Tottenham 3-4 Chelsea: Superb Cole Palmer scores twice from the penalty spot as Blues move within four points of Liverpool… with pressure mounting on Ange Postecoglou after Spurs throw away a two-goal lead in thrilling London derby

Even when Chelsea were losing it felt as though they would win. Even when Tottenham were winning it felt as though, eventually, they would be overwhelmed, both by their opponents’ burgeoning power and by their own creeping and quite unavoidable inadequacies. In the end it all came to pass before we were even into the last fifteen minutes of play.

And that tells us all you need to know about these two teams. Chelsea can win the Premier League title. Not next season or the season after as their own manager Enzo Maresca has suggested. No, they can do it this season. They are good enough. The squad is deep enough. They have lost just once, at Liverpool, since the opening day of the season. They are ready.

Chelsea gave Spurs a two-goal lead here and still powered past them. Had Chelsea defender Marc Cucurella not turned up in his carpet slippers and gifted Tottenham their advantage, Maresca’s team could have properly embarrassed their rivals. In some ways, they did so anyway.

As for Spurs they look as though they are about to drown on the back of their failure to correct basic flaws. Ange Postecoglou’s team are thrillers but they are also soft as snow. They have no midfield structure or strength and they lose too many games on the back of football that sees them wide open as soon as they lose possession.

They sit in the bottom half of a very open Premier League this morning and it can no longer be deemed a false position. Tottenham are there because they deserve to be and as the TV cameras focussed on chairman Daniel Levy in the second half, he seemed deep in the kind of thought that often acts as a precursor to a curly finger in the direction of his manager.

Last year’s game here between these two teams was memorable. Chelsea won it 4-1 against Tottenham’s nine-man high line. This one had lived up to that one within 20 minutes and only grew more engrossing thereafter.

Tottenham players cut devastated figures after seeing their two-goal lead wiped out by Chelsea

Palmer scored his second penalty with a delightful panenka finish to seal Chelsea’s victory

By then Spurs were 2-1 up and had lost their best nuts and bolts defender – Cristian Romero – to injury yet again. This was his first game back after a month on the sidelines. For Chelsea, their full-back Cucurella had twice lost his footing to hand goals to Tottenham and looked almost to his lost his mind before changing his boots.

It was like a basketball game at times. Up and down, up and down. Strangely, Chelsea looked the better team for much of the first half and that proved portentous. Two goals down within eleven minutes, they finished the half on the front foot. 

Cole Palmer had missed a sitter to make it 2-2 – yes, really – while Moises Caicedo should have been sent off for a high challenge on Pape Sarr. Strangely, he didn’t even get a yellow card and VAR cleared it. 

Add to all that the torrent of paper cups and the rest of it that landed at Chelsea players’ feet every time they went to take a corner and you get the picture of a frantic and at times rather incomprehensible first half that was all the more watchable for it.

Spurs had started the day with a smile as Romero and Micky van de Ven returned from injury to reform as Postecoglou’s first choice central defensive partnership. It wasn’t to last long. Romero was felled by a thigh injury after turning a little too quickly in his own penalty area early on and Van de Ven was off before the end too.

Chelsea, meanwhile, had done what Chelsea do these days. Seven changes from the midweek drubbing of Southampton. What they didn’t expect – given they have lost only once in the league since opening day – was to be two down in eleven minutes.

Maybe they had spent too long in Southampton in midweek. Russel Martin’s team are constantly giving away goals and maybe Maresca’s players had picked up the virus.

Cucurella’s first slip came in the fifth minute on the far side. Brennan Johnson picked up possession and crossed low for Dominic Solanke to finish well after cleverly making a late dart across and in front of his marker Levi Colwill. It was lovely centre forward play.

Palmer produced his iconic cold celebration after turning the match on its head with two penalties

Enzo Fernandez equalised for the Blues in the second-half with a thunderous strike

Tottenham striker Dominic Solanke (left) had initially given Spurs an early lead in the game

Chelsea defender Marc Cucurella had to change his boots after slipping in the build-up to both of Tottenham’s first goals

It was a shock for Chelsea and worse was to follow. Cucurella was down again six minutes later in an almost identical position. This time Johnson fed Dejan Kulusevski and he cut inside across the top of the penalty area and beat Robert Sanchez with a low left foot shot in to the goalkeeper’s left corner.

Spurs were heady on their start while the Chelsea left-back was on his backside by the near touchline huffily changing into new footwear. How does a modern footballer take to the pitch in the wrong shoes? Heaven knows but his miscalculation had cost Chelsea dear.

The Romero injury rocked Spurs back a little bit for sure. His partnership with the quick, ball-playing Van de Ven is crucial to Tottenham. Radu Dragusin, the Romanian, was his replacement. He was to be busy as Chelsea’s response was impressive and real.

Jadon Sancho’s goal was crucial to the recovery. It was decisively struck in off the far post from 20 yards and came quickly, in the 18th minute. Three minutes later, Enzo Fernandez crossed low from the left and Palmer only had to stab it in from eight yards. Somehow the England player made no contact and the ball struck his standing foot.

There was a complete lack of structure to the game and a pace to it that was quite hypnotic. Midfield was like a wasteland, just space into which attacking players could run. Tottenham carried a threat – helped by Sanchez’s enduring willingness to give the ball to them from his own clearances – and Heung Min Son curled one shot over on the break before setting up Solanke from the byline. This time he could find no power. From a corner Sarr headed on to the bar.

At the other end Chelsea were just as hungry and creative. Spurs keeper Fraser Forster saved low with his left hand from Palmer and then repelled a Fernandez follow up. Early in the second half meanwhile, some Cucurella cleverness set Sancho up close to goal and Forster saved brilliantly again.

Another Spurs injury didn’t help them. Johnson went down with what looked like a muscle injury in the 50th minute and was replaced by Timo Werner, once of Chelsea. Before long Werner’s old club were level. Such was Chelsea’s territorial dominance at this stage of the game, Cucurella was able to spend much of his time as a left side overload. Spurs struggled to cope numerically and it was down this side that Chelsea chiselled their equaliser.

Sancho it was who drew the Tottenham defenders cleverly on the left angle of the area and when he slipped in Caicedo, Yves Bissouma’s challenge would have felled a sycamore. Palmer took the penalty and thumped it to Forster’s right. They now had half an hour left to find a winner.

Chelsea boss Enzo Maresca (left) celebrated emphatically at full-time, while Ange Postecoglou (right) was left gutted

Tottenham captain Son Heung-min scored deep in stoppage time but ended up on the losing side

Jadon Sancho (left) scored in the first-half to kickstart Chelsea’s comeback victory

As it turned out, they were to wrap it all up by the time we had reached the 82nd minute. Son did waste one Tottenham chance – running down the left to miss the target across goal – but that was their only real opportunity of the second half until a late futile rally.

Fernandes scored goal number three in the 74th minute. Palmer’s scampering, dizzying run across field right to left proved too much for the Spurs defence and when his shot spun up in the air off a defender Fernandes sized up the dropping ball and spanked it into the corner from 14 yards. It was a sizzling finish and one that sealed the game.

The direction had long since disappeared from the home team’s football and now the hope disappeared too. Sarr’s barge in the back of Palmer over on the far side was as senseless as had been Bissouma’s clattering of Caicedo earlier. But by now Tottenham minds were scrambled, though, and when Palmer beat Forster with a delicious Panenka penalty the boos began to rain down from the home sections of this magnificent stadium.

This was a game that had started with Cucurella twice on his backside. It ended with Tottenham on their knees. Son scored at the death – side footing in from eight yards in the 97th minute – but all that did was make this one look close. It hadn’t been. Not really.