LONDON — Given everything that had occurred in the previous hour and a half, could you really blame Mikel Arteta for hoping that the gods might have some plan for his Arsenal side? So ludicrous had this game been it seemed only logical to assume that someone up there had plans fair or foul.
With one of their worst halves of football in the Premier League this year, Arsenal somehow romped into a 3-0 lead. Arteta’s league leaders stepped their game up significantly in the second half. Their reward? The most terrifying nine minutes of their season, Heung-min Son’s penalty following on from the moment where it seemed their entire title charge might fall apart, David Raya so spooked by the sight of Cristian Romero pressing him that he concluded the safest response was to give him the ball.
This is a game that defies much in the way of rational analysis, let alone coaching intervention. Arteta found himself powerless as Spurs lined up the siege weapons.
“I was praying,” he said.
Even a man who has prophesied Arsenal’s coming greatness in such zealous fashion during his tenure felt his faith waver at the death.
At the final whistle, it was reborn. There were miracles everywhere Arsenal looked. Raya had been redeemed from his earlier error by 20 minutes where he caught everything. The visitors had turned two shots on target into three goals in the first half. Gabriel’s posterior had been just small enough to play Micky van de Ven offside when he bundled home soon after Arsenal had taken the lead off a Piere-Emile Hojbjerg on goal.
If this were February of last season there might be cause for concern in how they were penned in by a team 20 points their inferior, how they really very nearly blew it all at the death. Let the warning signs abound when the finish line is this close. They won’t face a better team than Ange Postecoglu’s between now and the end of the season anyway — instead, they can merely hope that the Tottenham manager or his counterparts at Nottingham Forest, Wolves, Fulham and West Ham can do them a favor against Manchester City.
The curious thing about Arsenal was how much they had got right. Thomas Partey’s retention in midfield offered them more avenues through the Tottenham press while Kai Havertz, at his battling best even when his teammates struggled, excelled at the yeoman’s work that was required when Raya was forced to go long. Through it all, Arteta had a simple focus. Get Bukayo Saka running at Ben Davies. It worked to devastating effect with Arsenal’s second, a long ball by Havertz brilliantly controlled by the No.7, but even before then, the visitors had been running riot on the break.
In both halves, they might have had more from open play. Martin Odegaard was flagged offside when the margins were tight enough that play should have continued through to Havertz scoring. Saka was brilliantly denied by Guglielmo Vicario seven minutes into the second half. Arsenal’s great strength, however, is that they are just as adept at winning the game from dead balls. Postecoglu might dismiss corners and free kicks as trifling concerns while he tries to rebuild a football club but the harsh reality is that those small details cost his side a point, perhaps points, in a race for the top four that might be as tight as that between Arsenal and City above them.
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“If I thought fixing defensive set pieces was the answer to us bridging the gap, I’d put all my time and effort into that,” said the Tottenham manager. “It’s not where we’re at. We’re not as focused on the details.”
Postecoglu may be right that there is more to fix at his club than just what they do when someone puts the ball in the mixer. He may also wish to consider that he can employ someone else to mind the details, a set piece coach if you will, while he sets about forging a new identity for Tottenham as Arteta has for this physical, robust Arsenal.
Their dead ball aura seemed to coalesce with Tottenham’s own skittishness in such circumstances. Hojbjerg’s own goal was the header of a man determined to get something on Saka’s cross before it could get too near to Vicario, a goalkeeper who for all the shot-stopping prowess he has showed this season could be blown off course when Ben White tickled his arm. All discipline in the Spurs ranks had evaporated when Havertz glided from the back post to front to flick Arsenal into a 3-0 lead.
It was a curious advantage, one defined by the excellence of Saka and Havertz in particular. The German seems to have spent most of his time in England not sure if he was a nine and a 10. The simple answer of recent months is he is both, the sort of player who can deliver a pinpoint assist or rise highest to deliver the header of a thoroughbred poacher.
“He was sensational in every department today,” said Arteta. “He wasn’t at 100 percent, he was ill before the match and struggling a bit. Still, he put in the performance he did.”
Under the weather, though he may have been, Havertz did not fade from the fight in the second. Nor really did Arsenal, who were nowhere near as skittish as they had been in a first half where Romero twice went close from Spurs dead balls. Then Raya got a little too over a ball that was meant to be booted in Saka’s direction. Tottenham believed even as Arsenal continued to sweep up second balls as they do with such regularity this season.
Then again, it is typical of the gods to punish mortals when their greatest qualities become too much. Declan Rice, titan of loose balls, swung a right boot to divert play towards safety. Instead, he made the cleanest of connections with Ben Davies’ rear end. A penalty from Son and Arsenal’s torment could really begin.
High balls reigned down on them. Clearances did well to get them out of their own third. Somehow Arsenal endured, a win away to their great rivals greeted less with ecstasy than bafflement by an away end that had been readying itself to have its heart ripped out.
Perhaps someone up there has a plan for Arsenal. If they do, they’re certainly going to extract a heavy burden.
