Marcos Alonso extra-time winner saves Chelsea against battling Plymouth

On a thrilling, boisterous Saturday afternoon it took Chelsea 105 minutes, 39 shots, 19 corners and 670 passes to finally take the lead against Plymouth. These are the kind of numbers that suggest a pasting, a hammering, fourth round FA Cup minnows hanging on by their toenails.

But this was something else entirely, a 2-1 victory for Chelsea, but a day when Plymouth came to compete, played neat, disciplined, counterattacking football and really might have won this game. Deep into extra time they were spanking in shots at the Chelsea goal looking to force a shoot-out.

Chelsea’s occasional problems are clear enough, a well calibrated passing and pressing machine that seems at times to be lulling itself to sleep. But Plymouth were a great tribute to the enduring strength and professionalism of the lower tiers, and a huge credit to their manager, Steve Schumacher, who only sounds like a disciple of the Ralf Rangnick atelier, but is in reality from Liverpool.

To offer some perspective, Plymouth are seventh in League One. Their record signing is £500,000, which translates into two weeks of Timo Werner in west London.

As the game meandered through extra time, Chelsea had Romelu Lukaku, Kai Havertz, Werner and Hakim Ziyech on the pitch, a combined £280m of attacking talent, and all certainly standing quite near one another.

Plymouth even had time to miss a penalty five minutes from the end of extra time, as Malang Sarr brought down Ryan Hardie, only for Hardie to see a poor effort well saved by Kepa Arrizabalaga.

The Plymouth end was a stirring sight at the start of the day, a sizeable portion of Devon packed into the full double-decker and generating a deep surge of lunchtime noise as the players went across to wave before kick