Tottenham vs Chelsea: Spurs end rival’s undefeated run as Son Heung-min solo goal steals the show

Tottenham 3-1 Chelsea: Spurs thoroughly outplayed the Blues for the entirety of the match

Tottenham celebrate their third (Getty)

Remember the old Tottenham Hotspur? The Spurs that finished second and third in the Premier League, that ripped opponents - good opponents - to shreds with their relentless pressing from the front. The Spurs that wiped Manchester City, Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea and Real Madrid off the pitch when they came to town. The Spurs where Harry Kane would score from nowhere, and Dele Alli would ghost in before defenders could even see him.

Tottenham this season have not been bad. They started today’s game in fifth place. But they have not been like that. They have been grinding out results, winning ugly, and scraping past lesser teams. The focus has been more on the stadium delays and debt, and the lack of signings, than on the football itself.

But not today. This was Spurs’ best performance of the season by a distance, their best since they beat Real Madrid 3-1 here more than one year ago. And that scoreline, emphatic enough in itself, does absolutely nothing to convey the extent of Spurs’ dominance here at Wembley.

Had Tottenham scored six or seven it would have been a more accurate reflection of how the game went. They looked like scoring with every attack, Kane, Alli and Heung-Min Son slicing through a Chelsea defence that looked utterly unprepared for the challenge of today’s game. There will be plenty of questions about Maurizio Sarri’s side, their tactics, their personnel. But this afternoon should be all about Mauricio Pochettino and his players.

Because just when it felt as if this season might drift away from Spurs, likely out of the Champions League, still without a stadium, miles off the pace of Manchester City, they now have one of those unforgettable games they can all rally around. Play like this against Inter Milan on Wednesday night, or Arsenal on Sunday, and suddenly everything will feel possible again. Especially with their most important man back to his best.

Remember the Harry Kane of a year or two ago and one of his great gifts was his audacity, that ability to spot a gap and find it before anyone else in the ground could realise what had happened. Watch a compilation of Kane’s goals and there are plenty like this, where he finds the bottom corner from at least 20 yards out, with the goalkeeper and defence still expecting a pass. This is what Kane does at his best but anyone who has watched him recently knows he has not been playing this way. He has been taking fewer shots, hitting them later, as if that confidence to take a risk was left behind at White Hart Lane.

But it was immediately clear here that this evening was going to different. No more of the tentative, cautious Kane of recent months, who has taken an extra touch and an extra second by the time 2016 Kane would already be wheeling away.

Tottenham's Dele Alli celebrates with teammates (AP)

Even after three minutes Kane should have put Spurs ahead, pouncing on Serge Aurier’s cross but seeing his header tipped away by Kepa. But he was too sharp for Chelsea, first to everything, and helped them into the lead when he won a free-kick from David Luiz that Alli headed in.

In this furious first 20 minutes Tottenham looked like scoring with every attack, which is not something you can say about many of their performances this season. Son had two glaring chances to make it 2-0 but when the second goal came, Kane was the only man on the pitch who saw it. Cutting in from the left, he saw how much room there was down to Kepa’s right. So he bent an early shot behind David Luiz’s turned back and into the bottom corner. Precisely the type of goal Kane always used to score, and the surest sign yet he is getting back to his best.

And yet to reduce this all to one player is to ignore the fact that Spurs at their best are a high-performance machine in which every single part has a role to play. And that this was an evening when every single Spurs player reached a level he has not done so far this season, each man improving every other one around him.

Yes, it was Kane’s day but it belonged just as much to Alli. He, like Kane, has struggled this season, with post-World Cup fatigue and a hamstring injury that kept him out for a month. But here, tucked in as an inside-forward, he played with all the energy, flair and impudence he shows at his best. Always inventing, always probing, never giving the Chelsea back four a second of rest. He sensed early on that this was not like the Chelsea teams of old, that there was space to run into, and he never stopped testing them out.

Son's wondergoal secured the victory for Spurs (Getty) (Getty Images)

And it was Alli who scored the most important goal of all, the first one, the man who broke open the game. Only eight minutes had gone when Eriksen drove in a flat free-kick from the right, the perfect weight for a skimmed header into the net. Alli has been reading Eriksen’s deliveries for years now and he got just enough on the ball to beat Kepa and score, his first goal for two months.

But the real star of the show here was Son. Once Spurs had the lead and Chelsea had to open themselves up even further, he became the most dangerous player on the pitch. Chelsea never came to terms with his movement, either his quick dribbles with the ball or his late darts without it. They barely even looked like they wanted to. Son looked like he could not believe his luck, and wasted two golden first-half chances set up by Eriksen and curled another just with his left. The only man stopping Son from scoring was himself.

Nine minutes into the second half Son managed to overcome that with one of the greatest goals of his time at Spurs. Running away down the right wing, getting on the end of a Dele Alli pass, he skipped past Jorginho far too easily and then shuffled inside to get past Luiz. It should not have been that easy to get through on goal but there he was, and with his left boot he beat Kepa from close range.

Kane and Alli both missed good chances to make it 4-0 and in the end it was Olivier Giroud who scored the fourth and final goal of the game, giving the scoreline an appearance of evenness or proximity that was utterly at odds with the events of the 90 minutes.