Tottenham’s Dele Alli scores two to end Chelsea’s winning run short of record

The most damaging part for Chelsea, suffering their first league defeat since losing against Arsenal at the end of September, has nothing to do with it stopping them establishing a record in the Premier League era of 14 successive wins in a single season. It would have been a nice one to chalk up, but a team with their ambitions will be far more distressed about what it means for the league table and the confidence it might give Tottenham Hotspur, seven points back, to think they can still play a considerable part in the title race.
Dele Alli’s goals certainly ought to encourage Spurs on a night when their supporters endured opposition songs poking fun that they “won the league in black and white”, referring to the fact that the last time the team from White Hart Lane finished as champions was back in 1961. Alli scored one at the end of the first half and another early in the second period. Both were headers and the England international has managed two goals in each of his past three games.
Alli is in the best scoring form of his life and his latest brace was the most important of the lot given its impact on the top four and the braking effect it had on the league leaders, arriving here with their chests puffed out after 13 wins in a row.
It still counts as a remarkable feat even if that will be little consolation as they reflect on a sapping night against one of the teams they find it particularly difficult to lose to. Chelsea have tended to have easily the better of these encounters: this was their fifth defeat out of 50 Premier League meetings. Yet Spurs, lest it be forgotten, were high on confidence on the back of their own productive run of form.
They have now won five successive league fixtures. Their prize is to go third and push Arsenal down to fifth, and Mauricio Pochettino can reflect on a hugely satisfying evening’s work bearing in mind his switch to a 3-4-2-1 formation, deliberately set up to nullify Chelsea’s wing-back system.
From Chelsea’s perspective, perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the performance was that as soon as Alli scored his second, nine minutes after the break, the home team were rarely endangered. Until that point, nobody could doubt Chelsea’s effort or that, at 1-0 down, this was a side that seemed mortally offended by the idea of losing.
After that, however, there was not a great deal of personality from the team in blue and the home supporters could bask in one of those nights, under the floodlights, when it felt like a tremendous pity White Hart Lane, as we know it, is being lost to the bulldozers.
Guardian.com