What a game this was for Arsenal and the Gunners faithful. Arsenal continued their surprising title push by beating their North London Derby rivals, Tottenham Hotspur, to win the game 3-1 and remain on top of the Premier League.
Arsenal is really trying to make me look as bad as possible for counting them out of the title race four weeks ago. I thought that Arsenal’s loss to Manchester United back in early September (which feels like a lifetime ago now after everything that has gone done in the UK) was indicative of this team’s one major flaw: an inability to beat the traditional “Top-6” sides.
I believed that Arsenal was going to be able to beat up on the smaller teams in the Premier League, like they have done so far with their wins over Brentford, Bournemouth, and Fulham, but would find the games against opponents with players of an equal quality too difficult to overcome to keep up their title ambitions.
Sure, the Gunners have the ability to beat anyone at any time in the Premier League, but I didn’t believe that had the consistency to do it time and again, which is required for every would-be title contender. Well, boy was I wrong today as Arsenal smashed Spurs and dominated this North London Derby.
And they did so even before that silly red card was shone.
Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself as the Gunners scored well before that red card ever happened. With only 20 minutes off the clock, and a few half-chances by both Spurs (especially that Richarlison chance) and Arsenal gone astray, Thomas Partey bent a magnificent shot past Lloris and into the top corner to easily score the goal of the weekend thus far.
This goal is probably bittersweet for a lot of Arsenal fans as it reminds people not only of Thomas Partey’s talent, but also that his talent is so often diminished because of his constant injury problems. The former Atletico Madrid midfielder must have had at least 10 sperate injuries that have caused him to miss an extended period of time during his 3-year career with the Gunners thus far.
It’s honestly too bad that such a good player as Partey is has been forced to deal with so many injury problems.
Nonetheless, Gabriel thought it would be a great idea to slide tackle Richarlison in the middle of his own penalty box, even though he really had less than a 50-50 chance to win the ball, only ten minutes after Partey’s strike sent the Arsenal fans into an uproar.
Obviously, Richarlison smartly nudged the ball past Gabriel’s outstretched leg and willingly tripped over his Brazilian international teammate, giving Tottenham a penalty kick to get right back into the game.
Which they did through Harry Kane, who scored his 14th North London Derby goal, by blasting his penalty into the top corner.
Like I said earlier, most of Arsenal’s starting eleven consists of young, inexperienced players that will be prone to making dumb mistakes, like Gabriel did with his tackle. It didn’t cost them today, but it could against more ruthless and clinical teams.
Still, the other Gabriel on Arsenal, their new striker Gabriel Jesus, nearly put Arsenal back on top within 10 minutes of Kane’s goal as he danced and swirled around Tottenham defenders inside their penalty box and toe-poked a shot at goal…only to see it get saved by Hugo Lloris.
I’ll get to Jesus’ actually goal in a second, but these dribbling skills that he has consistently showed in his debut season with the Gunners has been nothing less of remarkable.
He’s easily the most improved player in the Premier League from last season to this season.
As for his goal, it wasn’t nearly as ‘fancy’ as his previous attempt. On the 43′ mark, Bukayo Saka whipped in a cross that was bundled by the Lloris and Tottenham’s CB Christian Romero and landed right in Jesus’ path. All he had to do was tap the ball home from less than 5-yards out to put the Gunners back on top in the derby.
And, now, I have to address the red elephant in the room that changed this game: the red card shown to Emerson for a ‘reckless/dangerous’ tackle on Martinelli. I’ve just got to say that it was definitely not a red card.
Sure, Emerson was late, and his foot went through Martinelli’s ankle, but it wasn’t done with a dangerous intent to injure Martinelli. Emerson just simply missed his tackle and ended up striking Martinelli on the ankle. It was just simply never a red card and Spurs fans should feel aggrieved about it…to a certain extent.
It’s true that this red card pretty much cemented any chance that Tottenham had in trying to get anything out of the game as Arsenal just ramped up more pressure on Spurs (they ended up with a whopping 65% possession), and Granit Xhaka sealed the win for Arsenal’s third goal of the game.
Nevertheless, even without the red card, Arsenal was never going to lose this game as they were just far quicker, stronger, determined, and just better than Tottenham was today. Tottenham came into this game playing slow, methodical football (as Conte likes), and were beaten by the faster, younger, more energetic side.
And Arsenal have earned their place on top of the Premier League, while Spurs can only look to themselves for this bad loss to their North London rivals.
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