Cole Palmer scored a stoppage-time equaliser against former club Manchester City as the Premier League champions drew 4-4 with Chelsea in a sensational game at Stamford Bridge.

Erling Haaland opened the scoring via a controversial penalty, before goals from Thiago Silva and then Raheem Sterling - who was outstanding against his old team - drew Chelsea back in front. Yet it was 2-2 at the interval after Manuel Akanji, left unmarked from a corner, equalised in added time and Haaland bundled in his second right after the restart to again give City the lead.

Nicolas Jackson reacted first to a minor Ederson error to make it 3-3, then Rodri looked to have won it for the visitors with a long-range strike that deflected past Robert Sanchez.

More drama was to come. Substitute Armando Broja was felled in the Chelsea box in stoppage time and Palmer - who started the season as a City player - was nerveless in dispatching the spot kick.

Speaking to Sky Sports after the match, Pep Guardiola touched on Manchester City's slim lead atop the Premier League table as we head into the international break.

"What's important is we go into the international break top of the league," the manager said. "I couldn't expect that after that Arsenal game when we lost. We are qualified for the Champions League, where we are top of the league.

"Where we came from, wow, that is really, really good. Now they can rest, come back fit and the next games are really, really tough..."

The game was off to a cracking start until some light tussling in the box between Marc Cucurella and Haaland in the box sent Anthony Taylor over to the sideline for an extended holiday in front of the VAR screen.

For three minutes and 37 seconds — it felt like an eternity — the ball didn’t move. A lively game ground to a halt. Players stood around bored and fans grumbled in the stands.

This kind of delay has become a virtual certainty in the Premier League lately, as gaps of two minutes or more have risen from just one every two games in the era before VAR to well higher than one per game in recent years.

Is it worth it? After the long wait, Taylor awarded Haaland a penalty that could just as easily have been waved off — he and Cucurella both did some shirt-pulling and none of it looked all that serious. The nearly four-minute delay ended in a decision that will be just as controversial as a live call would have been.

Late in stoppage time, Dias brought down Broja in City’s box. This time, there was little doubt — Taylor immediately pointed to the spot — but the VAR check still caused a pointless two-minute delay that sucked the energy out of the stadium before Palmer’s dramatic equalising penalty.

As Ange Postecoglou complained last week after Tottenham’s game against Chelsea saw eight different stoppages of two minutes or more: “When you look at how much standing around we had to do today — I don’t know, maybe people enjoy that kind of thing. I don’t.”