Tottenham Hotspur's Carling Cup victory may feel like a rip-off later this week, but it might have a ripple effect on the rest of English football. On the one hand, this was Tottenham's first trophy since 1999, and it's the kind of victory that could propel a club to go on a major run. Spurs may not have a shot at a league title, but they are still in the UEFA Cup, a title that Juande Ramos has won with Sevilla in 2006 and 2007, and his players believe a double is a real possibility.
What's more, winning the Carling Cup gives Spurs an automatic UEFA Cup bid next season. That's one less European spot available to the Premier League table, where the battle for fourth place remains tight. Everton climbed back into the drivers seat with a 2-0 win at Manchester City yesterday, while Liverpool and Aston Villa are only 3 points back and Portsmouth are nipping at their heels. Villa is already preparing for the worst by applying for the last Intertoto Cup.
Perhaps most importantly, though, Tottenham's dominance on Sunday sent a message to the rest of the world: Chelsea is in chaos.
All of England is asking if Blues manager Avram Grant has lost the plot -- an easy question to ask when Shaun Wright-Phillips starts over Joe Cole in a cup final -- while reports are surfacing that John Terry and coach Hank ten Cate nearly came to blows in training. All the while, Chelsea's form has slipped. Their only victory in the month of February was a 3-1 win over League One side Huddersfield.
As a result, Chelsea is closer to fourth place than to first, and to top it off, they're not playing the "attractive football" owner Roman Abramovich demanded when he sacked Jose Mourinho. The rest of the league is starting to see the Blues as a team that could be picked off -- the same way clubs are looking at 5th-place Liverpool.
It would take a major collapse for Chelsea to fall out of a Champions League spot. Then again, they weren't supposed to lose to Tottenham Hotspur in the Carling Cup Final, were they? That loss could be a sign to the rest of the Premier League that the status quo may finally be shifting. Until Sunday, nobody outside the Big Four had won a trophy in England since 2004. Could that be about to change?
