The battle against Spursiness is Conte’s biggest yet

Spurs’ eventual 2-2 draw at Chelsea on Sunday was a great many things.

Lucky, certainly. Hilarious, undeniably. Dramatic, for sure.

Either or both the goals Spurs scored in a searingly entertaining second half of purest Barclays could have been disallowed, prompting Chelsea fans to become the latest fanbase to thoroughly debase themselves by imagining a) some deep-state conspiracy against them exists among Premier League officials yet also b) that this might be cracked wide open and solved by starting an online petition.

We shouldn’t single Chelsea out here. Absolutely every club’s fanbase gets up to this kind of embarrassing nonsense after a disappointing result, and it’s not entirely the fault of Chelsea fans that theirs is a particularly egregious failure of self-awareness given they really should currently be spending every waking moment thanking whatever deity they happen to believe in that they still have a Premier League team – or any team at all – to support.

Anyway. Yes, Spurs were lucky. But in that second half they were also good. You couldn’t go quite so far as saying they made their own luck, but certainly after a first half in which they were overrun and overpowered by Chelsea it was going to take more than a couple of marginal refereeing decisions in their favour to get back in the game.

Clearly and understandably, Tuchel v Conte was the game’s big talking point. It might be the handshake spat to top all handshake spats, with Conte going full Conte and Tuchel so wound up that he ended up spouting his own referee-based conspiracy theories after both managers had received hard-earned red cards.

But the coaching clash between the two was also a beaut. Chelsea’s first-half dominance owed much to Tuchel deploying the ‘box midfield’ Conte had himself used so effectively when guiding Chelsea to their last league title in 2017. For Pedro and Hazard, read Mount and Havertz; for Kante and Fabregas, Kante and Jorginho.

Conte’s second-half switch to a 4-2-4 had more than a hint of desperation about it – and the lack of defensive shape and cohesion that resulted was a huge factor in the second Chelsea goal – but it did change the game and highlighted the range of options the Spurs manager now has. The first half was like pretty much every Chelsea v Spurs game here for the last 30 years; the second half was much more the game most expected on this occasion with little between the sides. It could clearly have ended…