North London is red and Arsenal not only won, but responded to the biggest setback of the season with one of the best performances of the season at Tottenham on Sunday.
Almost exactly two weeks earlier, Manchester City were trailing at Anfield with less than ten minutes to play and Mikel Arteta’s side were on the verge of moving 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 close the gap at the top to a two-point lead heading into Sunday’s trip down the Seven Sisters Road.
Anything short of three points would have been fatal to Arsenal’s hopes of winning a first league title since they were crowned champions at White Hart Lane 22 years ago. So it was the perfect day for some of this season’s more inconsistent players to get results and make things click in attack in a way that has been far too rare this season.
With Ben White not even on the bench, Jurrien Timber was once again selected at right-back and delivered perhaps his best attacking performance of the campaign, providing plenty of support to Bukayo Saka ahead of him and exploiting the shortcomings in Tottenham’s press.
From the very opening stages it was clear that Timber would come forward, creating lung-busting, White-like overlaps to give Saka an option and help him avoid 2v1 situations on the right.
That support continued for half of…
…and prevented Saka from being doubled as easily as is often the case, but Timber’s biggest impact actually came when he wasn’t supporting as high up the pitch, with his lower positioning dragging the Spurs left-back out of the back five as the hosts looked to apply pressure.
Playing without wingers and with a back five, Spence pressed on to close down Timber, but without ever getting close enough for the pressure to be effective. It meant that Arsenal could both control possession comfortably and then introduce Saka into advantageous one-on-one situations and really give Tottenham five points: In both examples below, Micky van de Ven is dragged out of the heart of the defence, first to lock down Saka on the wing…
…and later to push a pass into Eberechi Eze, although he was too far away from the midfielder to intervene as Eze quickly played the ball in the back for Saka.
It was a similar scenario where Arsenal opened the scoring, with Spence attacking Timber, who pushed a ball down the line for Saka to chase down…
… Saka beats Pape Matar Sarr and suddenly has the kind of space you wouldn’t expect in the area against a team with a back five, but Tottenham are once again incredibly stretched and Spence, tasked with challenging Timber, is miles away from the scene.
Within seconds the deadlock is broken. Saka’s deficit in more central areas was also a constant threat to Arsenal. The first time we saw him we had Spence pushing against Timber again, and Saka was sharper than Van de Ven and got the wrong side of the Dutchman. Vicario had to get out to win a header.
Vicario saved Spurs again, with a save, when Piero Hincapie found Saka from the other flank. Spurs’ defense was once again put on edge 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 tasked with being aggressive on the right, and this time he left a gaping channel for another wide-open full-back in Hincapie to spot and deliver the ball into Saka’s path.
Palhinha’s forward movement was put to excellent use early on by Viktor Gyokeres, as he slid behind the Portuguese and into the space between right-back Archie Gray and centre-half Radu Dragusin. With Hincapie again having enough space to receive, turn, and he threw a simple ball into Gyokeres, who had enough space to turn and look at the goal…
…from there he was able to put Dragusin in an awkward position, shuffling back towards his own goal, and the striker fired a neat effort that flashed just past the far post.
Overall, Gyokeres’ movement looked a lot sharper and more deliberate in Sunday’s match, as he tried to create angles for the players in possession to make their passes.
He starts a run behind him directly in front of Rice, making a pass difficult to complete, he goes wide, creating a better angle for the ball and a bigger gap between the two Spurs defenders, before darting back in as Rice prepares to release the ball.
It overheated and therefore led to nothing other than the movement was good and the intention was the right one. If the pass and the run had been a little better together, Gyokeres would have met the ball towards goal and had the chance to get a shot away.
Gyokeres continued to move in that channel, especially when Palhinha joined the efforts to apply pressure (both circled below)…
…and another sharp diagonal run just before half-time saw the Swede make his move inside too early, reducing the angle Rice had to aim for and ultimately leaving the pass hanging just behind him.
Even when things weren’t going quite right, as above, Gyokeres was more committed and alert than he has been in many games this season. He made the wrong decision in the box on the Trossard shot below – if he had attacked Gray’s other he would have given himself a much better chance of putting the ball in – but the first half was full of signs that he was really trying to get involved.
After the break there was no doubt about his involvement, with the striker scoring twice and playing a central role in the other Arsenal goal.
Gyokeres’ first goal came, ironically, from one of the occasions when Djed Spence (circled below) stayed in the backline and didn’t get to Timber. As he stalled, he gave the Arsenal right-back time to deliver a ball into a central area where Eze occupied Dragusin and Gyokeres again found the gap between two of Tottenham’s defenders.
The touch and finish were excellent. The touch on the third goal was even better and the goal as a whole combined much of what was good about Arsenal’s performance on Sunday: Gyokeres played at his best when he had teammates close to him, Eze got close to the striker and acted decisively, taking as few touches as possible in key moments, and Saka made a quick run through the middle.
There was a bit of luck in the way the ball bounced to Eze after Saka was denied, but Arsenal deserved their luck in front of goal.
Eze’s strong performance was based on his freedom to drift and stay close to teammates. He is most comfortable when he is not really playing in the right channel that we associate with Martin Odegaard, but when he can drift and combine with players with quick movements with one or two touches. Saka seemed a natural partner for some of that play on Sunday and it also suits Leandro Trossard well.
The key to more consistent performances likely lies in allowing Eze to roam, not involving him in the build-up, keeping him close to other attacking players for quick combinations, and watching him accelerate Arsenal’s attacking play from there. His sense of when to arrive in the penalty area 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’ll see where he needs to be on the field to thrive.
In particular, the areas he was involved in in the home game against Wolves did not seem suited to getting the best out of him.
Hopefully we now see that the manager and the player understand better what each other wants. If a first derby masterclass in North London didn’t get things going, perhaps a second one could? And that roaming role could just as easily be handed to him from the left wing, similar to how Trossard often plays, if there is a desire to get him into the team alongside the captain and/or Kai Havertz when he returns to fitness.
Gyokeres’ second place was the icing on the cake and well deserved after a strong performance. He could also have had more than two, if Trossard and Eze had wanted to play him instead of shooting in the first and second half respectively.
A look at the numbers further underlines the performances of Arsenal’s match winners on the day.
Jurrien Timber’s attacking output
- Three key passes during the season, despite coming off before the hour mark
Eberechi Eze’s eye for goal
- I shot five shots that day
- Up to and including the first derby of the season, Eze scored a shot every 32.4 minutes for Arsenal in the Premier League. Between the two derbies, he scored a shot every 120.6 minutes in the Premier League.
Bukayo Saka’s move
- Five shots, the second most he has scored in a Premier League match this season
The all-round game of Viktor Gyokeres
- Four shots, his most in a Premier League appearance since September
- Most passes attempted (27) and passes completed (18) in a Premier League match. His average for the season is 7.5 completed passes per 90 minutes, his previous high for a match was 12.
- Had 41 touches (his Premier League average this season is 24.9 per 90 minutes)
And now we go back to that quote from Mikel Arteta’s press conference at the top of the piece:
“It feels like we showed what we are made of, but then you have to show it again and again.”
Viktor Gyokeres can play like that. Bukayo Saka can be a huge threat when not chained to the wing. Eberechi Eze can be decisive, creative and clinical. Jurrien Timber can provide real support in the final third.
Those are not the things we are used to from those players this season. Doing that on Sunday was a necessary first step. Now the demand, the challenge, is to repeat it again and again.
That is the mark of champions.
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