Gunners staying ahead: Tottenham Hotspur 2-3 Arsenal - Match Review

Arsenal squeeze past Spurs in a tense North London Derby to remain top of the league.

Now, why am I writing an article about the mighty Arsenal? Many reasons: Man Utd have nothing to play for in the league, the title race is heating up, and I watched a North London derby at an Arsenal fan pub with one of my closest friends who’s an Arsenal fan in Joe. So, yes, I’ll be writing about Arsenal: what a treat.

Arsenal were travelling to White Hart Lane needing a win to keep the pressure on City who have a game in head, whilst Tottenham needed a win to push for the fourth Champions League space that Aston Villa’s currently occupying with real belief. In the lead up to this match, I sensed that it’ll be fiercely competitive given the high stakes, resulting in a 2-2 draw. The Eaglet was buzzing with gooners; Joe was grinning with hope; I was wishing for a great game (perhaps an Arsenal defeat deep down too) to make this review worthwhile.

Both teams looked a bit nervous to start out with and understandably so given the gravity of the fixture. Arsenal weren’t playing as smoothly as they did at the Emirates against Chelsea, and Spurs were lacking adventure in their play despite the likes of Rodrigo Bentacour and James Maddison always showing for the ball.

There were some chances in the first ten: Maddison blazed a cutback over, and Kai Havertz had a goal disallowed for offside.

The deadlock was broken by the 15th minute though. From a Saka corner, Pierre-Emile Højbjerg puts a bullet header past the Spurs keeper Guglielmo Vicario. “1-0 to the Arsenal” was ringing ‘round the pub, as you can imagine. Up to that point, I was disappointed by how Spurs showed up: for a team with a real chance of getting Champions League football with only Aston Villa in their way, in a volatile, unpredictable fixture such as the North London derby, they were playing like pussies. No cap.

But the own goal woke them up. Christian Romero was getting chances galore - heading just wide from a corner, and hitting the post with another header from a delivery on the left soon after. I’ll say this: Romero was probably the only Spurs player who showed up for the derby in the first 20 minutes.

Then Spurs equalised with centre back Van Der Ven stabbing home a chance that appeared after a couple of deflections. Then he didn’t: it was declared offside. The Arsenal fans loved that VAR decision, I tell ya.

To add insult to injury for the Spurs fans, Bukayo Saka - Arsenal’s main man - doubled the gunners lead from a good break. I hate to say this but Arsenal do play like a great football team, unironically. The attacking play from Arsenal compared to Spurs’ was chalk and cheese, night and day, black and white.

And Havertz punished Tottenham’s impotence with a header from another corner. 3-0. Before the third went in Joe said to me that if it gets to three it’s over, and I agreed. Spurs were poor.

When the second half rolled around, the Sky Sports coverage were showing the home fans cutting from the ground: they thought the same as everyone else that the match was dead and buried. And so they should have - the home team showed nothing for their fans to be inspired by.

Two instances summed up Spurs’ lack of vitality: 1. at the end of some decent build up play, Pedro Porro sliced a hapless shot from the corner of the box, and 2. during an Arsenal corner, Maddison dived onto the ground because Takehiro Tomiyasu “bodied” him. I mean Tomiyasu is a solid fullback, but he’s no unit.

I was pretty negged I won’t lie. I didn’t want to face the possibly of Arsenal travelling to Old Trafford in two weeks with the chance of lifting the Premier League at our home turf. That would cap off an absolutely horrendous season for United.

But appeared Arsenal’s keeper Raya was pretty negged by his team’s supremacy as well: around the hour mark, he delivered a beautiful ball to Romero - playing the box to box centre-back - and he lashed it into the bottom left corner: what the actual fuck. Persistence pays off, I guess.

3-1, and the pub was feeling anxious. I was loving it. Joe was quietening down. The match was getting edgy, but the problem was - I hate to say it - Spurs: they seriously had no cutting edge.

But by the 85th minute, Ben Davies risked it all for his team and got a pen. He allowed Declan Rice to annilihate, I mean absolutely obliterate, his potential to have more children with the foul that led to the Spurs pen. It was a cringe foul, I couldn’t restrain my mild disgust to the entertainment of a relatively attractive Arsenal fan who stood next to me (she thought I was a Spurs fan - I reckon she was trying to flirt with me).

Heung Min Son, who was largely absent from the game, stepped up and buried the pen in the top left corner. 3-2. Arsenal fans were getting the nervous sweats.

But the red side of North London pulled through in the end. 3-2 it finished, and the momentum, the hope, remains for the gunners to finally reclaim the elusive league title after 20 long years.

As I write this, Man City beat Nottingham Forest, so the gap is still a point. But Arsenal are still in pole position: despite City’s game in hand, this season has been bonkers so we can’t sit here and assume they will win, even if that mindset may be advantageous in Arsenal’s case to not let up.

I took away many things from the match, to be honest. Arsenal are a great team now. They are as close as they have been in recent memory of excising their clownish nature to seriously challenge and, perhaps win, some major trophies. Spurs are a team of nearly men. Now, I can’t talk too much because I support Man Utd, BUT, I won’t lie, it’s clear to me that Spurs just have a bit of a shit team.

It’s bizarre: for instance, Dejan Kulusevski should by all accounts be a great winger given his natural attributes but he lacks the finesse, or the polish, to be a winger that scare the fullbacks of bigger teams. Hojberg should be a great holding midfielder: he has a great passing range, he has the engine, yet his lack of concentration, his poor positional awareness makes him a liability at times - I dare say he’s a player that even Spurs fans wouldn’t put down first, which is a shame. Son is one of the Premier League’s best supporting actors in an attack in recent memory: say all you want about Harry Kane, but when Kane was leading the charge, Son was possessed by a goalscoring spirit. He should be world class: he has pace, he’s a devastating finisher, he can play across the front line, yet he isn’t. No one who watches the Prem regularly would class him at that level. It’s so strange.

Spurs have a team, each player knows roughly what they should be doing, but they just seem incapable, as if their potential is just out of their reach.

I wouldn’t say the match itself was a classic by any means despite the scoreline - it was too disjointed, lopsided to be a thriller, no matter how much the producers at Sky Sports want you to believe that. Nonetheless, it was an intriguing, informative match-up that pushes the title race to the wire. I’ll be back with the Man Utd/Arsenal match review.