Halftime; Tottenham 1-0 Chelsea

HT Tottenham 1-0 Chelsea
Gylfi Sigurdsson 19'

The tackles are suddenly flying in and referee Mike Dean is dealing with them by dishing out verbal warnings rather than yellow cards - we await our first booking, but my guess is that Dean will run out of patience with the next player who dives in.

"Chelsea's Juan Mata warms up to some applause - from Spurs fans. Some are even offering him White Hart Lane as a new home if he gets fed up with life on the bench."

Try, try and try again seems to be the Chelsea mantra today. That diagonal ball does come off the next time a Blues player tries it, and Oscar is on the end of it, lurking on the left. He tries to deliver a low cross but it is blocked - by Michael Dawson again (I think). Still, signs of life from Jose Mourinho's men - this is their best spell of the match.

"Gylfi Sigurdsson has had a great start to the season, but Andros Townsend has grown so much over the same time. Townsend getting in ahead of Nacer Chadli is a big thing here."

Better by Chelsea. Branislav Ivanovic raids down the right for the first time today and his low cross has to be hoofed clear by Michael Dawson at the near post.

The improvement does not last long, mind. John Obi Mikel tries to spray a diagonal ball forward from deep but gets it all wrong and slices it straight through to Hugo Lloris instead.

Tottenham have the lead and they have had by far the better of the first 30 minutes. Christian Eriksen is still seeing plenty of the ball - in contrast, Chelsea's main playmaker Oscar has been a peripheral figure.

Chelsea have been on the back-foot for a while now and they need to do better than this when they do come forward. Frank Lampard tries to fizz in a free-kick from near the half-way line but ends up hitting it straight at Hugo Lloris.