Chelsea 1-0 Tottenham: Enzo Fernandez heads Blues back into the top four as lengthy VAR reviews see goals ruled out at both ends

Chelsea still have a place in the top five to fight for this season, the bare minimum requirement of their stupendous spending spree.

And Spurs reached a point long ago where it was obvious they were going to have to bank everything on rescuing a sorry campaign by trying to win the Europa League. The first leg of a quarter final against Eintracht Frankfurt awaits next week.

But there was something else at stake here between two teams who have spread little more than disillusion amid their respective sets of supporters this season. This was a London derby about salvaging self-respect.

Chelsea just about managed it. They won the game 1-0, they moved ahead of Newcastle United and Manchester City into fourth place in the Premier League and they fought to defend their narrow lead with a superb late save by Robert Sanchez from Son Heung-min. They didn’t play particularly well but they got the job done.

Spurs? They are still wallowing in the shame of a miserable campaign that keeps getting worse. They might have been unlucky when a Pape Sarr goal was ruled out by VAR for an earlier foul but Chelsea had already suffered a similar misfortune by then as well.

And the truth is that Spurs didn’t deserve anything from this match. They were second best for long periods of it. They lacked cohesion and purpose and belief. And their fans have run out of patience. ‘You don’t know what you’re doing,’ they sang at Ange Postecoglou in the second half.

But Postecoglou clings on, even though this was the 16th – yes, 16th – defeat of their season. He cuts an increasingly isolated and glum figure on the touchline. Everything rests on the Europa League. If Spurs do not win that, he will be very, very vulnerable.

And so an ordinary game was won by a fine goal, crafted early in the second half by the cultured left foot of Cole Palmer and finished by a bullet header from the skipper Enzo Fernandez. It was a better goal than the game deserved.

It had started like a whirlwind. Less than a minute had gone when Nicolas Jackson ran on to a long ball over the top of the Spurs defence that put him clean through on goal. Guglielmo Vicario saved his first, scuffed effort but the mayhem was only just beginning.

The ball ran loose, Micky van de Ven tried to clear it but kicked it straight at Jackson and the ball rebounded off Jackson’s leg and off the foot of the post. Spurs launched a counter-attack and it took a fine block from Trevoh Chalobah to deny Son.

Chelsea continued to dominate but they did not come close to breaking the deadlock again until midway through the half. This time, the build-up was more considered. Jadon Sancho slipped a clever ball through to Palmer, Palmer drilled it across goal and, as Enzo Fernandez tried to touch it in, Destiny Udogie blocked it and the ball was gathered gratefully on the line by Vicario.

Those two flurries of action aside, it was a poor half. Both sides gave the ball away so often it was obvious why neither has flourished this season. There are other reasons, too, but the inability to retain possession prevented either side from building momentum. Sometimes, the carelessness with the ball felt downright negligent.

Son did muster one shot on target nine minutes before half time but Robert Sanchez got down well to his left to push it away. At the other end, Vicario produced an even better save on the stroke of the interval to touch over a shot from Sancho that was rising towards the roof of the net.

The final moments of the half were enlivened by a fracas that developed after Levi Colwill picked up the ball following a foul and Cristian Romero shoved him over in his efforts to retrieve it. It seemed briefly as if we might have a sequel to the Battle of the Bridge – the war between these two teams here in 2016 – but the trouble soon dissipated. Romero and Chalobah were both shown yellow cards.

Chelsea started the second half well. They went straight on the attack and Vicario had to get down sharply to his right to push away a venomous shot from Palmer. A minute later, though, Palmer turned provider.

The England forward drifted away to the left and curled in a perfect ball towards the edge of the six-yard box. Enzo Fernandez, who had had an ordinary game until then, timed his run perfectly and rose majestically to punch a powerful header past Vicario.

Chelsea thought they had scored again a few minutes later when Moises Caicedo smashed a fine volley past Vicario from the edge of the box but, after an interminable delay, the effort was ruled out by VAR for offside against Colwill earlier in the move. Roll on the introduction of semi-automated offside.

The reprieve did not stop Spurs fans voicing their discontent with Postecoglou. They were incensed when he took off Lucas Bergvall and replaced him with Pape Sarr. ‘You don’t know what you’re doing,’ they sang at their manager.

Sarr almost proved them wrong straight away. He dispossessed Caicedo midway inside the Chelsea half, advanced and hit a stinging low shot goalwards. Sanchez got down to it and should have saved it but he pushed it up on to the underside of the bar and it bounced into the net.

Spurs celebrated wildly but VAR checked Sarr’s challenge on Caicedo and ruled, correctly, after another interminable delay, that the Spur midfielder had kicked Caicedo’s leg out from under him. Eventually, the goal was disallowed and Sarr was booked. Postecoglou went back to not knowing what he was doing.

Son almost rescued a point in the last minute of regular time when he threw himself at a Brennan Johnson cross at the back post and directed it goalwards. He thought he had scored but Sanchez also hurled himself across goal and got down to push it out. It was a fine save. And it brought a measure of redemption for some of the mistakes he has made this season.

How Postecoglou craves redemption but it eludes him still and will continue to elude him unless Spurs get past Eintracht Frankfurt and go on to lift the Europa League. Nothing else will do.