Tottenham Hotspur’s hopes of returning to the top of the Premier League were dashed in extraordinary fashion as they lost 4-1 at home to Chelsea.
This was after a Nicolas Jackson hat-trick in a chaotic London derby that they finished with nine men on Monday.
It was a triumphant return to Tottenham Hotspur for Mauricio Pochettino who got the biggest win of his short Chelsea tenure.
Although few could have imagined how it would be achieved on a mind-boggling night of VAR decisions, fraying tempers and disallowed goals.
Previously unbeaten Tottenham went ahead after six minutes thanks to Dejan Kulusevski’s deflected shot and minutes later had a second scored by Son Heung-min ruled out for offside.
But the scenes were reminiscent of the infamous Battle of the Bridge in 2016 when Chelsea scuppered the title hopes of Pochettino’s Tottenham side.
The hosts’ night unravelled in a way that could have a serious impact on their season.
Centre back Cristian Romero was sent off after a VAR check for a dangerous tackle that resulted in a penalty scored by Cole Palmer.
Tottenham then lost Romero’s defensive partner Micky van de Ven and playmaker James Maddison to injury before halftime.
Destiny Udogie was shown a second yellow card 10 minutes after the break leaving the hosts hanging on grimly for a point.Howeveror a point.However, the VAR check ended with referee Michael Oliver viewing a pitch-side monitor and awarding a penalty.
He then showed a red card to Romero for a wild tackle on his Argentina team mate Enzo Fernandez in the build-up.
After seven minutes of baffling confusion, Palmer stepped up to squeeze his penalty in off the post despite the best efforts of Tottenham’s outstanding goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario.
It got worse for Tottenham as Maddison rolled his ankle and was unable to continue before Van de Ven’s hamstring gave out.
With four of their starting lineup no longer on the pitch, Tottenham survived 12 minutes of first-half stoppage time but the wind had been taken fully out of their sails.
The second half was only 10 minutes old when Udogie was sent off for a poorly-timed tackle on Sterling.
Chelsea peppered Tottenham’s goal but the home fans cranked up the volume, roaring every tackle and clearance.
Tottenham made two more substitutions on the hour mark with Sarr and Kulusevski replaced by Rodrigo Bentancur and Oliver Skipp.
This meant the hosts were now missing seven of the players that started the incident-packed derby.
Jackson eventually broke Tottenham’s resistance with a tap-in from Sterling’s pass and the Senegal striker rubbed salt in the home side’s wounds with two more goals at the death.
