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One chance, one goal, one point: slim pickings for Tottenham Hotspur, but in the circumstances, enough is as good as a feast. Juande Ramos got the draw he came for and avoided replicating the worst start at the club in 29 years. A previous Chelsea manager might have sneered that the opposition merely parked a bus in front of the goal, but Luiz Felipe Scolari is more generous.

“Sometimes a team plays very well and it is impossible to win,” he said. “They had five, sometimes nine, players back in front of goal in the last 30 minutes, but this is the game. We had chances, but when you make mistakes with the final shot, a draw is the normal result.”

Normality is not what is expected of Chelsea, however, and, having started the season against Portsmouth as if powered by rocket fuel, the past two matches have been a bungled splash landing. Chelsea got away with it against Wigan Athletic eight days ago, when a moment of brilliance from Deco turned the game, but Scolari’s little magician had his first quiet afternoon yesterday and the performance dipped accordingly. If it were not for Frank Lampard, there would have been barely a scoring threat, although that applied at both ends, unfortunately.

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It was a well-intentioned but misdirected clearing up job by Lampard that set up Tottenham’s equalising goal. Stealing the ball off Luka Modric midway in the Chelsea half, Lampard’s interception bisected Ricar-do Carvalho and José Bosingwa in the back four, but not Darren Bent, the striker bereft of goals since preseason ended, who was suddenly left with only Petr Cech to beat. Bent’s first touch was poor, but by knocking the ball some way in front of him he drew the goalkeeper from his lair and stuck the ball smartly under his body.

It sent Tottenham in at half-time with a parity that was scarcely deserved but confidence-boosting. The first 45 minutes would have shown them that Chelsea are a weakened force without Didier Drogba and in the second half, the odd speculative effort from Lampard aside, Scolari’s team barely created a chance. Jonathan Woodgate, in particular, and Ledley King were outstanding for Tottenham, watched by Fabio Capello, the England manager, who is in a predicament recognisable to many predecessors, with an embarrassment of riches in one position – in this case centre half – and a shortage elsewhere.

Woodgate and King were aided by Chelsea’s self-limiting decision to attempt to win by lobbing high balls into the area for the final 20 minutes; potentially effective when Drogba is leading the line, but a tactic that rendered Nicolas Anelka even more redundant than he has rendered himself in recent matches.

Once, in the 78th minute, a long clearance from Carvalho found Anelka, who passed the ball on to Florent Malouda, on as substitute for the ineffectual Joe Cole, but he panicked and shot pitifully wide. The rest of the time Tottenham’s back-line treated Chelsea’s route-one approach like a training-ground exercise before a visit to Stoke City and the tactics brought out the Brazilian in Scolari, who was gesticulating ever more furiously on the touchline but clearly did not know the sign language for “keep it on the damn floor”. “We made a mistake with too much long ball,” he said. “The problem with hitting it high is that you win that way one time, but lose eight times. I understand, though, because when the players feel the pressure it becomes difficult to think.”

And the pressure is on Chelsea, certainly to take advantage of Manchester United’s traditional slow start to the season, the absence of Cristiano Ronaldo and the brief period before the arrival of Dimitar Berbatov or a run of form for Wayne Rooney. Dropping points at home against opponents who have lost matches to Middlesbrough and Sunderland is not part of the plan, even if Tottenham are in a false position.

The most worrying aspect for Scolari will be that his players found it hard to break through the defensive screen of Didier Zokora and Jermaine Jenas and their best chances came from range, usually from Lampard, who went close with two fantastic dinked chips at the start of each half. The first caught Heurelho Gomes, the Tottenham goalkeeper, off his line, but he recovered to tip over; the second beat him but dropped just the wrong side of the bar.

Between that Michael Essien had a shot from 25 yards that struck the bar, although Chelsea did get a reward from the resulting corner. Lampard curled it in, Bent missed his kick with an attempted clearance and Juliano Belletti glanced the ball past Gomes at the near post.

The match was a tiny triumph for Belletti, a reserve full back, who was given the job of holding midfield with John Obi Mikel injured. In addition to scoring from a set-piece, he shut Modric out of the game. It is amazing that English football finds it so hard to fill this position in the national team when foreign players respond instantly to its code of discipline and self-sacrifice. These are worrying times for English football all round, with injuries mounting in key roles, a void where a world-class striker should be and a series of failed auditions for David Beckham’s role. Nothing David Bentley did here would have impressed Capello going into his first competitive international; mainly, because he did nothing.

“We deserved a point for what we did in the second half,” Ramos, the Tottenham head coach, said.

About right. Both teams looked as if they could do with an injection of sorts. The arrival of Roman Pavlyuchenko at Tottenham and, perhaps, Robinho at Chelsea cannot come soon enough.

Chelsea ratings

4-1-3-1-1

P Cech 6 J Bosingwa 6 R Carvalho 6 J Terry 7 A Cole 7 J Belletti 7 F Lampard 7 M Essien 6 Deco 6 J Cole 5 N Anelka 5 Substitutes: F Malouda 5 (for J Cole, 65min), S Kalou (for Belletti, 75), F Di Santo (for Anelka, 88) Not used: C Cudicini, W Bridge, P Ferreira, Alex Next: Man City (a)

Tottenham ratings

4-5-1

H Gomes 7 C Gunter 7 J Woodgate 9 L King 8 G Bale 8 D Bentley 5 J Jenas 7 D Zokora 7 L Modric 6 G Dos Santos 5 D Bent 7 Substitutes: T Huddlestone 7 (for Gunter, 62min), A Lennon 5 (for Dos Santos, 59), J O’Hara (for Bentley, 72) Not used: C Sánchez, Gilberto, M Dawson, B Assou-Ekotto Next: Aston Villa (h)

Referee: H Webb Attendance: 41,790