West Ham deserved to win. It is worth highlighting that fact lest it be obscured by the fallout to Chelsea’s disciplinary meltdown.

The champions had Nemanja Matic sent off in the first half, two players booked for protesting against that decision, their assistant first-team coach, Silvino Louro, dismissed for haranguing the fourth official and José Mourinho banished to the stands at half-time.

The Portuguese manager has recently taken to describing referees, whose performances displease him, as “weak and naive” – pointedly borrowing the term from Arsène Wenger – but this was a demonstration of strength by referee Jonathan Moss, who was not prepared to let Chelsea personnel tell him how to do his job. Chelsea did not do their own job as well as champions should. Defensively it is they who have been weak and naive this season. There were suggestions before this match that they were improving on that front – two consecutive clean sheets served as evidence – but West Ham ran a serious stress test and Chelseafailed it.

Even amid a cagey opening there were signs that betrayed the principles that Mourinho teams have traditionally applied, with Cesc Fàbregas, deployed in an advanced midfield role, acting as the sort of luxury player that the Portuguese has never tolerated.

The Spaniard seemed sluggish at the start and his unconvincing tackle on Dimitri Payet in the 16th minute led to the home side’s opening goal. The Frenchman took the resultant 25-yard free-kick himself. He had fired over the bar from a similar distance earlier but this effort was more accurate and forced Asmir Begovic to improvise a save, the goalkeeper tipping the ball over the bar to concede a corner. Payet delivered the set piece and Diego Costa, one of Chelsea’s most energetic performers, botched an attempted clearance, allowing the ball to bobble out to the edge of the area, where Mauro Zárate arrived to lash a splendid low shot into the net.

“You’re getting sacked in the morning!” crowed the home fans as Mourinho fumed in the dugout. The visiting manager knew that his team would now have to pierce hosts who could afford to play as they had when achieving memorable victories away to Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester City this season. It was a while before Chelsea looked like rising to that task but eventually they did summon more intensity and creativity.

Kurt Zouma came within millimetres of equalising from a corner but Manuel Lanzini scrambled the right-back’s close-ranger header off the line.

The home side remained dangerous on the counterattack. Begovic blocked a James Collins header in the 36th minute. Moments later, Lanzini should have doubled the home side’s lead after being put through courtesy of a beautiful flick by Payet. Lanzini clipped the ball over the advancing Begovic but it flew over the bar, too.

Costa put a proper clearance on a West Ham corner in the 44th minute and it led to a wonderful counterattacking chance, with four Chelsea players racing towards two West Ham defenders. Willian slipped a pass through to Fàbregas, who cracked a low shot into the net – but the Spaniard was ruled to have been offside. Within a minute Chelsea lost a player and the plot.

Matic, on a booking for a previous foul on Lanzini, was adjudged to have tripped Diafra Sakho and was shown a second yellow by Moss. The visitors surrounded the official to vent their anger. That, at least, was like the old Chelsea.

Moss showed two of the offenders, Fàbregas and John Terry, yellow cards and then sent Louro to the stands for berating the fourth official. Mourinho watched the second half from the directors’ box, having been ordered not to return to the sidelines.

A man down on the pitch and two down in the dugout, Chelsea faced a stern character test now, on top of their footballing trial. Their initial response was decent. With Mikel John Obi introduced for Fàbregas during the break the visitors got a grip on the game despite their numerical disadvantage. Eleven minutes into the second period they drew level, Gary Cahill whacking a bouncing ball into the net from close range after Zouma flicked on a corner.

West Ham battled to regain the upper hand. Payet was a constant menace, probing and conniving relentlessly. But with Mikel joining Ramires in protecting the back four, Chelsea defended well.

Mourinho’s men retained their ambition to attack when they could. Ramires should have made Adrian work in the 77th minute after being teed up by Eden Hazard, but the Brazilian miskicked from 16 yards.

That proved costly, as two minutes later, Slaven Bilic’s decision to spring Andy Carroll from the bench paid off. The striker leapt to meet a fine cross from the left by Aaron Cresswell and sent a powerful header into the net from 10 yards.

Chelsea’s fifth league defeat of the season was complete, their problems nowhere near over.

Southampton’s Sadio Mané denies Liverpool win but is then sent off

Just to be clear, it is Liverpool who are the draw specialists, not their new manager. Jürgen Klopp is simply taking longer than expected to galvanise a side who have now drawn eight of their last nine games. The German thought he had overseen his first win here when Christian Benteke put Liverpool ahead with 13 minutes remaining but Sadio Mané levelled the scores nine minutes later before being sent off in stoppage time for a foul on Alberto Moreno that brought a second yellow.

“Now I know not to celebrate too early,” Klopp said. “If I looked delighted when our goal went in it is because I was, I was really pleased. But then we give a free-kick away, the ball is in the air and we are not calm enough. These things happen and of course we are disappointed, but I saw some development. We all know it will take time and patience but opposing teams are not going to wait around for us.”

If that makes the game sound exciting, it was only the final quarter. A tedious first half had made the earlier anticlimax at Old Trafford look scintillating. “Where’s your famous atmosphere?” the Southampton fans chorused, and Klopp could have been forgiven for wondering the same thing. Anfield was so eerily quiet most of the time it was possible to make out all the insults Adam Lallana was receiving from his former public. There was certainly little happening on the pitch for anyone to get worked up about. With Daniel Sturridge still absent and Benteke on the bench there was no focus to the home attacks and slightly too much of Philippe Coutinho, James Milner and Lallana moving the ball around on the edge of the visitors’ area with no end result.

Southampton looked more purposeful when they came forward, holding the ball well and always threatening to find Graziano Pellè in a dangerous area, although it was Virgil van Dijk who came closer to scoring when the visitors ended the half with a sustained spell of pressure. The centre-half brought a save from Simon Mignolet when left unmarked at the far post from a free-kick, then won a header from the resulting corner to force Lucas Leiva to clear from under his own crossbar. Moreno fired high and wide from Lallana just before the interval, though perhaps the best chance of the half fell to Steven Davis when Mamadou Sakho misjudged a defensive header. The ball went straight to Davis near the penalty spot. But he was either too surprised or off balance to take advantage with a shot at goal.

It was no surprise to see Benteke replace Divock Origi for the second half and immediately he combined with Lallana to set up a half-chance and earn the first of a succession of corners. Nothing came of any of them but at least Liverpool brought the crowd to life with a promising flurry of attacks as Southampton were pinned back, culminating with Moreno sending a fierce shot across the face of goal from a narrow angle.

Moreno’s next effort, from a more promising position after being found well by Lallana and Coutinho, ended up high in the Kop to audible groans, though the pacy full-back instantly made amends by racing from half way to dispossess Mané in the act of shooting.

As in the Europa League game against Rubin Kazan on Thursday Klopp also added Roberto Firmino to his attacking mix before the end, though it was Benteke, with an old-fashioned centre-forward’s header, who finally broke the deadlock. Milner retrieved a loose ball on the right wing, looked up and hit a measured cross. Benteke timed his run perfectly, climbed higher than José Fonte and placed a firm header into Maarten Stekelenburg’s top-left corner. Klopp, in danger of becoming a passive figure on the touchline by that point, leapt into the air in celebration, prematurely as it turned out.

When James Ward-Prowse launched a free-kick into the Liverpool area four minutes from the end, Southampton won two successive aerial challenges, and when Gastón Ramírez headed across the face of goal from the second one, Mignolet could neither reach the ball nor prevent Mané hooking it in.

“We were only worth a point. We can play better football than that,” Ronald Koeman said with disarming honesty. “It was a great goal from Benteke but a good reaction from us to come back so late.”

Man of the match Victor Wanyama (Southampton)

Harry Kane hat-trick fires Tottenham Hotspur to easy win over Bournemouth

In the end, and cruel as it was, the most brutally accurate assessment of this game was inadvertently broadcast over the public address system about a minute from time. “It’s fucking unbelievable,” said a visiting supporter, whose technology had somehow logged on to the same frequency as the PA and unaware his comments were booming around the arena. “Men against boys.” It was hard to disagree.

Harry Kane has been craving opponents as accommodating as Bournemouth since the spring. This was the afternoon everything finally clicked, when Spurs’ supply-line was irresistible and the rivals’ goalkeeper so obliging that the flurry of errors almost served to devalue the England striker’s contribution. Artur Boruc sank without trace, his late save from Clinton N’Jié exceptional only because everything that had preceded it had been so woeful. The Premier League is proving a brutal stage but one on which Tottenham, sixth and rising, are revelling again.

Kane needed this. The forward had been industrious but largely luckless up to this point and his hat-trick was reward for months of endeavour and, potentially, a springboard to another prolific run. He benefited from Christian Eriksen’s excellence, the Dane running riot in the space and time offered by wide-eyed opponents. “I never had any doubts about Harry but it was a very important hat-trick,” said Mauricio Pochettino when reflecting on Kane’s one goal in 13 club games before this visit to the south coast. “It’s important for him to learn from that period. It happens in football. I’m happy because he’ll become a much better player after such a tough run.”

This was far more straightforward, even for a player sporting heavy strapping on his right knee. For all that Bournemouth were accommodating, the balance of their side undone by the depressing swath of injuries that have denied Eddie Howe the spine of his first-choice team, Spurs were admirably clinical. Eriksen sparked their recovery from an early deficit with a nicely weighted pass beyond Steve Cook for Kane to chase down nine minutes in. Boruc charged manically out to upend him and concede the most predictable of penalties and Kane stroked in his second club goal of the season from the spot.

Boruc’s discomfort had only just begun. Within minutes Glenn Murray was penalised for a foul and Eriksen squared the free-kick across the area for Danny Rose to collect. The full-back’s effort thumped into Simon Francis and dropped kindly for Mousa Dembélé to collect and convert as home defenders, wrong-footed by the deflection, failed to recover. Boruc did at least keep out Toby Alderweireld’s near-post flick from Eriksen’s free-kick but on the half-hour he was disconcerted by Sylvain Distin’s presence and Kane’s innocuous cross squirmed from his hands. Erik Lamela could not believe his luck and tapped the ball into the gaping net.

The Pole’s handling was greasy throughout, even if he was left exposed too often by his team’s porous midfield and the acres they allowed Eriksen. The playmaker struck the goal-frame from distance before the end with a sumptuously curled attempt and it was his whipped centre which was converted by Kane, the striker bursting easily beyond Distin to divert into the net on the stretch. The hat-trick came courtesy of another Boruc spill, the goalkeeper pushing out Alderweireld’s header at Eriksen’s corner to present a tap-in, and there might have been another penalty before the end as the panicked 35-year-old let slip another centre and tripped the Spurs striker in the goalmouth.

He was spared that concession by Roger East almost as a kindness. “The goals were all self-inflicted, that’s evident,” said Howe. “But we take collective responsibility. Artur has been excellent since he’s been here and played a huge part in our promotion. He’s not that kind of character [to be inconsolable]: he’s strong mentally and resolute when it comes to errors. He’s seen it and done it. But there is a need for the team to eradicate those mistakes and for our goalkeepers to recover their form.”

Adam Federici had played at Manchester City the previous weekend when Boruc had succumbed to injury in the warm-up, and had also been on the end of a 5-1 thrashing. These are relatively unfamiliar problems for Howe, even if he and Bournemouth have recovered from far worse predicaments than being just outside the Premier League’s relegation zone. But striking the right emphasis between “resolute defence” and the attacking enterprise which led Matt Ritchie to volley the home side emphatically ahead after 49 seconds is proving a test.

Howe’s side had led but ended scorched. Each week is proving an education.

Man of the match Christian Eriksen (Tottenham Hotspur)

Arsenal join local rivals and Liverpool in race for BuLi’s hottest prospect

According to reports from Mirror Football on Saturday, Arsenal scouts ran the rule overLiverpool and Tottenham Hotspur target Leroy Sane last week.

The 19 year-old Schalke prodigy has enjoyed a fantastic start to the season and now netted seven times in his last nine games for club and country. That includes three goals in the Bundesliga, another three for Germany’s U21 squad and a strike in the Europa League on Thursday evening – which was witnessed live by Gunners scouts.

The 6 foot winger has already drawn plenty of attention from the Premier League. Liverpool reportedlylaunched a €15million bid during the summer and are expected to revive their interest within the next two transfer windows, whilst Tottenham Hotspur are also considering a bid following the summer arrivals of former Bundesliga stars Heung Min Son and Kevin Wimmer.

According to Mirror Football, however, Arsenal have now entered the race to sign Sane after watching him in action last week. He didn’t start against Sparta Prague but came off the bench to net a late equaliser in a 2-2 draw.