Key events
21 mins: Mudryk goes on a run. It starts with a lovely nutmeg, almost ends a couple of times â voluntarily, with him trying to pass the ball â but the ball always hits a Spurs player and rebounds back into his path. Eventually heâs about six yards from goal, but with defenders all around him and one of them deflects his shot/whatever to Vicario.
18 mins: âHonest question,â writes Ben Gastel, âputting 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.â Um, maybe? Chelseaâs bench is extraordinarily callow. The question that leaps to my mind when I see Chelseaâs bench is, who calls their child Deivid?
17 mins: Cucurellaâs 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 âShootâ and he sprints ballwards with nothing else in his mind. He thumps it over the bar.
15 mins: Chelsea have a corner, which Vicario doesnât 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 heâs found himself in Van de Ven has closed it.
12 mins: This is the opportunity that Palmer failed to convert:
10 mins: The ball is played ahead of Emerson Royalâs run into the Chelsea penalty area. He feels Maduekeâs arm touch his left shoulder and collapses. Iâve seen them given â 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-manâs-land. Jacksonâs 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!
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 hasnât happened down Tottenhamâs right/Chelseaâs left.
1 min: Peeeeeep! Chelsea have kicked off.
âA word on 16-year-old Mikey Moore on the bench for Spurs today,â writes Alexandra Ashton. âWon 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 weâve been missing in the last few months.â
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. Hereâs a bit of Ange Postecoglou:
Look, itâs 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 weâll 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.
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).
Well the managers seem to get onâ¦
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 â 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 Mediaâs headline on their story detailing Pochettinoâs pre-match thoughts:
âREALLY GOODâ CHELSEA FANS GIVE MAURICIO POCHETTINO TREATS WHILE WALKING HIS DOG
Whatâs really special here is the idea that the fans are not giving treats to Pochettinoâs dog, theyâre popping them into the grateful maw of the Argentinian himself. Iâm picturing a series of exchanges in which strangers approach him to say something along the lines of: âYeah 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 â have a fun-size Twix.â
And it is even more delicious because the article that follows mentions neither treats nor a dog. âWhen I am on the street the people are really good and appreciate,â Pochettino said. âThey give us the credit [for] working in a project and a process that is so difficult.â
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 â and earn Pochettino a few more tasty goodies.
