AND SO AT THE end of another tremendous, logic-warping North London derby, the Arsenal players frolicked toward their travelling support and Manchester City fans put their phones away with a sigh. Arsenal are still in this race.
But how to make sense of their latest step down the gauntlet? Analyse the game coldly and you can make as much of an argument for a Spurs draw as a narrow Arsenal win.
But this game is never played coldly, and so you generally end up with this kinds of bizarro epics. Spurs were probably the better team while falling 3-0 behind but then manage to score twice and draw great streams of Arsenal sweat while doing much less than they had done earlier.
You might argue that Arsenal contriving to chuck away a three-goal lead is a sign of some mental fraying in the season’s end-game, but they shouldn’t agonise over this game’s analysis. A win away to your fiercest rivals in the final stretch of a title race is all anyone should be asking for. Take the grammar of the thing and don’t spend anytime fretting about the vocabulary that comes along with it. When you’re in the championship rounds with Manchester City, all you have to do is win.
And in spite of the flaws Arsenal exhibited today, they have won their most difficult remaining fixture, which means they should keep City honest by winning three final three games. Arsenal have Bournemouth and Everton at home – both of whom have nothing left to fight for – either side of a trip to Old Trafford. That should not be treated as a daunting task, as Manchester United are not a serious team.
Tottenham are somewhere in between. They are more serious than United but still more flimsy and insurgent than the cool collection of furrowed brows now playing for Arsenal. If there was a criticism of Tottenham today, it wasn’t that they were weak or naive or too open, but the opposite. They tried to be a little too grown-up; they suffered from a slight deficiency of Angeball.
That was evident in the selection of Pierre-Emile Højbjerg over both Pape Sarr and Yves Bissouma. Højbjerg has destructive qualities but he has never looked comfortable enough in possession to suit Postecoglu’s approach, and it was he who headed in Arsenal’s opening goal, from a corner won by Arsenal’s voracious pressing. Højbjerg was caught on the ball a little too often in the first-half, but just prior to the opening goal, Mickey Van de Ven was the guilty party; the last man holding the ticking package when Spurs walked right into Arsenal’s pressing traps.
Spurs continued to blithely play their best football as they leaked goals: Romero hit the post and an absurdly tight VAR call ruled out Van de Ven’s equaliser before Saka skated clear on a counter-attack to twist Ben Davies’ blood and roll the ball into the corner. It was a characteristic finish by Saka, though Destiny Udogie might have done a better job of stopping it had he been fit. Spurs felt aggrieved too: Dejan Kulusevski was unintentionally tripped in the Arsenal box moments earlier: it was one of those marginal incidents in which one party is guaranteed to feel hard done by.
The third goal again arrived from a corner, Havertz left in a ludicrous amount of space in front of goal to nod in. Spurs have had issues defending corners all season, but here they weren’t helped by the Premier League approaching set pieces like a sequel to The Purge: on corners, folks, anything goes. One of the reasons Havertz was able to separate himself in the box was because he pushed Van de Ven in the back. It is an area of the game of which VAR remains remarkably incurious.
The third goal seemed to stupefy Spurs for a while, and Arsenal flexed their control over the game for much of the early part of the second-half, as the game trundled to the point in the horror movie in which someone thinks aloud, ‘It’s quiet…almost too quiet.’
Enter David Raya, and a comedy slash at the ball that went straight to Christian Romero who was bizarrely leading the Spurs attack but finished as if it came naturally to him. That sprung the stadium to life, but Spurs’ attacks in chasing the game were oddly stodgy, consisting largely of floating crosses into Raya’s grateful arms. They didn’t look like forcing a second goal until they won a late penalty, Davies floored when Declan Rice delivered his greatest kick to the bollocks since he declared for England.
From there Arteta pointed repeatedly to his brain and Arsenal steeled themselves against a disaster wrapped up in a humiliation that never came.
They held on and that’s all they needed to do, because holding on is now the name of the game.
With three games to go they look like lasting the distance, and from their nervy end they can pluck one great positive. Spurs showed enough to suggest they can unnerve Manchester City when the sides meet on 14 May.
