Would the champions please stand up?

WHAT do Premier League champions look like?

Can they be spotted trudging off towards the dressing room after being recklessly sent off in a complete shambles?

Or are they more likely to be pictured kissing Gary Neville having headed a last-minute winner at the home of their local rivals?

We shall soon know...

It seems that whoever passes the Tottenham test can have the most legitimate claim on the crown this season.

Arsenal and now Chelsea have taken it on and come up short; Manchester United are due to take it next weekend, and in familiar surroundings too.

It is all adding up to one of the most exciting tussles for the title in many a year yet there was something disconcerting and unsatisfactory about seeing a side at the top of the league so comprehensively out-played so close to glory.

Tottenham have been a breath of fresh air this season, arguably more so than Manchester City, Carlos Tevez or no Carlos Tevez. Harry Redknapp, as he may have mentioned one or two times himself, has transformed the fortunes of a club that was hurtling in the wrong direction not so long ago and has done so in style.

They were slick enough to give Chelsea the run-around despite not having all their best players available. Good on them, well done. They thoroughly deserved the three points and the margin of victory could have been much, much wider. They were mostly magnificent in fact.

But surely, surely, Chelsea should not have allowed this to happen? How could they have been so second class all game when so much was at stake?

The result was also a day of joy for the John Terry haters as the former England captain added another chapter of woe to his already-bulging almanac of misdemeanours.

First he (unfortunately) conceded a penalty, then he managed to get himself recklessly sent-off under the steely gaze of Fabio Capello.

The Stamford Bridge skipper has gone from legend to liability in a remarkably short space of time and will now be banned for the visit of Stoke City on Sunday. Perhaps it is just as well.

But it wasn’t all down to Terry. One of the other two Englishmen in the starting line-up fared little better either as Joe Cole was one of two to be replaced at half-time with Chelsea already 2-0 down to Jermain Defoe’s spot-kick opener and Gareth Bale’s solo second.

Only goalkeeper Petr Cech emerged with any credit via a series of acrobatic saves although Frank Lampard’s stoppage-time consolation might yet prove useful if it all goes down to goal difference.

If Chelsea are to keep their noses in front they will have to regroup and respond and Carlo Ancelotti does not look like a man who is easily flustered.

In fact the Italian doesn’t always look like a man who is actually breathing so lethargic is his presence both on the touchline and in front of the media afterwards.

Ancelotti can’t stand Jose Mourinho so it makes sense for him to want to do everything the exact opposite of the Special One. Which means limping wheezily over the line, it seems.

Ancelotti was hoping his players would adopt a similar Zen Buddhist approach to the final three fixtures. “I think my players have the character and the concentration to maintain an atmosphere of calm and quiet and remain in focus,” he said.

“The pressure now is normal, with three games to the end of the season. All the teams are involved in important things and important aims so to have pressure is absolutely normal.”

For Terry to become embroiled in controversy is now absolutely normal but Ancelotti, who likes to relax by listening to Elton John, was calm about that too.

“People are looking too much at his performances,” he said. “He is doing very well. He has had a fantastic season. Maybe sometimes he had some problems and didn’t play so well, maybe today he didn’t play too well. But we have to look to the season of John Terry, he has been absolutely fantastic.”

Ancelotti denied Scholes’ late winner at Eastlands had put the Chelsea players off their lunch but the other side of the same coin was that it had undeniably acted as a huge fillip to Tottenham, who are now two points ahead of Manchester City in what now appears to be a two-horse race for fourth and the Champions League qualification place that goes with it.

Whatever happens therefore there is likely to be a new name representing England next season in the flagship competition and Redknapp argued that was also a breath of fresh air.

“Yeah, I think so,” he said. “It’s like someone else winning the Cup. If, every year, you get the same teams it gets boring so it will be nice to get someone new. Before today, I honestly still felt Liverpool and Aston Villa could still get in. Looking at Villa’s fixtures, they could still go on a run. But now it’s going to be difficult for them. It really looks as if it should be between us and Manchester City.”

And how might Tottenham fare with Defoe and Roman Pavlyuchenko up front, Bale rampaging down the left and Michael Dawson bravely throwing his body at the ball at the back? Redknapp could afford to be confident on this showing.

“It would be great,” he said. “Although you get into the knock-out phase and anything could happen. You could last two minutes. But just to get fourth position would be a fantastic achievement.”

MATCH RATING: ***** – Though Chelsea were massively disappointing considering what was at stake, the way Tottenham took hold of the game made it a spectacle to linger long in the memory. Redknapp’s side wasn’t at full strength yet looked more than capable of making a Champions League bow on this showing. A side at the top of the table doesn’t often get given a run-around yet that was exactly what Chelsea received, from the first minute to the last.

REFEREE: Phil Dowd 6/10 – Somehow managed to miss, or decided not to award, two stonewall Tottenham penalties before penalising Terry for a debatable handball. Had to defuse a mass gathering of handbags in the centre-circle before handing two yellows to Terry. The Chelsea captain might have been a little hard done by again for the first but was definitely lacking in the brain cell department for the second.