61 minutes had passed at the Tottenham Hotspur stadium when Cole Palmer sank his first penalty of the game to make it 2-2. Marc Cucurella hit himself hard in the head with both hands near the left sideline and did a cinematic fly roll, like a lovable dog in a floor detergent commercial.

When Palmer scored his magnificent ball in the corner against Southampton last week, Cucurella had his fists clenched and roared while he thrust his hips pompously into the air. Palmer clearly has an emotional impact on him. And the afternoon belonged to both men here, a 4-3 clean sheet victory in the London derby, dominated by the two qualities that mark Enzo Maresca’s team – which he will of course contest – as genuine title contenders.

Most obvious is that Palmer brings the craft. Mohamed Salah remains the most effective creative player in the league. But Palmer is truly something else, a flexible brain, completely unique in his ability to observe, learn and invent the game in front of him. Here he seemed to decipher Spurs over the course of the first half, finding weak spots, deciding where to stand and where to begin his passing sequences.

What Cucurella offers is spirit. This is a footballer with a level of hilarious Energy of the main character. When he moved into the midfield in the second half because, yeah, why not, there was a feeling that Cucurella was supposed to play basically everywhere all the time, pass to other Cucurellas, egg on the opposing Cucurellas and end up arm in arm with his Cucurella colleagues should run away.

Chelsea is a happy pirate ship these days, a bunch of billion-dollar desperadoes brought into the light but all running in the same direction at the moment. Sport can often be so simple. For all the DNA chatter and philosophy chatter, football is essentially feelings, energy, colors, an illusion of design that comes from winning.

Chelsea are now second in the league. It’s not an exaggeration to say they could win it this season. There’s a new world order out there. Manchester City seem to be afraid of their own shadows. The old certainties are crumbling. David Hasselhoff stands on the concrete wall with his sledgehammer raised. Chelsea arguably have the best squad in the league. It seems that there is a distinct advantage to spending large sums of money on good young players. In the end you have a lot of good young players.

They also have the winning energy of Cucurella. He is a very funny footballer in many ways, from the resemblance to the Renaissance fresco depiction of a mischievous fruit seller to the way he runs, a kind of powerful waddle that is both convincing and relentlessly theatrical.

At times the first half was here Total Cucurellaon a day that started with not one, but two mistakes that directly resulted in Chelsea being 2-0 down. There are few things in a sport more vital and empowering than someone falling. Cucurella falls over? This is box office.

Slip No. 1 came five minutes later, Cucurella’s foot gave way and lay completely outstretched on the turf. Brennan Johnson took the ball, crossed low and Dominic Solanke skillfully finished the ball. Within minutes the same thing happened. Cucurella fell over, Dejan Kulusevski carried the ball forward and scored.

Cucurella’s response was brilliantly defiant. Crushed? Me? Actually no. Instead, he stormed to the sideline, threw his football boots from the side with a spark, marched out again and provided the assist to make it 2-1.

In reality it was just a pass inside to Jadon Sancho, who produced one of those sequences where the game suddenly seemed too small and too easy and he found so much space and time in the middle of all that noise and heat by just one shoulder dropped. Sancho isn’t particularly fast, but he does have a deceptive hyperspeed mode, a Millennium Falcon outfit where the air around him just seems to open up. From there the ball circled into the far corner.

At that point, when Chelsea were down 2-1 away from home, Chelsea always won that game. North London was gripped by the nationwide meteorological norovirus all afternoon, whipped by a scraping wind that somehow seemed to come from every direction, one of those days when it really does feel like a narrow island in an unfriendly sea.

For long stretches it was a chaotic game, reminiscent of one of those traditional Derbyshire hunt games where people fight for a sheep’s bladder outside a pub for three hours. But in the end, the Spurs were drawn to opponents who simply had better players, better options and a wider selection of equipment.

Palmer scored the decisive third goal for Enzo Fernández with a wonderful, swirling dribble. In response, Timo Werner came on for Spurs and did a lot of strange things, throwing his arms around, running very fast and making clanging first touches. It’s tempting to think that Werner should have been a sprinter. But he probably would have ended up in the triple jump pit.

Cucurella and Palmer had almost won the game after 90 minutes, with Cucurella high-fiving everyone on or even near the Chelsea bench, like a celebrated actor humbly celebrating his own masterpiece. It felt like a pivotal afternoon for this team. You have as many chances as anyone right now.