cost you in a Premier League title race, as Chelsea fans, courtesy of Steven Gerrard, well know. Tottenham, though, are generous hosts: here, they allowed their visitors two.
Two-nil down inside 11 minutes to goals both made in part by Marc Cucurella’s loss of footing, the Blues came roaring back to win 4-3 and deliver the hallmark triumph that was about all that had been missing from Enzo Maresca’s flourishing reign.
The Italian may still insist his young team are not title contenders, but he will have a harder time arguing the point after this. The gap to Liverpool is down to four points, a meteorological quirk perhaps, but a margin that suddenly sounds a whole lot more surmountable than seven. With Arsenal held at Fulham earlier on Sunday, Chelsea are clear as the closest pursuers, too.
Belief and momentum can be powerful things at this stage of the season in particular and this was the kind of turnaround that builds plenty of both.
Cucurella’s errors for a while seemed set to be the headline, but in truth, Maresca was as much to blame for a rare misstep of his own.
The 44-year-old had spoken on Friday of tailoring his team’s structure to each game but got this one wrong in attempting a rinse-and-repeat of last weekend’s dominant win over Aston Villa.
Then, playing Moises Caicedo at right-back had worked a treat, the Ecuadorian inverting into midfield in possession and suffocating Unai Emery’s team in dogged tandem with Romeo Lavia.
Here, though, Caicedo was badly missed in midfield without the ball during a first-half in which a chaotic, open game was crying out for his controlling influence. So end-to-end was the contest that Caicedo often did not make it as far as midfield before being forced to turn heel and cover at right-back.
He was, in fact, lucky to make it to half-time at all after a crunching high challenge on Pape Matar Sarr went unpunished, but credit Maresca for at that stage recognising the flaw in his approach and acting decisively.
Off went Lavia, on came Malo Gusto and Caicedo shifted back to the base of midfield. Chelsea suddenly had security and balance, and had Caicedo still been at full-back it seems unlikely he would have made the dart into the left channel that won Chelsea’s equalising penalty.
Cole Palmer converted the first of two spot-kicks, before Enzo Fernandez thrashed his third goal in four league matches. Kudos there to Maresca, too, for being bold in keeping the Argentine on the pitch in a more advanced role when he, rather than Lavia, might have been sacrificed for Gusto.
