It’s happened again! Arsenal beat Tottenham 4-1 to emphatically remind everyone of the only color in North London: R-E-D. Playing a terrible team is often the best tonic for a side when things aren’t going their way and boy are Spurs bad. Arsenal hammered them en route to their largest Premier League victory away to Tottenham. The Gunners have won 7, drawn 1, and lost 0 of the last 8 North London Derbies. We’re one win (or Spurs non-win) away from celebrating St. Totteringham’s Day.
Ebere Eze is proper Arsenal, isn’t he? Absolutely despises Tottenham Hotspur. The Hale Ender come home scored a brace to go along with his hat trick against Spurs earlier this season, making him the third-highest Arsenal scorer in the fixture with only two matches played, only Robert Pires (7) and some guy with the initials EA (6) have scored more.
And welcome to the party, Viktor Gyokeres. The Big Swede ran his Premier League goal total to 10 with his brace, including the eventual winning goal early in the second half. Today was among his best performances in an Arsenal shirt and hopefully augurs a strong closing run to the season. His hold-up play was particularly good — it was his little stabbed touch that set Eze free to find Bukayo Saka on the move for the third goal. Gyokeres has five goals in his last five Premier League matches, by the way.
For what it’s worth, Gyokeres would be even more effective if you weren’t allowed to grab, hold, and yank him all over the place with near impunity. I’m not sure if it’s because he’s big and physical himself, it’s his first season in the Premier League, or because he’s wearing an Arsenal shirt, but it feels as if he is refereed differently than most of the strikers in the PL. There is always going to be battling between a striker and CB. Some of it won’t get called and some will get called on the attacker and defender, respectively. The ratios seem to be differently skewed with Big Vik — he was getting tossed around by Radu Dragusin and left looking for calls that didn’t come all match.
The big win is an excellent response to a disappointing string of results, but one bad habit in particular reared its ugly head again — switching off after taking the lead. The ball hadn’t been back in play for 30 seconds after Arsenal went up 1-0 before Declan Rice got caught in two minds, lost the ball, and Spurs equalized. In a particularly amusing bit of irony, the cameras captured Rice reminding his teammates to stay focused and keep their heads after Arsenal scored. To be fair, he immediately took responsibility for conceding and signaled “my bad” to his teammates.
Rice had a mixed game, to say the least. The turnover leading to the goal might be his worst mistake in an Arsenal shirt. He nearly was to blame for a goal in the second half, too. He mis-controlled what looked to be a rather easy clearance / cut-out coming across to challenge Dominic Solanke. A few seconds later, Richarlison’s backheel flick deflected off William Saliba and beyond David Raya only for the Arsenal keeper to make a tremendous scrambling save to swat it off the line. Declan failed to put Viktor Gyokeres in on goal in the first half on the break, perhaps helped by Gyokeres not quite angling his run properly. And he opted to cross from the near side in the second half when he probably should have ripped a shot on goal.
He did the stuff he usually does well enough. He patrolled the middle, broke up the play, and set the tempo in transition on both sides of the ball. I just can’t remember a match where he had FOUR instances of mistakes / bad decisions that stood out. Is it a bit unfair to judge him by his own nearly impossibly lofty standards? He wasn’t quite up to them today. But an off game from Declan Rice is still better than almost everybody else’s good games, so.
Gabriel nearly did his bad thing, too. Randall Kolo Muani had the ball in the back of the net for a Spurs second goal but the referee immediately called it off for a foul. The Spurs attacker shoved the Brazilian defender, who exaggerated the contact, before scoring. It was a foul, barely, and there certainly wasn’t enough in it to overturn the decision with VAR. But I don’t think he’d get that foul via VAR if it hadn’t been given on the pitch, either. Kolo Muani probably didn’t help himself by committing six fouls throughout the match — it’s easier to whistle a guy if he’s been committing them all over the pitch (and had, I believe, two instances of simulation and one of waving an imaginary card to ask for a booking). The Spurs attacker managed to avoid a booking, somehow.
It feels a bit wrong to keep pointing out errors and shaky performances in a resounding, bounce-back win against Arsenal’s biggest rivals, but darn it, I’m going to push through. Jurrien Timber is next up. The fullback got himself a deserved, early booking for hauling an attacker down after he got beat. He has that in him, doesn’t he? It feels like he does that a bit too often for comfort. You’d rather not have your fullbacks playing carefully on a booking, particularly when they’re asked to cover as much ground as they have to at Arsenal. In Timber’s defense, fatigue is likely a big factor in today’s mistake and bad decision. He’s played a ton of minutes lately because Ben White is dealing with minor knocks.
Credit to Mikel Arteta, after Timber clearly had to give up / back off on a recovery run in the second half out of fear of a second booking, the manager quickly got Cristhian Mosquera on to relieve him. The Ecuadorian was excellent in relief.
The win feels great. It’s exactly what Arsenal needed. Battering your rival on their ground feels great and will lift the club into what should be a good, full week of training ahead of Chelsea next weekend. But Arsenal aren’t out of the woods yet. They’re still making mistakes they weren’t making earlier in the season when they looked a far more dominant team. The combination of a feel-good win with a full week between matches should help iron some of that out. Arsenal are 5 points clear with 10 matches left. It is still in their hands.