Chelsea 0 Spurs 0 - Match breakdown, analysis, and review
Facts, stats, chances, clips, and tactical review
It was a typical Jose Mourinho performance - defend in numbers and hope for some luck on a counter attack or an opponent error.
Whatever you think of Mourinho and his tactics, ‘parking the bus’ has got his Spurs side currently sat top of the Premier League table, and ‘parking the bus’ actually went a long way in helping Chelsea win their first and only Champions League trophy so far back in 2012.
But it heavily depends on luck, and for me, give me attacking progressive football over low-block defending any day of the week, and this is what Frank Lampard is giving Chelsea fans this season, and he gave it to us again last night.
We had the lion’s share of possession and should have won the game. Tammy Abraham will be knocking his head against the wall this morning rueing missed chances.
He just didn’t make himself strong enough to finish this chance early in the second half..
Reece James was literally feeding him like a baby all game and was once again robbed of an assist. This was another chance that Abraham should have buried but failed to get on the end of.
Just notice the look on Olivier Giroud’s face after the chance, he is licking his lips at those kind of chances, quite literally!
These are the chances that win matches, and Tammy will know this and he will be a very frustrated guy today. You’d expect him to come back firing to make up for it.
He already has 5 goals and 5 assists this season for Chelsea so he is having a good spell, but if we want to challenge at the top, these are the games we must win.
Spurs were there for the taking. Not only did Chelsea have 61% of possession, they 13 attempts at goal, compared to Tottenham’s 5.
3 of those attempts were on target from Chelsea, including this fine effort from Mason Mount that produced a wonder save from Hugo Lloris late on in the match.
Chelsea also made 219 more passes than Spurs, showing how much they controlled the game.
Edouard Mendy was barely bothered in the Chelsea goal all bar a few occasions where he was called upon to make a save. This was one of those in the first half.
Mendy has now got 8 clean sheets in 11 games for Chelsea and only conceded 3 goals. Ironically, this is the exact same record that Petr Cech had in his first games when he first arrived at Chelsea, also from Rennes!
Tottenham defended relentlessly and Chelsea often got frustrated and tried to rush the play as a result. Most of our attacking threat was arriving from crosses, which made me wonder whether Giroud would have been the better bet in a game like this.
This brings me to my only real gripe at Lampard from last night, why he didn’t make the substitutions earlier? He gave Giroud just 12 minutes, and I genuinely believe he would have scored yesterday if he had at least half an hour on the pitch, it was his type of game.
But there are no real moans from me, on another day we would have got that goal from an individual bit of brilliance, which is what you felt it needed to break the deadlock last night.
Chelsea did actually produce it early on from Timo Werner with a world class finish. But unfortunately he was inches offside.
Chelsea remain unbeaten in 14 matches (inside 90 minutes) and have kept 8 clean sheets so far. This is a massive improvement from last season and they are just 2 points off the top of the league.
The momentum continues and the great form continues, Chelsea bossed Spurs last night, and they can be proud for that.