Somehow, a match-week that started with Chelsea selling a football team to themselves ends with an even greater level of farce.
Ange Postecoglou has suffered defeats of a far more humiliating scale than this 1-0 loss at Stamford Bridge, but his ill-advised decision to gloatingly cup his ear after a disallowed goal just made it much worse.
It’s hard not to think that will serve as an epitaph for the Australian’s end. He certainly can’t hear the fans backing him any more.
With Spurs 1-0 down to Enzo Fernandez’s goal and playing abysmally, Postecoglou decided to haul off Lucas Bergvall for Pape Sarr. It was instantly met with chants of “you don’t know what you’re doing” from the away end. Within just five minutes, Sarr had stolen the ball in midfield and driven in an equaliser out of nothing.
Postecoglou immediately turned to the away end and cupped his ears. Except, no sooner had he done that than VAR was checking out the manner in which Sarr had stolen the ball from Moises Caicedo. It looked a very clear foul, although the unusually long check only elongated the pain – and the humiliation. Everyone knew what was coming. Postecoglou had been plaintively shaking his head throughout.
By the time the goal was eventually ruled out, a good four minutes later, he was waving his hand. There was also a slight glance at the away end.
Everyone surely knows what is coming at the end of the season now. Postecoglou will surely be replaced, unless he can somehow pull out a Europa League win. Except, right now, Spurs don’t seem to have any of the attributes to rally for that.
They are not a united club, as the fans also chanted “Daniel Levy out” once again. They certainly do not look a unified team, at least in the sense of a coherent idea.
This is what is really going to do for Postecoglou should he go, and what actually makes moments like the ear-cupping gesture meaningful.
Spurs do not look anything like what a Postecoglou team was supposed to be, and that after almost two years. They’re currently a rabble, easy to get at in defence, creating so little up front, and with a midfield you can almost run through.
And this, remember, is with the majority of those injured players back on the pitch.
There is something more going on here. This scoreline could have been much more than 1-0.
It is really down to Chelsea’s own deficiencies that Spurs did not suffer proper embarrassment. It really could have been four or five.
By the time Fernandez plundered a brilliant header from Cole Palmer’s typically fine cross, Chelsea were looking as if they were going to overwhelm Spurs. They’d spent so long around Guglielmo Vicario’s area.
The first moment of the game set the tone. After just 35 seconds, Nicolas Jackson managed to force his way through the Spurs defence and past Vicario, only for Micky van de Ven to fortuitously hit the post after looking like he was about to score a spectacular own goal.
That was the story of the match. Spurs slapstick. Chelsea imprecision.
While it feels a bit harsh to criticise the home side here given they were so much better and have sustained their place at fourth in the table, there are still a few things missing. It isn’t just time for this young squad to develop either.
They are still lacking a greater conviction, if it can even be described as that.
You can see Enzo Maresca’s idea. You could, in this game, see the dominance. You couldn’t quite see the end product, and it was hard not to think that the absence of the usual flat passing here was because Spurs just let them run through them. For Chelsea’s part, it could have ended up much a much bigger win had Caicedo’s spectacular volley not been ruled out for a marginal offside.
While it is futile to hark back to the past, there were moments when it was hard not to imagine one of the club’s proper teams cutting Spurs apart. Virtually all of those teams of course came in the Roman Abramovich era, which has been the subject of an investigation over irregular payments that currently has the Premier League involved in settlement negotiations because the new ownership self-declared them.
That’s all the more reason not to hark back to the past.
There is still something uncertain about Chelsea’s future, even if it is obviously a lot brighter than Spurs’. Hence they ended this match with so many unnecessary nerves, especially when Robert Sanchez admirably clawed Son Heung-Min’s late chance away.
Questions remain about how high Chelsea can reach as a club again, and how high this team can ascend under this manager.
There doesn’t look like there is any of that doubt about Spurs, though. It is known they are already looking at alternative managers such as Andoni Iraola, Marco Silva and Thomas Frank.
By the time the final whistle went, the cameras were on Postecoglou, not Maresca. He waved his hand away, and slowly made his way out to shake some of his players’ hands.
This might lead to jokes in his second year. It is going to take something drastic for there to be a third year.
Spurs now have their worst-ever loss percentage in any season in history, at more than 53 per cent. That is certainly beyond farcical.
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