Chelsea 1-0 Tottenham: Blues edge London derby to boost Champions League qualification hopes | OneFootball

Blues continue their dominance over Tottenham in this fixture

Big win: Chelsea are back up to fourth in the Premier League table after beating Tottenham

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Chelsea are back up into fourth in the Premier League table after edging out Tottenham in a relatively low-key London derby.

Both teams, returning to action for the first time since losing respective London derbies to Arsenal and Fulham prior to the international break, were boosted by the returns of several key players.

Chelsea were able to welcome back Cole Palmer and Nicolas Jackson to the starting line-up, with Noni Madueke named on the bench after recovering from a hamstring injury.

Meanwhile, Ange Postecoglou was able to pair Cristian Romero and Micky van de Ven at the heart of Spurs’ defence for the first time in a Premier League fixture since the reverse meeting with the Blues all the way back in December.

Although they were almost undone inside the opening minute as they failed to deal with a simple ball over the top which allowed Jackson to get an attempt away which was saved by Guglielmo Vicario and then the Chelsea striker was denied by the post after van de Ven had inadvertently played the ball off him.

The hosts remained on top for much of the first-half with Fernandez going close before Vicario pulled off a stunning finger-tip save to deny Jadon Sancho a goal. Tempers threatened to boil over just before half-time as a mini-melee resulted in yellow cards for Romero and Trevoh Chalobah.

The deadlock was broken five minutes into the restart as Cole Palmer picked out Fernandez in the area and the Argentina international made no mistake from close range as he planted his headed effort past Vicario.

Moises Caicedo thought he had doubled the lead minutes later after finding the back of the net with a brilliant volley. But VAR intervened and ruled the goal out as Levi Colwill was in an offside position from the initial free-kick.

After getting a reprieve, Spurs suffered the same fate as their London rivals when VAR spotted a foul by Pape Matar Sarr on Caicedo before the midfielder had equalised out of nowhere with an effort that Robert Sanchez ought to have saved.

Sanchez made amends with a brilliant stop to deny Heung-min Son an equaliser late on and even with 12 minutes of added on time, Spurs never looked like scoring en route to suffering a 16th Premier League defeat of the campaign.