“It feels like we’ve shown what we are made of but then you have to show it again and again and again.”
North London is red and Arsenal didn’t just win but responded to the biggest setback of the season with one of the best performances of the campaign at Tottenham on Sunday.
Almost exactly two weeks earlier, Manchester City were trailing at Anfield with less than 10 minutes to play and Mikel Arteta’s side were about to go nine points clear at the top of the league. City turned that game around and Arsenal have since dropped four points, drawing with Brentford and Wolves despite leading in both games. City, meanwhile, have a game in hand and reduced the gap at the top to two points ahead of Sunday’s trip up the Seven Sisters Road.
Anything but three points would have felt fatal for Arsenal’s hopes of winning a first league title since they were crowned champions at White Hart Lane 22 years ago. It was the perfect day, then, for some of this season’s more inconsistent performers to deliver and for things to click in attack in a way that has been far too infrequent this season.
With Ben White not even on the bench, Jurrien Timber was selected at right-back again and gave perhaps his best offensive performance of the campaign, offering plenty of support to Bukayo Saka ahead of him and exploiting the flaws in Tottenham’s press.
From the very opening stages, it was clear Timber was going to get forward, making lung-busting, White-esque overlaps to give Saka an option, and help him avoid 2v1 situations, down the right.
That support continued through the half …
… and helped ensure Saka wasn’t doubled up on as easily as he often is, but Timber’s biggest impact actually came from when he wasn’t supporting so high upfield, with his lower positioning dragging Spurs left-wingback out of the back five when the hosts looked to press.
Playing without wingers and with a back five, Spence would push on to close Timber down but without ever getting close enough for the pressure to be effective. It meant Arsenal could both control possession comfortably and then also get Saka into advantageous one-on-one situations and really stretch the Tottenham back five: in both of the examples below, Micky van de Ven is dragged out of the heart of the defence, firstly to close Saka down on the wing …
… and later to press a pass into Eberechi Eze, though he was too far away from the midfielder to intervene as Eze quickly played the ball in behind for Saka.
It was a similar scenario that saw Arsenal open the scoring, with Spence engaging Timber, who slid a ball down the line for Saka to chase …
… Saka beats Pape Matar Sarr and suddenly has the sort of space to run into that you wouldn’t expect in the area against a team with a back five, but Tottenham are again incredibly stretched and Spence, having been tasked with challenging Timber, is miles from the scene.
Within seconds, the deadlock is broken. Saka’s movement in behind in more central areas was a consistent threat for Arsenal as well. The first time we saw it had again seen Spence push up onto Timber, and Saka was sharper than van de Ven, getting the wrong side of the Dutchman. Vicario had to come out to win a header.
Vicario rescued Spurs again, with a save instead, when Piero Hincapie found Saka from the opposite flank. The Spurs defence was stretched again on this occasion, with Joao Palhinha coming out of the backline to mark Leandro Trossard – while it was Spence who pushed forward from the left, it was generally Palhinha, from centre-back, who was the player tasked with being aggressive on the right, and this time around he left a gaping channel for another wide open fullback in Hincapie to spot and deliver the ball into Saka’s path.
That forward movement from Palhinha was excellently taken advantage of by Viktor Gyokeres early on, as he ghosted behind the Portuguese and into the space between right-back Archie Gray and central centre-back Radu Dragusin. With Hincapie again in plenty of space to receive, turn, and he threaded a simple ball into Gyokeres, who had enough space to turn and face goal …
…from there he could get Dragusin into an awkward position, shuffling back towards his own goal, and the striker hit a good effort that just flashed past the far post.
In general, Gyokeres’ movement in behind looked a lot sharper and more considered throughout Sunday’s game, as he looked to create angles for the players in possession to thread their passes.
Starting one run in behind directly in front of Rice, making a pass difficult to pull off, he moves wide, creating a better angle for the ball as well as opening a bigger gap between the two Spurs defenders, before darting back inside as Rice gets ready to release the ball.
That one was overhit so led to nothing but the movement was good and the intention was the right one. If the pass and the run had been a little more suited for each other, Gyokeres would’ve run onto the ball facing goal and had an opportunity to get a shot away.
Gyokeres kept peeling into that channel, especially when Palhinha joined the efforts to press (both circled below) …
… and another sharp diagonal run just before half-time saw the Swede make his move inside too early, closing the angle Rice had to aim for and the pass ended up stuck just behind him.
Even when things didn’t quite come off, like above, Gyokeres was more involved and more alert than he’s been in a lot of games this season. He made the wrong decision in the box on the Trossard shot below — if he’d attacked the other of Gray he’d have given himself a much better chance of poking the ball in — but the first half was full of signs that he was really trying to get involved.
There was no doubting his involvement after the break, with the striker scoring twice and playing a central role to the other Arsenal goal.
Gyokeres’ first strike, ironically enough, came from one of the times Djed Spence (circled below) stayed in the backline and didn’t get out to Timber. Standing off, he gave the Arsenal right-back time to deliver a ball into a central area where Eze was occupying Dragusin and Gyokeres once again found the gap between two of Tottenham’s defenders.
The touch and finish were excellent. The touch for the third goal was even better and the goal on the whole was a combination of so much of what was good about the Arsenal performance on Sunday: Gyokeres playing his best when he has team-mates close to him, Eze getting close to the striker and acting decisively, taking as few touches as possible, in key moments, and Saka making a darting run through the middle.
There was a bit of fortune in the way the ball bounced to Eze after Saka was denied, but Arsenal earned their luck in front of goal.
Eze’s strong performance was built upon his freedom to drift and keep close to team-mates. He looks at his most comfortable when he isn’t really playing in that right channel we associate with Martin Odegaard, but when he can drift and combine with players with quick, one and two touch moves. Saka looked a natural partner for some of that play on Sunday and it fits well with Leandro Trossard as well.
The key to more consistent performances probably lies in allowing Eze to roam, not involving him in the build up, having him in close proximity to fellow attacking players for quick combinations, and watching him accelerate Arsenal’s attacking play from there. His feeling for when to arrive in the box is strong and his natural ability to combine with players makes things flow when they work. Just compare his touch maps in his last two starts and you see where he needs to be on the pitch to thrive.
The areas he was involved in in the home game against Wolves, in particular, felt ill-suited to getting the best out of him.
Hopefully now we’re going to see the manager and the player get to understand what each other wants a bit better. If a first north London derby masterclass didn’t kickstart things, maybe a second can? And that roaming role could just as easily be handed to him from the left wing too, similarly to how Trossard often plays, if there’s a desire to get him into the team alongside the captain and/or Kai Havertz when he returns to fitness.
Gyokeres’ second was the icing on the cake and well-earned after a strong performance. He could’ve had more than just two as well, had Trossard and Eze looked to play him in rather than shooting in the first and second half respectively.
A look at the numbers further underlines the performances of Arsenal’s matchwinners on the day.
Jurrien Timber’s offensive output
- Season-high three key passes despite coming off before the hour mark
Eberechi Eze’s eye for goal
- Took five shots on the day
- Up to and including the first derby of the season, Eze took a shot every 32.4 minutes in the Premier League for Arsenal. Between the two derbies, he took a shot every 120.6 minutes in the Premier League.
Bukayo Saka’s movement
- Five shots, the second most he has taken in a Premier League game this season
Viktor Gyokeres’ all-round game
- Four shots, his most in a Premier League appearance since September
- Most passes attempted (27) and passes completed (18) in a Premier League game. His average for the season is 7.5 completed passes per 90 minutes, his previous high for a game was 12.
- Had 41 touches (his Premier League average this season is 24.9 per 90 minutes)
And now it’s back to that Mikel Arteta press conference quote at the top of the piece:
“It feels like we’ve shown what we are made of but then you have to show it again and again and again.”
Viktor Gyokeres can play like that. Bukayo Saka can offer huge threat when not shackled to the wing. Eberechi Eze can be decisive, creative, clinical. Jurrien Timber can offer real support in the final third.
Those aren’t things we’ve been used to seeing from those players this season. Doing it on Sunday was a necessary first step. Now the demand, the challenge, is to repeat it again and again and again.
That is the mark of champions.