With Manchester United not playing for a couple of hours, Chelsea's 1-0 over Spurs left the Premiership champions three points behind the current Premiership leaders.
A fine strike by Ricardo Carvalho won the match and left Jose Mourinho a happy but always in pragmatic mood.
He said:" At this moment we did our job. It's the only time that we play before Manchester United.
"We had an incredible chance to close the gap and we did." We should have scored in the first half, but we scored in the second and could have had a second soon after." But Spurs played well and Petr Cech was forced to make two great saves. "I know that with Spurs anything could happen. "They score many goals, but we defended well. Our midfield was excellent and we controlled the ball.
It was a difficult game. Luckily we have not picked up any injuries and I hope that Michael Essien is available to play on Tuesday against Valencia [in the Champions League]."
With reports that Sir Alex Ferguson ranting that Chelsea's match should have being played later - in order to allow Spurs to recover from their European excursions, Mourinho said: "Sir Alex is an intelligent man. You cannot be successful without being intelligent.
"It's just as well that others are not stupid."
Chris Houghton deputised for Martin Jol in the post-match press conference, citing Jol as being: "Unwell. In fact he has not being well for a couple of days."
However the coach was encouraged by his side's performance.
" We always felt we were in the game," he said.
"We battled right to the end.
We rested Lennon and Keane. We have a tough match on Thursday and will have a very hard game next weekend against Wigan.
"So it was a chance to utilise the squad.
"We know that Chelsea finish games well and we would have being delighted with a 0-0.
"But we showed in the last 15 minutes that we too can finish well.
"There is no doubt that the effort we put in in Seville affected us.
"We would have like an extra day to prepare for this match.
"WE are getting close to Chelsea. All our matches this season have been close and we should have won in the FA Cup.
"AS for their goal, we should have put pressure on the ball but it was a wonderful strike. We knew he is capable of it.
Any goalkeeper will evaluate what happened when a goal goes in but sometimes you just have to give credit to the striker of the ball.."