Chelsea Fan View: Irresistible Spurs stop winning streak

Tottenham Hotspur 2 – 0 Chelsea.

Zaki Ahmed says there is no shame in the Blues being beaten by a better Spurs team, but have Mauricio Pochettino’s men identified a chink in Antonio Conte’s armour?

An inevitable end to Chelsea’s 13 game winning streak came in fairly predictable but hardly avoidable circumstances at the hands of Spurs at White Hart Lane. A stadium that is fearsome to play in, and one in which Chelsea lost a couple of years ago 5-3; however that loss came in a title-winning campaign.

The previous meeting was not too long ago and was a 2-1 comeback win made by opportunistic goals from Pedro and Victor Moses. Today the opportunities were few, and shirked when presented to the Blues. Hazard had a glorious chance in the opening stages of the game to grab a goal but fluffed his lines. Chelsea would come to rue that moment the rest of the day.

Tottenham were irresistible, and made it hard to fathom why they were so far down the table when they are capable of playing like they did against Chelsea. Nothing was too askew about Chelsea’s performance, but the quality was lacking at the final moments and Tottenham looked sharper and more able. I’ve said that Chelsea’s best feature was their “X” factor to surprise opponents in the second halves of games, but today Tottenham showed that all their players have that in their locker, and can use it for most of 90 minutes.

Spurs have an enviously good squad assembled, and the biggest battles lost were between the midfielders, and in the wings. Dele Alli, Christian Eriksen, Mousa Dembélé, Victor Wanyama, Danny Rose and Kyle Walker all shone today where as N’Golo Kante looked as though he was playing in overdrive to compensate for his teammates’ lack of presence during the match. The height, pace, composure, and flair on the ball were the determinants of the result today, with Chelsea’s blunt instrument-defense faltering. But the battle was lost not only on the pitch, but also from the technical areas.

Mauricio Pochettino is a great manager and many would love to have them at the helm of their squad. Antonio Conte has done magical work so far at Chelsea, and seems to be one of the toughest minds in football. But Pochettino got the advantage over Conte today by gambling on a glaring weakness that has yet to have been breached so far since the change in system by Chelsea, and that was the Dele Alli-shaped hole between Azpilicueta and Moses from which he Spurs twice.

As brilliant as Moses has been this season, he is still a patch job. On top of that, he is a patch job being backed up by another patch job in Azpilicueta as a center-back. It has been an awesome sight to see Victor Moses bombing forward, with Azpilicueta performing amazing darting runs in behind to cover when Chelsea were in trouble. They were adapting well to their roles, and their undying efforts made them fearsome opponents. But Pochettino wanted to exploit this chink in Chelsea’s armor and see how well they could handle a well-placed Eriksen cross and he will be delighted in finding his answer.

The win streak has been so surreal and has gone on for so long that we forgot that Azpilicueta and Moses were playing out of position and perhaps were out of their depth. The system was so effective with everyone in blue defending, and only four or five being responsible for winning the game on the counter. But the team at Pochettino’s disposal is too devastating on their day and had Chelsea well beaten for over three-quarters of the match.

Chelsea and Conte will continue to grind out performances, and Tottenham are arguably the hardest team to play against, especially in their home stadium so this loss can be seen as a benefit to Chelsea as they know their weaknesses and can work to cover them. Azpilicueta isn’t going to grow taller anytime soon, and I don’t know how effective an NBA training session will be to improve his jumping, so the return of Zouma may be imminent to the starting line up, and we may see Moses relegated to the bench.

Alarm bells don’t need to be ringing quite yet, but it is a sad day for Chelsea fans as this team were on the cusp of making a historic 14th successive win. I am more than happy with equalling the record because this run has been nothing short of incredible. And after the tragedy that was last season I’ve learned the secrets to happiness are gratitude and low expectations.