Chelsea vs Spurs ends in scenes that ‘no-one’ except all fans wants to see

Chelsea vs Spurs featured a lot of arguing, a very late equaliser and two managerial red cards. All the stuff we ‘don’t want to see’, then, eh?

Well, it took us a couple of weekends to get there, but we did in the end.

At Stamford Bridge, a combination of the heat, competition and an age-old rivalry resulted in the Premier League’s first truly explosive match of the season, with Thomas Tuchel and Antonio Conte ending their days with a red card each at the end of an afternoon of drama, bad tempers and atrocious refereeing.

There was a curious contrast between the two teams as they took to the pitch. The home side did so with three of their summer signings present and correct. But for the second game in a row, Antonio Conte named a Spurs team made up of the same players that he had at his disposal last season.

It is a curiosity, for all the talk about Spurs having had a ‘successful’ transfer window, that Conte chose to do so. It’s easy to interpret something like this as a baller move, a flex with the implication that the best is yet to come.

Spurs ended the first weekend of the Premier League sitting top following an unusual but still successful opening day win against Southampton. There was much to admire about their performance: recovering quickly from conceding an early goal; scoring four of their own and none of them coming from Son Heung-min or Harry Kane; and the outstanding performance of Dejan Kulusevski.

But at the same time, there were question marks. A familiar lack of concentration had led to them conceding first and, well, this was all coming against a team as defensively suspect as Southampton.

It was also noticeable that Spurs created everything from the wings with little coming through the middle. What might happen against a team that would press harder in that part of the pitch?

For Chelsea, the first home game of the season really did mark the start of a new era for the club. Roman Abramovich is now a slowly fading memory, but Todd Boehly can hardly be said to have been parsimonious with the club’s pursestrings. While their 1-0 win at Everton on the opening weekend was enough but little more, they will surely only continue to improve as their new-ish team continues to take shape.

There does remain a huge question mark up front. They still haven’t replaced Romelu Lukaku and have now sold Timo Werner back to RB Leipzig. And while Raheem Sterling is a terrific player, he hasn’t thus far been a great scorer of goals…