Chelsea all but secured a top-three finish on Thursday following a draw at home with Leicester City.
For the opener, James Maddison made the most of some lax defending from both Marcos Alonso and Antonio Rudiger, not even having to weave between the bodies to get his shot off from inside the box, such was their lack of initiative.
From there, the home side dominated possession but in the kind of sterile way the second-half of their season has come to be defined by.
That was, however, until Reece James started seeing more of the ball. Chelsea’s one true moment of quality came when the England international found Marcos Alonso at the back post with a brilliant delivery before the Spaniard struck a sweet volley to level the scores.
How differently things could have been had James – along with Ben Chilwell – stayed fit all season.
In the second-half, James grew into the game further.
Within minutes of each other just after the hour mark, it was he who put one on a plate for Romelu Lukaku with a fantastic corner, only to see the Belgian head over, before instigating a flowing team move to culminate in Christian Pulisic missing a cut-back entirely.
Kai Havertz would suffer a similar fate as both sides failed to cause many genuine problems as the game dragged on.
With a much better goal difference than Tottenham’s, Tuchel – who has spoken about the importance of finishing in the top three – achieved that goal at least.
