Arsenal beat Tottenham Hotspur 2-1 on Wednesday night to move to within four points of the top of the Premier League.
The hosts dominated the early exchanges, but Spurs scored with one of their first opportunities of the match. A deflected Son Heung-min strike went past goalkeeper David Raya to give the visitors the lead.
But Arsenal turned the game around in the space of four minutes. First, Gabriel’s header from a corner hit Dominic Solanke before travelling into the back of the net. Then Leandro Trossard drove forward and scored from range for Arsenal.
An end-to-end second half yielded no further goals.
The Athletic’s experts Art de Roché, Jack Pitt-Brooke, Jay Harris and Anantaajith Raghuraman analysed the game.
How important was this win to Arsenal’s title hopes?
Arsenal had missed opportunities to make up ground on Liverpool in recent weeks — which made this north London derby win even more important. The league leaders still have a game in hand, but closing the gap to four points should give Arsenal encouragement for the second half of the season.
The weight of the game could be felt in the ground throughout the game. After two disappointing cup defeats, the stadium was the loudest it had been all season, driving the players on.
Encouraged by the noise of the home support, Kai Havertz set the tone with a tackle on the touchline. The fans didn’t go silent after Son put Spurs ahead either, feeding an urgency onto the pitch that was key to the turnaround at the end of the first half.
From a footballing perspective, that helped Arsenal attack with much more purpose than in recent games. That was seen in their second goal, with Martin Odegaard and Trossard making their decisions to pass and shoot much earlier than they have done in previous matches.
This result will only truly matter if they back it up, however. Losing against Aston Villa at home was fateful last season, so meeting them this weekend is an opportunity to set the record straight and start a run necessary to catch Liverpool.
Art de Roché
Where does this loss leave Spurs?
An 11th Premier League defeat of the season for Tottenham leaves them 14 points behind fourth place. Quite remarkably, they are two points behind West Ham United, who have barely played well all season and just changed their manager.
This was by no means the worst Tottenham performance of this season. They had some good moments on the break in the second half, took the lead, only to let the game escape them just before the break. Then they had plenty of openings in the second half but were never sharp enough to take advantage. Pedro Porro even hit the post in added time.
The problem for Spurs is that every team has injuries and yet few teams in recent memory have underperformed as badly as Tottenham currently are. They don’t know how to find a way to win games they do not dominate. And, frankly, with better finishing from Arsenal, this would have been a more embarrassing scoreline than it was.
Jack Pitt-Brooke
Should Arsenal have been given the corner in the build-up to their first goal?
Tottenham survived an onslaught from Arsenal in the opening half an hour to take the lead through Son but their bubble burst in the 40th minute when Solanke scored an own goal from Declan Rice’s corner.
It was a well-worked move as Gabriel made a darting run towards the back post and his header bounced off Solanke past Antonin Kinsky but Spurs will feel understandably frustrated as the corner should not have been given.
A through ball released Trossard down the left wing and Porro, who had slipped awkwardly a few minutes before, did well to keep up with him. Porro blocked Trossard’s left-footed cross and it appeared to hit the Arsenal winger’s right leg before it went out of play. The officials awarded Arsenal a corner, though, and less than a minute later all of Tottenham’s hard work was undone.
Tottenham’s record at defending set pieces has improved but it would have been irritating to concede from a corner for the second time against Arsenal this season.
Jay Harris
How errors from both teams defined first half
Fixtures such as these are often welcomed with the understanding that the margins for error are low and neither team helped themselves, conceding as a product of avoidable mistakes.
In the moments before Spurs’ opener, Arsenal committed plenty of men forward but did not track enough with equal energy, allowing goalkeeper Kinsky to find Pape Matar Sarr in acres of space. Sarr obliged by carrying the ball about three-quarters the length of the pitch before winning a corner off Thomas Partey. As Tottenham played a short corner, Arsenal were slow to react again from their initial clearance and did not close down Son, who scored with a tame effort via a deflection.
The hosts’ equalizer came in fortuitous circumstances with the referee wrongly awarding Arsenal a corner when the ball went behind off Trossard’s leg from Porro’s tackle. But Spurs did not do themselves any favours from the corner. Kinsky completely misread an excellent delivery from Declan Rice, while Radu Dragusin lost Gabriel, who got to the far post and applied enough pressure to force a Solanke own goal.
Spurs will not want to watch the third goal back either. Yves Bissouma was lazy on the ball in his own half, allowing Partey to win it and find Odegaard. With Spurs having pushed men forward when in possession, Odegaard could easily set up Trossard, who finished the move, though some will rightly question if Kinsky, who got a hand to the shot, could have kept it out.
Mikel Arteta and Ange Postecoglou would have been far from pleased.
Anantaajith Raghuraman
How did Sterling perform on his return to Arsenal’s starting line-up?
After Gabriel Jesus joined Bukayo Saka and Ethan Nwaneri on the injury list, this was a big night for Raheem Sterling on the right wing.
This was his first league start since October, when he was sacrificed to replace William Saliba after his red card away at Bournemouth, and unfortunately, it was summed up by an action inside the opening minutes of the game.
Played in by Myles Lewis-Skelly, Sterling was in a great position to apply a first-time finish but decided to take a touch and the chance was gone. He had a similar moment when played in by Havertz inside the box in the second half, only to fluff his lines. The effort was there for the most part, but confidence and clarity seemed to be lacking at the crucial moments.
For example, the winger worked well to regain the ball in loose duels but struggled to get the better of Djed Spence on the right. His driving runs made an impact against Manchester United but Spence’s frame, and little support on the overlap, made the task harder for Sterling.
That became more noticeable in the first half as fans in the West Stand urged him to take his man on at every opportunity, but the burst just wasn’t there.
Sterling did have some bright moments, with backheels to Jurrien Timber inside the box and driving runs through the centre of the pitch. This being his first league start in three months could make the inconsistency in his performance understandable. Moving forward, however, more decisiveness (and potentially support) could be needed when Arsenal attack through him.
Art de Roché
Kinsky’s struggles a reminder of need for patience
It has been a rapid introduction to English football for Kinsky, but this was a reminder that maybe people should be more patient with Tottenham’s new goalkeeper.
Kinsky was put under pressure throughout and struggled to cope with it. No one could question his confidence with the ball at his feet but he had to scramble in the first half when Havertz charged down one of his kicks. It did not help that Archie Gray and Dragusin were struggling to build up from the back, so tended to pass the ball back to Kinsky every single time. Kinsky was under more pressure than he needed to be.
But then Kinsky’s problems were not just with the ball at his feet. When Arsenal equalised it was in part because Kinsky got pinned in at a corner and could not get a hand on the ball.
Four minutes later, the crucial moment in the game came when Trossard drove a hard shot to the bottom corner and Kinsky got a hand on it, but could not keep the ball out. It was not how he would have envisaged his first north London derby.
Jack Pitt-Brooke
What did Mikel Arteta say?
Arteta told BBC Sport: “We were outstanding today. From the first minute we were really at it, really intense. We played with a real purpose to hurt them. We created an unbelivable atmosphere.
“We know how important the game is. It’s a gift we can make the supporters very happy.
“The attitude we played with, not feeling sorry for ourselves, was phenomenal.”
What did Ange Postecoglou say?
Postecoglou said: “There’s no magic cure. You’ve got to get up tomorrow, work hard and go into Sunday and prepare to go into battle and turn around our fortunes and our season. There’s nothing magical that’s going to change it. There are always reasons for all these things to happen.
“The reality is that our results and our form in the league have been nowhere near good enough. That needs to change.”
What next for Arsenal?
Saturday, January 18: Aston Villa (H), Premier League, 5.30pm GMT, 12.30pm ET
What next for Tottenham?
Sunday, January 19: Everton (A), Premier League, 2pm GMT, 9am ET
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