LAST UPDATE | 13 Jan 2023
IT MIGHT be tempting to suggest this weekend’s North London Derby is the biggest and most important one that has taken place in a long time.
But that is not strictly true when you remember last season’s equivalent fixture was almost as close to a Champions League qualifier as a Premier League fixture can get, as it was the third-last game of the season for both sides.
On that occasion, it feels like the roles were reversed compared to now.
Arsenal were showing signs of wilting, having lost four of their previous nine fixtures, whereas Tottenham had been rejuvenated under Antonio Conte.
Spurs would beat Arsenal 3-0 and lose just one of their last 11 top-flight games on their way to securing Champions League football.
Much to their fans’ dismay, Arsenal simultaneously missed out on qualifying for Europe’s biggest club competition.
Therefore, just eight months ago, it looked like Tottenham obviously were the North London team on the up — if you were to ask which of the two clubs would be title contenders for the 2022-23 season, neutral observers would predominantly say Spurs.
Yet as Sunday’s clash approaches, it is Mikel Arteta who is being hailed for transforming the Gunners into a side that look capable of winning the Premier League title, whereas there are continual question marks over Antonio Conte’s future at Tottenham.
But despite the 11-point gap between the teams, football is seldom straightforward, as illustrated by the sides’ contrasting fortunes at the end of last season.
It is earlier in the campaign than it feels for mid-January — now is only roughly the halfway point, as many teams this weekend will be playing their 19th out of 38 games.
Arsenal’s most recent Premier League fixture — a 0-0 draw at home to Newcastle — was just the third time they have dropped top-flight points this season (away at Southampton and Man United were the others).
But the big question most people are asking is whether Arteta’s squad has the depth and experience to cope with the rigours of a title race, particularly in a unique season significantly disrupted by the Qatar World Cup.
They have already lost one key player to injury — Brazilian forward Gabriel Jesus — for a substantial period.
Yet there are some factors working in their favour. They are already out of the EFL Cup, affording them potentially pivotal rest time, having been beaten in their first match against Brighton.
They may well soon be out of the FA Cup too, having drawn Man City in the fourth round.
The Europa League knockout stages await, but Arteta likely will be tempted to continue with a largely second-string side in that competition.
And do they have less impressive squad depth and experience compared with, say, Leicester’s 2015-16 champions?
As was the case then, most of the sides tipped to potentially challenge for the title have been unconvincing at best.
Chelsea and Liverpool are so far off the pace that a top-four finish would feel like a decent achievement at this stage.
Man United and Tottenham have been sporadically impressive but are both in transition to a degree and don’t feel fully formed yet.
Even Man City, most people’s pre-season favourites, have dropped points five times already, including twice in their last four matches.
Consequently, a surprise top-two of Arsenal and newly mega-rich Newcastle is not beyond the realms of possibility.
The point is often made that Arsenal’s relative success at the moment exacerbates Spurs’ present shortcomings.
Indeed, taking a step back, the position Conte’s men find themselves in is far from disastrous — they are still in the Champions League and FA Cup, and just two points off Newcastle in third.
But while Spurs and others are no doubt envious of Arsenal’s present position, perhaps it is Eddie Howe’s men’s rise that feels most galling.
At the equivalent point in the season last year, the Magpies were 19th and looked in serious danger of relegation.
Their dramatic improvement since then has shown how simple success in football can be if there is enough money at a team’s disposal.
Buying several new players and putting them on big wages as well as hiring an accomplished manager really can turn a club from relegation candidates to top-four contenders within the space of 12 months.
Many pundits previously argued that it would take time — ‘five years’ was routinely cited — for Newcastle to become capable of competing with the best teams in the league, but that is not necessarily true, as their success has proven.
And if it wasn’t already the case before, fans and critics have certainly woken up to what is possible and how closely interlinked success and finances are in the Premier League, provided the money is spent with a degree of competence and footballing knowledge.
So in the 1990s, if a team was struggling, supporters might call for a change in manager, a few new signings or lament the fact that a certain player either is/isn’t being picked. Owners were seldom under the same level of scrutiny.
Now, increasingly, it feels as if the ‘Newcastle effect’ is having wider ramifications.
It is the owners, rather than the managers or players, who increasingly bear the brunt of supporters’ frustrations.
A portion of Chelsea fans recently sang the name of the previous owner Roman Abramovich when the current team was struggling. There have been similarly loud recent calls at Tottenham for Daniel Levy and his colleagues to step aside.
Man United fans, of course, are ahead of the curve in a sense as they have been protesting the Glazers’ ownership for years now.
Even at Liverpool, a team who have overachieved to an extent in recent seasons compared to what they can afford to spend, there are murmurs of discontent and strong signs Fenway Sports Group will soon sell the club.
At times, it seems that near-relentless success — the kind Man City have experienced of late or that Newcastle may soon become accustomed to — is the only solution to stemming widespread fan disaffection.
So really, it could be argued that Newcastle’s success rather than Arsenal’s is the biggest reason behind Spurs fans’ palpable unhappiness — the team were booed off following a particularly dispiriting New Year’s Day home defeat by Aston Villa.
Like Tottenham and their so-called ‘Spursy’ tendencies,’ for years, the Magpies were seen as somewhat of a joke by rival fans owing to decades of persistent failure and on occasion, dramatic underachievement.
The North London club — who last secured the title in 1961 and whose major trophy wins since the turn of the century amount to a single League Cup triumph (in 2008) — look at the substantial upturn in fortunes for present-day Newcastle and think ‘that should be us’.
And they may well get their wish. It seems now that every underperforming club secretly yearns to be funded by a state with a morally dubious human rights record a la Newcastle, PSG and City.
And recent reports suggest Qatar’s sporting investment group has held talks with Tottenham amid plans for a possible investment.
According to The Guardian this week: ”Sources close to Nasser al-Khelaifi, the chairman of Qatar Sports Investments (QSI) and president of Paris Saint-Germain, have confirmed that he met Daniel Levy, the chairman of Tottenham, in London last week.”
Putting aside the moral quandaries and the many well-documented human rights issues that were discussed at length around the time of the 2022 World Cup, a potential deal would be complicated by the fact that European clubs are forbidden from taking part in the same competition if they share an owner.
However, minority stakes are permitted (QSI also own 22% of Portuguese club Braga) and so this possible solution could be one way around the problem.
And with Spurs heavily in debt owing to the construction of their new stadium and revenue lost during the pandemic, Levy may be tempted at the very least to seek support from elsewhere.
And like Spurs fans, QSI will have watched Newcastle’s recent rise with a mixture of awe and envy.
Regardless of Saudi Arabia’s even worse human rights record than Qatar, with a few notable exceptions, their ownership of Newcastle has gone relatively unchallenged by fans, authority figures and a significant portion of the media.
It would of course be naive to expect that the Spurs situation would be significantly different if it transpires.
And a bad result on Sunday will only intensify calls for these changes to come to fruition.
Upcoming Premier League fixtures (3pm kick-offs unless stated otherwise):
Friday
Aston Villa v Leeds (20.00)
Saturday
Man United v Man City (12.30)
Brighton v Liverpool
Everton v Southampton
Nottingham Forest v Leicester City
Wolves v West Ham
Brentford v Bournemouth (17.30)
Sunday
Chelsea v Crystal Palace (14.00)
Newcastle v Fulham (14.00)
Tottenham v Arsenal (16.30)