Chelsea’s Moises Caicedo was described as a “diamond” by former Tottenham Hotspur boss Tim Sherwood.
The west London club defeated their city rivals 1-0 to boost their chances of staying in the top four as the season comes to a close.
Enzo Fernandez scored the only goal of the game, but it was his Chelsea midfield partner, Caicedo, that Sherwood picked out for praise.
“Caicedo is a diamond of a player,” Sherwood told Premier League Productions.
He breaks up so many attacks, he sits in that midfield, for [Levi] Colwill and [Trevoh] Chalobah tonight he must’ve been a dream.
“He was just in there and giving it to players who can play in front of him, the likes of Enzo, Cole Palmer, [Pedro] Neto, always threatens in behind even though it wasn’t his best game, they’ve got Nicolas Jackson back.
“They need to finish in the top five otherwise it’s not a very good season for them.”
Chelsea are one point ahead of Manchester City with eight games to go in the Premier League season and manager Enzo Maresca said at this stage of the campaign, every win is important.
“It’s very important. First of all, because of the performance. We know how important it is in this moment to win games, but since we start, we try to win games in the way we want, and I think tonight the performance was very good.
“I said yesterday in the press conference, the last four games at home was Leicester, Southampton, West Ham and Wolves. Four teams that they sit back and wait for us. Tonight, Tottenham, it’s a different kind of game, so for us in some way it’s better.”
Glenn Hoddle, meanwhile, said Chelsea were not at their best and would have been punished by a better team.
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“They didn”t play free-flowing, quick football where it was one, two touch through the pitch quickly, create, get corners, get pressure, it wasn”t that sort of performance from Chelsea,” Hoddle said.
“I think the manager said it right, they did enough to win, they deserved to win, they did just enough to win tonight against Tottenham who were playing a little bit within.
“If they”d have played against Liverpool tonight, or Man City, or Forest, they might have had some trouble, they really might.”