Chelsea suffered a 5-3 thrashing by London rivals Tottenham as Mauricio Pochettino’s men gave Jose Mourinho a new-year day scar that he will not forget anytime soon.
It was the first time that Chelsea conceded five goals under Mourinho despite having a pretty impressive defensive record this season. Going into the game, the Blues were definitely the favourites as they last lost to Tottenham four years ago in the 2009-2010 season and Diego Costa’s goal in the 18th minute justified their favourites tag. However, Tottenham came back strong and equalised 12 minutes later thanks to an excellent run by striker Harry Kane. The 21-year old took on Branislav Ivanovic and John Terry with some neat close control and footwork before slotting the ball past a diving Thibaut Courtois.
The game was end to end after the equaliser until the end of the second half when Tottenham found he back of the net twice in the space of three minutes. From then on, it was always going to be hard for Chelsea as they were susceptible to the Tottenham counter-attack.
Kane’s impact was there to be seen in the second half as well as he linked up well with Christian Eriksen and Nacer Chadli. He got his second goal after a brilliant take before passing the ball into the back of the net to make it four for Tottenham. Eden Hazard, who was Chelsea’s best player on the pitch, scored in the 61st minute to make matters more interesting, but Chadli’s deflected goal in the 78th minute all but sealed the game for his side. Chelsea did however get a consolation goal in the dying minutes of the game when John Terry scored to make it 5-3 and in the process became the league’s second highest goalscoring defender. He is behind David Unsworth with 37 goals.
Mistakes all around, says Mourinho
Chelsea were outplayed on the night, but had a few penalty calls turned down which infuriated Mourinho on the touchline. The Chelsea boss clearly wasn’t impressed and when he was asked about it, he did not reveal too much,”What do you mean? Why do you ask? You know, first of all I don’t want to be punished. I want to be for the next match, so I prefer just to say that we lost and that tomorrow is another day, and Sunday is another match. It Is a question I don’t want to answer.
“You know I think we made some defensive mistakes, some individual defensive mistakes. It was not easy for my defenders to cope with Chadli and Kane. But it was also not easy for their defenders to cope with an amazing Hazard and Diego Costa.
“You can focus on the result. If I focus on the crucial moment of the game you know what I have to say because you have exactly the same opinion as I have and you know it is a crucial minute of the game, where a result could go four to zero and game over.
Mourinho also felt that Hugo Lloris’ excellent save to deny Cesar Azpilicueta in the 75th minute was probably the turning point of the game as Tottenham scored a 5th just three minutes later which sealed the win, “Lloris made an amazing save for 4-3. They tried the players, they tried a lot. The 5th goal killed our fantastic reaction.
“After that there is action on Hazard, that Hazard, honest as always, tells me was not a foul, not a red card.
“In spite of Mr Dowd being too slow to be with the ball, he was 40 yards away but made the right decision. The decision he was 10 metres away and he couldn’t make it. And that’s the decision that is the crucial moment of the game.
“Every game is unpredictable but there are things in the game that are becoming predictable. Forget it.
“Of course I hate to lose, but I prefer to lose like I did against Newcastle with a clean performance by Atkinson. Unlucky performance by us, a lucky performance by Newcastle. But a game where you lose because of football is a different feeling,” he added.