Postecoglou facing a harsh reality as Old order restored
Home fans flocked to witness rivals’ title bid crashing but deserted seats in droves as their own dreams died
A stark fatalism is descending on Tottenham as their season dissolves into familiar stage fright. Five minutes into the second half of a borderline-chaotic derby, hundreds of home fans had still not returned to their seats.
In fairness, when your stadium is so lavish that you can have your beer glasses filled on oak-and-copper concourses, there are decent excuses for being detained. But the half-empty stands also revealed how little even the diehards trusted their team to reverse a 3-0 deficit, and how dramatically the balance of power in north London had flipped.
This was meant to be the day that Ange Postecoglou’s team, fortified by the luxury of a fortnight’s preparation, threw the loathed enemies’ title ambitions off course. Instead, it was Arsenal’s turn to play the dream-wreckers, delivering a result that all but ended their rivals’ hopes of a top-four finish.
For the first time since 1988, when George Graham was manager, they relished the sensation of consecutive top-flight victories at Tottenham, having won only two of their previous 17. A feat that eluded Arsene Wenger for his entire 22-year reign is one that Mikel Arteta has already ticked off. As players celebrated wildly in front of their supporters, you could sense the old order being restored.
It was St Totteringham’s Day once more, the fictional holiday marked by Arsenal as it became mathematically impossible for Tottenham to finish above them. Come the end of this campaign, the gap could be as wide as 20 points. The gulf was everywhere you looked in this contest, from the dominance at corners to Ben White’s glovetweaking psychological skirmish with Guglielmo Vicario. In every department, Arsenal were tougher, wiser, cuter. Postecoglou suggested as much by expressing a wish to transplant the World Cup-winning mentality of Cristian Romero, the Argentine centre-back whose second-half goal briefly kindled a fightback, into all his players.
The 100-day honeymoon that the Australian enjoyed here last year, with the chorus of Robbie Williams’ Angels rewritten to read “I’m loving Big Ange instead”, feels a distant memory. Tottenham are fifth but floundering, clinging on for one of the lesser European qualifying spots after promising much more. At home, the coda will come against Manchester City on May 14, and what a peculiar affair that threatens to be. Provided both City and Arsenal keep winning, many of the 60,000 in attendance will be praying for their own team to lose, desperate for their neighbours’ 20-year wait for a title to be prolonged.
You could detect this urge as fans left the ground, whooping approvingly on learning that Erling Haaland had put City out of sight at Nottingham Forest. A galling situation, all told, for a club who were top of the league six months ago. So often, Tottenham fall prey to a habit of peaking too soon. Take the lone trumpeter who played the anthem beside the golden cockerel at kickoff, performing on a ledge several hundred feet up. It was Braveheartesque, as he stood flanked by two men in full warpaint mode, holding flags aloft. But within 27 minutes, his side were two down, the battle cries long silenced.
Much is distinct about Postecoglou’s approach. He is credited with leading a cultural transformation, minimising team meetings and allowing players to sleep in their own beds the night before a game, rather than at the training complex.
But one element of the culture he has been powerless to expunge is the traditional drift into late-season torpor. This team had benefited from a two-week recovery since their 4-0 defeat at Newcastle, and yet the scars were still visible in their naive defending, with Ben Davies turned inside out by Bukayo Saka. Surprise at the selection of Pierre-emile Hojbjerg, who had not started since Feb 3, morphed into
incredulity when the Dane headed Saka’s corner into his own net.
The manager is correct when he argues that Tottenham’s problems extend beyond their vulnerability at set-pieces. They are also haunted by flaws in their mentality, too prone to panicking once opponents
To which the obvious riposte is: if Postecoglou had a set-piece specialist on his staff, then he would not need to put any additional time or effort into it. That, evidently, would be the job of the expert.
It must be said, there are issues here that go beyond defensive formations at corners and free-kicks. Guglielmo Vicario, the Spurs goalkeeper, has struggled to defend corners and is repeatedly targeted by the opposition. He has many strengths, but commanding his sixyard box does not yet appear to be one of them.
Vicario was exposed to the dark arts of Ben White who even pushed him into his own goal as Havertz scored before half-time. of Arsenal’s quality find a way through. James Maddison sought to stir them after Micky van de Ven’s equaliser was scrubbed out by VAR for a fractional offside, but to no avail. They were so rattled by the perceived injustice that Arsenal scored twice in the next 15 minutes.
North London, there can be little doubt, is red again. Arteta is the fifth-fastest manager to reach 100 wins in the Premier League era. The four above him? Pep Guardiola, Jose Mourinho, Jurgen Klopp and Sir Alex Ferguson. It is the mark of a man building a team to last, not one who flicker in bursts before burning out. Postecoglou took 26 points from his first 10 matches in England, more than Guardiola, but has since presided over a team in mid-table form. The worry is when, if ever, Spurs will escape this casting as the club with the shiniest stadium but the sparsest trophy room.
‘Credit to Arsenal, they are there now. They are a team that does deal with the details well, and we don’t’
Earlier, in an attempt to get under Vicario’s skin moments before Hojbjerg’s own goal, White had attempted to undo the goalkeeper’s glove. Other teams in recent months have worked hard to remove White from the six-yard box. Spurs, to their cost, did not. “Our defensive set-piece for those two [goals] were very poor,” Postecoglou admitted.
The Australian later added, tellingly: “We are still not absolutely laser-focused on the details, the small things that get you from where we are to become a team that contends. Credit to Arsenal, they are there now. They are a team that does deal with the details well, and we don’t.”