The title race has again been thrown wide open by the events of another weekend, in what is becoming one of the most exciting run-ins for many seasons.

Having beaten Manchester United last weekend and apparently sown the whole shebang up, Chelsea’s hard-fought for four point cushion has been cut to one again, and again at the hands of an impressive Tottenham team.

Last week, Tottenham effectively ended their North London rivals Arsenal’s title bid, and this week White hart Lane proved an equally difficult place for the Blues to visit.

Celebrated for their classy attacking style, Spurs are beginning to discover a bit of a backbone, defending strongly and attacking quickly on the break, and appear to be relishing the contests against the big teams – Manchester United await.

Chelsea’s chief tormentor was Welsh international Gareth Bale, whose pace forced a penalty for Jermain Defoe and who scored the second himself. Frank Lampard scored a late consolation goal for the Blues. Their misery was compounded by a sending off for John Terry after a second yellow card. For Terry the season gets longer and longer, bearing in mind that he has so far this year been stripped of the England captaincy, failed to conceal news of an affair with a teammate’s partner, been caught in other nefarious business dealings by a newspaper “sting” and managed to run over a club security guard in his 4x4.

Another team who are reluctant to make the running is Arsenal. In the face of the turmoil at White Hart Lane, Arsene Wenger’s men found themselves in the position of being able to claw back three points on Chelsea by beating strugglers Wigan the day after. Two nil up with ten minutes to go and it seemed to be job done, until Wigan scored three times in eight minutes, including the by now obligatory comedy goalkeeping moment from the hapless Lucas Fabianski. A goalkeeper is surely top of the summer shopping list…

Meanwhile, champions United toughed out a tense Manchester derby and took the spoils with a Paul Scholes header in the 93rd minute. “Fergie Time” jokes and comments about the game not being over until the red-faced Scotsman sings are by now commonplace, but still United continue to clinch tight matches with last minute winners.

With the exception of Rooney, United are a shadow of their former selves but do appear to want (really want) to win this title, in spite of being second best to Chelsea for most of the campaign. Another league championship would be the record breaking 19th title which one suspects may be their driving force. In truth, they have at times seemed like a team playing by memory, but with the experience of Scholes, Giggs and Neville coming to the fore, and with Sir Alex still at the helm, what memories they have…

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