Chelsea continue dominance over lifeless Tottenham as Enzo Maresca remains on course to achieve target | OneFootball

Chelsea have now won the last four games in a row against Tottenham

Chelsea have rarely needed invitation to pile misery on Tottenham in this fixture, the visitors having claimed just one win at Stamford Bridge in 35 years.

This was as lifeless an iteration as Spurs can have fielded in that window, and yet here, in the opening 45 minutes in particular, the Blues came dangerously close to letting them off the hook, twisting, turning and teasing, but stubbornly declining to land a blow.

Eventually, five minutes after the interval and six yards out, Enzo Fernandez could not refuse, heading home the goal that sends the Blues back into the Premier League’s top-four with a 1-0 victory and only eight games left to go.

Still, in a game lacking quality, there was more than enough time for carnage and controversy, a disallowed goal at each end and two interminable VAR checks meaning it was gone 10pm when the final whistle blew. Still, for Chelsea, there was an opportunity missed. A more confident, ruthless team would have smelt the gallons of blood in the water and condemned Ange Postecoglou to all-out humiliation in front of an away crowd ready to turn.

At this stage of the season, though, Chelsea need be concerned with no one but themselves. A fifth-straight home league win means their Champions League fate - assuming five English clubs qualify - is set in their own hands.

The previous four had been must-win, hiding-to-nothing fixtures, against struggling sides in West Ham, Wolves, Southampton and Leicester. Tottenham may be only a few places above those teams and as shorn of belief as any of them, but derby wins count double, as the full-time atmosphere proved. Maresca wanted momentum almost as much as he did points from this evening; if they cannot quite find it on the pitch right now then at least it is building in the air.

The return of Nicolas Jackson after two months out had promised to put the chaos back into a Chelsea brand that had become grimly predictable. Inside a minute, there was evidence, Trevor Chalobah’s ball sending the centre-forward and both Tottenham centre-halves racing back towards goal. A flurry of touches from the two parties and Spurs goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario, none of them controlled, ended in the ball ricocheting back off the post.

Jackson tired into the second-half, but so much better is his all-round centre-forward play than his various ill-suited deputies, the Senegalese’s availability for the run-in could be defining.

That, muddle chance, was as close as Chelsea came before the break, despite playing out nicely and shredding a flaky Spurs midfield at will. Again, it was in the final third where Maresca’s side lacked conviction, best typified by Jadon Sancho’s devotion to the pacifist cause.

Progress: Jadon Sancho

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With uncertainty brewing over Sancho’s future beyond the end of the campaign, and the winger fortunate to keep his place with Noni Madueke back fit, Maresca had yesterday suggested a straightforward solution to the loanee’s lack of goals since striking at Spurs four months ago: shoot more.

The 40,000-odd inside Stamford Bridge had heard that instruction, relaying it en masse with increasing fury as the Englishman hesitated and checked back inside time and again. When, finally, he let loose approaching half-time he was denied by a wonderful, one-handed Vicario stop. Still it was progress, Sancho’s first shot on target in the Premier League since Boxing Day.

The 25-year-old, in fairness, is not alone in his drought. Both Jackson and Cole Palmer remain in the midst of their longest goalless streaks in a Chelsea shirt. Luckily - or by Maresca’s design - Fernandez is becoming a reliable back-up source of goals. This was his tenth in all competitions for the Blues this season, to go with one last week for Argentina against Brazil.

This rivalry does not quite compare with that one, not least because of how one-sided it has come to be. Maresca’s first season in charge has brought another double over Tottenham - and remains on course to take Chelsea back into the Champions League.