Lauren James hits the accelerator as Chelsea leave Tottenham in the dust

We should probably talk about the Lauren James goal first, if only because it was the one thing that appeared genuinely unequivocal, the single brilliant shaft of light in this cracked mirror of a game. It came 27 minutes in, the score 1-1, the surface weathered, the terms of engagement still tentatively being negotiated. Jess Carter had headed Chelsea in front. Beth England had tapped in an equaliser shortly afterwards and dutifully refused to celebrate against her former club.

James is having a fabulous season, a player who seems to be operating on a different plane at the moment, a kind of artificial intelligence that allows her to glide through a game more frictionlessly than anyone else. Emma Hayes held her back a little last term, allowing her to find the size and shape of her game, allowing her once more to trust a body that has let her down more than is really fair for such a supremely talented 21-year-old.

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So Chelsea win the ball in midfield and James brings it in from the right touchline. What is most striking from this moment is the sense of calculation. At no time does James accelerate into a sprint; at no point does the ball ever stray more than a couple of inches from her gait. Everything here is pure patience, pure control, educated feet eating up the turf and waiting for the angle to open up. When it does, she does not let fly or shoot with passion. She simply rolls the ball from 14 yards into the one corner she knows Tinja-Riikka Korpela cannot reach. A kiss on the inside of the post seals the deal.

In hindsight James’s goal was the clincher, the act that killed off a game that seemed to flicker in brief instants without ever deviating from its likeliest outcome. Chelsea won and ultimately there can be few complaints about that. But, even before Tottenham’s late consolation from Nikola Karczewska, there were passages that did not feel like a foretaste of inevitable Chelsea dominance, moments when Tottenham attacked with pace and verve and an entirely different kind of battle seemed possible.

Tottenham’s problem is that they seem largely unsure as to what these moments actually signify. Should they feel proud of this defeat or not? Was it a brave effort against a far more accomplished team, or a gigantic missed opportunity to get their season back on track? Is the blue blur in their windscreen getting closer, or simply bigger? Can you really toast another afternoon of quiet progress when you are fourth from bottom and have just lost four straight home games for the first time in your history?

“We stayed in the game the whole time and that is a big step forward,” said the Tottenham coach, Rehanne Skinner, which essentially encapsulated the problem. Look at the ability on the pitch – if not necessarily on the bench – and with time this is a side that should be competing in the top half of the table.

Manchester United fell two points behind Chelsea at the top of the Women's Super League after being held to a 0-0 draw at Leigh Sports Village by Everton.

Lucia Garcia and Alessia Russo – playing for the first time since United rejected a world-record bid for her from Arsenal on transfer deadline day – saw efforts hit the Toffees’ goal frame in the first half, and Ella Toone then struck a post after the break.

The Everton goalkeeper Courtney Brosnan made a number of saves as well, while the hosts were almost punished for a mistake at the back late on as Jess Park shot wide.

The Manchester United manager, Marc Skinner, said: "They stopped us from scoring, that is the reality of the game, but we had 25 opportunities. We didn't get as many as we wanted on target but we had good chances. We should be scoring those opportunities. We are not happy with a point but you get what you deserve when you don't take your chances."

Liverpool rose to eighth, pushing Tottenham down to ninth, with a 2-0 home win against 11th-placed Reading. Missy Bo Kearns and Ceri Holland scored in quick succession just after the hour as the Royals, who are four points better off than bottom side Leicester, endured their fourth league defeat in a row.

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Yet the doctrine of slow, gradual development is largely at odds with their recent recruitment strategy, the focus on proven WSL players such as England and Mana Iwabuchi, which looks a lot like trying to buy a Great Leap Forward. So what is it reasonable to expect of Tottenham, and when?

You can sense that in-betweenness when Tottenham have the ball, caught amidst the twin poles of caution and enterprise, risk and reward. Going forward, the braver they were the better they looked. Yet at the back they remain fatally flawed. Carter’s opener was eminently preventable, as was Chelsea’s third, a cascade of errors that allowed Guro Reiten to run clean through on goal. A tolerance of mistakes is part of evolving as a team. But equally: just how does a team of Tottenham’s ambition manage to concede goals as elementary as this?

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As for Chelsea: just what are we watching? They were opened up more than once. The lack of creativity from the full-back positions is beginning to look like a structural flaw. But somehow whenever an acceleration was required they always seemed to know where the pedal was.

“It’s about three points and we did enough,” Hayes said. “This is a tough league and to everybody who thinks it’s going to be near-perfect performances, it’s not.”

Even the sparkling James did not emerge unscathed, Hayes critical of her off-the-ball work. This is, of course, the sort of uncompromising approach that has made Chelsea such a resilient winning machine over the years. Yet before a punishing run of fixtures in four competitions, they do not seem quite as flawless or impregnable as they have in seasons past. A decisive result, then, but one that produced as many questions as it answered.