The new 'three-point lane'? How Chelsea turned Tottenham Hotspur's stadium into a fortress

Forget the Battle of the Bridge, the honor of the Tottenham Hotspur stadium is at stake this Sunday.

games between Chelsea and Spurs are must-see venues for Premier League fans, as their two clashes a season are often the most vitriolic in England.

And this weekend, Ange Postecoglou needs to cause another surprise or risk things getting out of control in north London.

The Australian partisans confronted The last time, after a 1-0 defeat against Bournemouth, they had gone three games without a win.

With aspirations of finishing in the top four, Tottenham are currently well below tenth place and have shown absolutely bizarre form in recent weeks.

They have beaten champions Manchester City twice, once by four goals, but in between have suffered defeats to Galatasaray and newly promoted Ipswich.

Fans will surely hope that at least the trend of big games continues when Chelsea travel to north London, but the statistics show that they may well be in trouble.

Helsinki's five wins are the most by any visiting team since the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium opened, and that is certainly unusual.

The Blues have claimed just two away wins in their previous 13 trips to north London, and their new form, as it turns out, has fans calling the ground 'Three Point Lane' in reference to their old White Hart Lane stadium.

Spurs opened their £1bn state-of-the-art stadium in April 2019 and, although it was mostly a warm welcome, things changed in December when it came to one of their rivals.

Willian was the one who heated things up on Chelsea's first trip, scoring a goal from distance before adding another from the spot in the 2-0 win.

But that wasn't all, as is typical in this match, there was a red card for Heung-min Son for kicking Antonio Rudiger.

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Spurs would redress the balance next time with a penalty shootout victory in the fourth round of the Carabao Cup, but since then Chelsea's travels have been almost perfect.

They won four out of five and followed two clean sheets, before Spurs said goodbye to their trophy hopes for another season during the 2021/22 campaign when they were knocked out of the Carabao in the semi-final by that man Rudiger.

A rare victory came under Antonio Conte in February 2023, but in Postecoglou's only home game against the Blues, things got as bad as ever.

Chelsea won 4-1 as Spurs surprisingly finished the match with nine men.

Even more surprising than that, was that even with two men and two goals down for the final 35 minutes, the Australian ordered his troops to keep attacking, resulting in a humiliating Nicolas Jackson hat-trick.

As a result, Spurs' chances of finishing in the top four suffered a major blow, and it was the first time that their manager's tactics came under serious attack, resulting in an intense post-match press conference.

Taking the blame for the defeat, Postecoglou finally became enraged when asked about his tactics and said: “Come on, buddy, we didn't play well. What do you want, for me to sit here and write you a dossier about the mistakes we made?” .

“Like I said, I take responsibility, we were bad in the first half. I still think their (first) goal was a foul, but nobody cares about that. But we didn't deserve anything more than that, and that's all about me. “

This result meant that C

Currently second to Enzo Maresca and finally clicking for the first time in the Todd Boehly era, another three points may be on the way, and this time Postecoglou may have no answers left after the game.