How Chelsea Pulled off a Comeback Win vs. Tottenham
It has been 13 months since Mauricio Pochettino’s Chelsea erased an early deficit and scored four uninterrupted goals en route to a 4-1 victory, ending Tottenham’s unbeaten start to life under Ange Postecoglou. We saw something fairly similar on Sunday — whilst Dominic Solanke and Dejan Kulusevski put Spurs two goals to the good after 11 minutes, Enzo Maresca’s Chelsea were able to score four straight goals via Jadon Sancho, Enzo Fernandez as well as two penalties from Cole Palmer. When Heung-min Son pulled one back in the 96th minute, it was too little too late.
This was nearly a carbon copy of Chelsea’s November 2023 win vs. Tottenham, but unlike that comeback victory, which saw Tottenham finish with 9 men, Chelsea were going up against a team that played the entire match with 11 players. However, Spurs found themselves resigned to losing both of their starting center backs — Mickey van de Ven and Cristian Romero — to injury, which proved costly for Postecoglou’s side.
Though there was constant noise and chatter about the size of Chelsea’s squad, a trigger-happy approach to sacking managers and questioning owner Todd Boehly’s transfer strategy, that has all dissipated and been replaced with optimism, as there are murmurs of a title challenge appearing. Maresca’s side are an intelligent team with the ball and without it, as the Italian is astutely using the depth of his young squad. Having led Leicester City to the EFL Championship title last season, it hasn’t taken long for Maresca to justify why Chelsea decided to sack Pochettino and bring him in.
The main takeaway as to why Chelsea throttled Tottenham Hotspur was their ability to play through Spurs’ press with ease. Thanks to their skill at manipulating the press and exploiting the space ahead of them, Chelsea were able to come back from a two-goal deficit and win for just the fifth time in their Premier League history — the first time since beating Southampton 3-2 in April 2018.
By having Moisés Caicedo as an inverted full-back in midfield, Spurs couldn’t deal with the space Enzo Fernández and Cole Palmer enjoyed, either side of Yves Bissouma. As Spurs pressed with their entire midfield and attack, it was a huge issue and Chelsea exploited it, because the Blues routinely punched the ball through their press. As Chelsea had the ball in their back three, Spurs pressed and with Roméo Lavia and Caicedo deep, Fernández dropped into the half-space to pick the ball up.
It meant that for the large majority of the game we saw situations such as the ones above. They were able to exploit the press and work it wide to Palmer and Fernández, the advanced 10s. With Tottenham players unsure of which one to pick up, a giant gap was left between Chelsea’s two 10s.
Freeing up Fernández and Palmer allows two excellent players to run riot in advanced positions. They can drop and find space or peel wide and find space dragging Spurs to whichever side they choose in the process. Palmer continued to prove why he is one of the finest players in England by reaching 50 goal contributions in 48 Premier League matches for Chelsea — only Erling Haaland for Manchester City (39), Andy Cole for Newcastle (43) and Mohamed Salah for Liverpool (46) have reached a half-century in fewer matches.
Chelsea then started adding different variations of using this method as a form of attack, adding in the option of going long over the top to Nicolas Jackson, in behind Spurs’ backline. This proved effective for Chelsea as they erased an early deficit and secured a fifth straight victory — in fact, you’d have to go all the way back to their 2-1 defeat at Liverpool on October 20 for the last time they lost in the Premier League.
Whilst it certainly hasn’t helped Tottenham insist on playing the same way despite their problems, it’s becoming clearer that Enzo Maresca is building something at Chelsea. For the 11th time in their Premier League history, Tottenham have lost a match after being 2+ goals ahead (four more than any other side), and they sit 11th in the table. As for Chelsea, they find themselves in second place, four points behind Liverpool (who have a game in hand).
By: Dharnish Iqbal / @dharnishiqbal
Featured Image: @GabFoligno / Sebastian Frej / MB Media / Getty Images