Jose Mourinho can deny it. He can pretend Tottenham were disappointed they did not win at Chelsea last week. Yet the evidence of both the naked eye and the statistics tells us a different story: Spurs played for a stalemate. They got one, too.

It felt both typical of Mourinho, whose approach can betray a lack of trust in his players to go toe to toe with peers, and the wrong way to win the title now.