Chelsea show the courage of champions to bounce back and condemn Tottenham to yet more Wembley woe
Tottenham 1 Chelsea 2: The mood around Antonio Conte's team will instantly improve, but the vibe around Wembley remains so disconcerting for Tottenham
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Your support makes all the difference.Familiarity and discontentment. One of the big storylines for Tottenham Hotspur this season is going to be getting used to their temporary home of Wembley, but this was a feeling they will be all too depressingly used to: defeat at the stadium to a reinvigorated Chelsea, who resiliently claimed a win of champions.
Marcos Alonso scored a sensationally late second of the game to give his side a 2-1 win over Spurs, a first victory of the season, and also kill one of the other early storylines of the season: a Chelsea crisis. Manager Antonio Conte certainly didn’t celebrate like a manager who was disgruntled or feeling like he was going to walk away from this job some time soon. He was aggressively euphoric, but then that's what late wins like this will do.
The mood around the club will instantly improve, but the vibe around Wembley remains so disconcerting for Tottenham. This type of game was precisely the wrong way to start life at the stadium. In fact, beyond getting hammered, it’s difficult to think how this opening match here could have gone worse for Spurs. A calamitous late defeat in a game they dominated will only deepen the complex about this stadium, as well as all the discussion about it, especially since a depleted Chelsea were supposedly there for the taking.
While the Wembley issue does remain somewhat exaggerated, arguably a greater concern for Mauricio Pochettino is how this game conformed to a pattern - notably that from these two teams’ last meeting here, Chelsea’s 4-2 win in the FA Cup semi-final last season. Spurs again had the majority of the play and the chances, but it was Chelsea who had the incision. That remains such a problem to be fixed for the Argentine, especially given the pressure they had the champions under.
Alonso showed them what they were missing.
Shorn of so many of their most creative players, Chelsea were going to have to come up with something special to breach that Tottenham defence, but the wing-back offered precisely that.
On 24 minutes, after Dele Alli had tripped David Luiz, Alonso curled in a perfect free-kick to make it 1-0. Alvaro Morata had actually missed a much easier chance to open the scoring on five minutes when somehow heading wide, but Antonio Conte’s side couldn’t really think they deserved more. Tottenham had been battering them, and really pinning the champions back.
The last 10 minutes of the first half alone were torture for Chelsea, as a relentlessly effervescent Kane hit the post and so many crosses flashed across Thibaut Courtois’s box. Christian Eriksen also saw a free-kick go just wide, having also taken out half of Chelsea’s midfield with one deft turn.
As good as Spurs were at that point, though, the game did take on that familiar pattern that led to a familiar problem.
Just like in the FA Cup semi-final, they had so much of the ball and so much energy… but couldn’t really force their way through. It was all a bit blunt in the wrong way, most of their attacks ending with swung-in crosses. It is probably the one remaining problem with this Spurs side, a predictability that truly denies them from taking that next step.
Yes, they were someway impressive, but also frustrating. That frustration also told with a few abrasive challenges, particularly from Eric Dier on David Luiz. The England international was actually probably lucky to stay on.
While there was also an element of luck in Chelsea staying in the lead for so long, and their set-up was undoubtedly down to their depleted squad rather than any concerted tactic, the truth was that it quite suited the champions. Beyond the late first-half flurry and a few Kane runs, they dealt with most Spurs threats fairly comfortably. Hugo Lloris’s backline also had to be alert to quick Chelsea bursts, infrequent as they were. Willian was a constant threat, however, like when he smashed the post from distance on 73 minutes.
This was then the big challenge for Tottenham, to break Chelsea down, to get that big result in such a situation - to offer the inspiration required.
They ultimately failed that challenge, with the manner of their equaliser only emphasising the point. It wasn't one of their players who scored. Just when it looked like Pochettino could do with something different from the bench, that bit of unpredictability, the unpredictable happened. Conte brought on Batshuayi, and he proceeded to bury Eriksen’s 82nd-minute free-kick into his own net.
Wembley was by now rocking and looking like Spurs could really turn it around… only for Alonso to completely turn the game on its head. He burst through the left after a Victor Wanyama error and powerfully drilled the ball under the body of the despairing Lloris.
Spurs were beaten again. Wembley felt like a problem again. Chelsea felt like champions again.
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