We gave Spurs 18 percent: a rookie keeper, a red card and ten minutes that broke Chelsea

We gave Tottenham an 18 percent chance in our preview on Saturday morning, and we named the risk that would decide the game: a rookie goalkeeper making his first Premier League start in a London derby. The risk decided it all right, just the other way round. Tottenham won 2-0 at Stamford Bridge, and a ground that has tormented them for a generation finally gave them a night to keep.

For 76 minutes this looked like a familiar kind of Spurs frustration, only sharper than usual. Tottenham had 70 percent of the ball and 15 shots to Chelsea's seven, and still the score sat at 0-0. When James Maddison went off injured on 51 minutes, the player whose set pieces were supposed to test Mike Penders most, it felt as if the chance had slipped through their fingers again. A side on top everywhere except the scoreline, at the one away ground where that story always ends the same way.

Then ten minutes broke Chelsea completely. On 77 minutes a corner swung in and Penders, 21 years old and playing his first league game, punched the ball into his own net. Three minutes later Cole Palmer picked up a second booking, two yellows in nine minutes, and the first red card of his senior career, and the home side's best player walked off with the game still there to be saved. On 87 minutes Mathys Tel collected the ball, drove the length of the pitch and buried the second. Nil nil to two nil, in the space of one short collapse.

The table tells you what the win is worth beyond the bragging rights. Tottenham climb to 12th on nine points, a long way from the 16th place they carried into the evening, and they did it at a ground where they had won once in the league since 1990, Dele Alli scoring twice in April 2018. Chelsea stay fourth on 13 points, but the question that hung over this fixture beforehand has only grown louder. With Emiliano Martinez recovering from surgery on a fractured jaw, Chelsea need Penders to be a solution rather than a story, and his first start has handed every opponent between now and Christmas a set piece plan to copy.

Our argument before kickoff was that the pocket behind Chelsea's striker, where Palmer and Morgan Rogers play, would decide this match rather than the goalkeeping story. We were wrong on both counts, and the honest reading is that Tottenham earned the correction. They controlled the match for more than an hour without scoring, lost their main creator to injury, and still found the pressure that forced the error. One result does not repair a season that began with six goals in seven games, but a win built on dominance rather than luck, at Stamford Bridge of all places, is the first evidence that this Spurs side can turn all that final third possession into something real. The return fixture will tell us more. For now, the 18 percent turned up, and no complaints from us: that is why you play the game.