THE DOLDRUMS DERBY
Spurs and Arsenal meet with both at a low ebb. But is it the white or red half of north London with more hope?
NOT since the mid-Nineties has the north London derby been quite so incidental and irrelevant to matters at the top of the table.
This is ninth against eighth, little more than a Europa League sixpointer. Just another local skirmish, which might go some way towards determining whether one side of this ancient rivalry can salvage enough points from the last four fixtures to minimise the embarrassment of a dismal Premier League campaign.
By kick-off tomorrow, Arsenal could be 45 points behind the champions with Tottenham trundling along a point further behind. They are so far adrift of the top four that even if Manchester City fail to overturn their UEFA ban there is unlikely to be any Champions League football in this part of the capital for the first time since the Wenger revolution.
For Arsenal, that would be a costly fourth successive year on the outside of the European elite. For Spurs, a depressing return to familiar struggles in the days before Mauricio Pochettino and an ominous feeling that the local power shift was nothing but a temporary affair.
On the slide, how can they hope to hold on to stars such as Harry Kane? How can they attract talent to rebuild with neither Champions League football on the horizon nor a competitive transfer budget?
Amazon released a short teaser yesterday for the documentary of the inside story of an extraordinary Spurs season. Just 41 seconds long, it begins with Pochettino on the pitch in tears and cuts to players looking pensive in meetings before Jose Mourinho sweeps into the building.
Words flash up on the screen: ‘The Season . . . Everything . . . Changed’ as chairman Daniel Levy says: ‘We have to do what we feel is right for the club and only time will tell if it’s the right decision.’
Eight months on from Pochettino’s exit the Spurs natives are increasingly restless. Perhaps the only positive aspect to Levy’s fine new stadium standing empty is that the home crowd might be close to turning on Mourinho.
Many were never sure in the first place. Not only was he definitely Not Poch. But he was still an icon at Chelsea where he won the title three times. Worse still, his reputation for uninspiring football was the antithesis of a philosophy defined by Tottenham’s Doublewinning captain Danny Blanchflower:
‘The game is about glory, it is about doing things in style, with a flourish.’
What would Blanchflower have made of them on Thursday at Bournemouth where they failed to register a shot on target? ‘Goalless and soulless,’ groaned one seasoned Spurs watcher.
Mourinho has tightened his team up at the back — with the exception of defeat at Sheffield United — but at a cost going forward and he must strike a balance to avoid the same fate as George Graham who was never able to convince the faithful at White Hart Lane.
‘Nobody in this club is happy,’ rapped Mourinho after a week when Hugo Lloris clashed angrily with team-mate Son Heung-min, and Eric Dier was banned for wading into the crowd to pursue a fan who was yelling abuse. When he was in charge of Chelsea, the self-styled Special One seemed to have a mental hold over Arsenal but he goes into his first north London derby as Spurs boss on the back foot, fending off critics by insisting the problems predate his arrival and were not solved by the £100million Pochettino spent on players last summer.
‘This season is very difficult since day one,’ said Mourinho. ‘Since the moment they lost the Champions League final was very difficult for lots of people in the club to believe the next day could be sunny.
‘Many big clubs have difficult periods, moments of transition, moments of replacing players, losing players, of players getting older. This is a process and my message to our fans that are of course not happy is that the thing keeping me strong and optimistic and loyal to the project is to know that the club wants to improve.
‘That’s the biggest motivation. Next season is going to be different. No doubts.’
At Arsenal, the mood is rather more chipper about the impact of the mid-season managerial change. Unlike Spurs, who risked the wrath of fans and opted for the winning pedigree of Mourinho to address a 12-year trophy drought,
their neighbours took a chance on a rookie, a former player with ambition and an appreciation of the club’s culture.
As Levy says, time will tell, but Mikel Arteta has made a strong impression since he replaced Unai Emery. He has made the right noises, and on the eve of the derby, he knew better than to antagonise Mourinho, with whom he worked as a young player in Barcelona’s B team. Moreover, there are signs of spirit about Arteta’s Arsenal.
They have reached the FA Cup semi-finals and a crop of players emerging from the academy are being given chances, which always plays well to the devoted masses during these transitional phases.
During Tuesday’s draw against Leicester, they found rhythm and tempo until they lost their way after Eddie Nketiah was sent off.
‘I want them to play that way as much as possible,’ said Arteta. ‘To play in the opposition’s half, aggressive. When we give the ball away, to win it back and attack the opponent’s box. To do that we need a good structure, to attack the right spaces and generate overloads. We saw that.
‘Obviously, it was different when we went to 10 men. But I’m happy with the way they played, again.’
It is less than a month since Arsenal returned from lockdown in shambolic fashion at Manchester City, where defeat was instigated by an error-strewn David Luiz who was rewarded with a new contract. Now, 10 points later, they have climbed a point above Spurs.
Perceptions are prone to fluctuate but neither team can be proud of their league campaign and what remains indisputable is that they are a great distance from the top.