Sp*rs 0-1 Arsenal: Defensive discipline provided platform for Gabriel’s winner

Match report – Player ratings – Arteta reaction – Video

I very rarely start with a line from the previous day’s blog, but I think today is a bit of an exception, so:

I have to say, as difficult as the Rice/Odegaard thing is, I’d be more worried if we had similar problems at the back. The solidity and continuity of the back four/five will be tested today, but we know what they’re capable of.

Yesterday’s 1-0 North London derby win was built on the defensive platform we have built over the last number of years, and while I think the back four and the goalkeeper are obviously the mainstays, what stood out to me most yesterday was how hard the entire team worked from a defensive point of view.

Not everyone was flawless, but that old cliche of defending from the front sprang to mind when I saw Kai Havertz closing down high up the pitch to stop them from getting the ball forward. Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Martinelli ran themselves ragged in both directions, Leandro Trossard buzzed around interchanging with Havertz, and even the two veteran midfielders – both of whom I think struggled at times – did their bit to shore up the centre of the pitch.

We know how Spurs like to play through the middle. They kept trying. They kept hitting a brick wall. It was sort of like an anti-Pavlovian response. They kept doing it and it didn’t work, but they didn’t learn anything from it. It was, in as much as anything can be during the stressful 90 minutes+ of a derby, quite funny.

Early on David Raya had to be alert a couple of times, and William Saliba picked up a 15th minute booking for ‘delaying the restart’ after he won the ball. The fact that this rule only seems to apply to Arsenal players is doing my head in, but if it’s a fact of life for us and nobody else, we’re going to have to adapt – regardless of how nonsensical it is to see us pick up yellows and reds while nobody else does.

We had the best chance of the first half when Trossard sent Martinelli through. If he’d got his head up, he might have seen the opportunity was there to play in Saka at the back post, but he didn’t and went for goal. I don’t necessarily blame him fro trying to score but the finish lacked conviction, which is a bit of a running theme for him at the moment. His last goal came in March, he’s badly in need of something to unblock the talent we know he has.

The second part of the first half was punctuated with a series of yellow cards, more for them than for us, but Jurrien Timber’s was the one in the spotlight. To be honest, I don’t even think it’s a booking, he didn’t touch Porro who writhed around on the ground yet required no treatment for something which evidently was so serious. Pure playacting. He’d get his in the end, and the discussion on TV about how he was lucky not to be sent off was absurd. I also loved the afters, not just Timber himself, but look how quickly Bukayo Saka was in there to look after his mate. Brilliant.

Their best moments came from our carelessness. Jorginho lost it and they countered; Partey’s sloppy touches around our box presented them with opportunities that were snuffed out by our defenders; Trossard got caught on the ball outside our box. I wasn’t at all surprised to hear the manager references those aspects of our play afterwards, saying:

I don’t think we’ve done, especially with the ball, the simple things right at all.

He was spot on. That felt like the thing that might cost us far more than what the opposition were doing with the ball themselves. Which was, as I’ve pointed out, not much at all beyond trying to drive down the cul de sac of broken dreams which our discipline and organisation snuffed out time and time again.

The other question was: how were we going to hurt them? The answer came midway through the second half. On 62’18 Gabriel made a hugely important block after a loose Partey touch presented a chance in our box to Brennan Johnson. Arsenal countered and won a corner. Porro took a breather, exhausted from whatever. Chump. Saka took it, and on 63’42 the ball was in the back of the net, courtesy of a thumping header from the Brazilian.

Again, the absurdity of the TV discussion about a possible foul on Romero was stark. It was just awful, awful defending from the Argentine. He knew where Gabriel was the entire time, but still found himself the wrong side of the Arsenal man, allowing him all the space and time he needed to head home from an excellent Saka delivery. By the way, in four Premier League games this season, it’s 1 goal and 4 assists for him. He has made a goal contribution in each game, and it’s sort of flying under the radar because the expectation levels he is building are so high.

As for Gabriel, it felt like the goal gave him energy. If he was Popeye, scoring against Spurs is his spinach, and it powered up the rest of his performance. If there’s a better guy to have in your team while the opposition are slinging in hopeful crosses then I don’t know who it is. He won everything, including another one where another poor Partey touch meant he had to be so precise in the challenge or it would have been a penalty.

I also just want to mention the sense of calm that comes with David Raya in goal. In these high stakes games, just like he did at Villa Park, his handling and decision making helped ease pressure. The way he kills time must be infuriating for the opposition fans, but I love the way he buys us those few seconds so we can get into shape and organised again.

As now know, Spurs had nothing much to offer from an attacking perspective, and what they did have was shut down by a defensive effort that was just outstanding. All the talk pre-game was how Arsenal would cope with Declan Rice and Martin Odegaard, and you could see that we missed them in certain phases of play, but perhaps the more pertinent question was how would Spurs cope with an Arsenal team whose defensive solidity and discipline is so good from front to back. And the answer was, they couldn’t. Arsenal were without Odegaard; Spurs had James Maddison ambling around thinking about how to be the main man at a Sunday roast. Anyone who wanted us to sign him ahead of the Norwegian, please do your penance.

Afterwards, Mikel Arteta was asked about his pre-game preparations, because not only did we lose Odegaard to injury, we went into this one without Riccardo Calafiori and Oleksandr Zinchenko. The bench was hugely inexperienced. He said:

I didn’t enjoy it because I didn’t sleep much. I looked at Spurs for four or five days. I had a super clear plan, how to do it. I prepared everything, the session, the meeting, etc, and then one news, we lose a player. Another news, we lose another player. Another news, we lose a player. So I had to completely change it. I liked the plan for the players that we had available, so it was a great challenge.

And on the effort his side put in:

People that are harder, they have thick skin, they love the game and they love winning. In order to love the game and win, you have to do a lot of things – sometimes people call them ugly. It’s a big week coming up and that’s going to give us a lot of energy and belief.

Had we not come through this, there would have been questions about how we were unable to live without Rice and Odegaard. It wasn’t just a huge win because it was the derby, it wasn’t just a huge win because that made it three in a row at their place, it was a huge win because we showed that there is sufficient depth and quality to do it without some really important players. Wins like this instill that little bit extra in terms of belief. We’ll happily welcome those players back, of course, but doing it without them was so important.

Now we take stock ahead of a trip to Italy in the Champions League, and then Man City next weekend when that defensive quality will be tested again. For now though, it’s a day to bask, to enjoy the result and the three points. And to laugh at Tottenham. Because that’s what you have to do. No exceptions. It’s mandatory.

Right, let’s leave it there. We will have an Arsecast Extra for you a bit later. Keep an eye out for the call for questions on Threads @gunnerblog and @arseblog with the hashtag #arsecastextra – or if you’re an Arseblog Member on Patreon, leave your question in the #arsecast-extra-questions channel on our Discord server.

Pod should be out mid-morning. For now, have a good one.