KANE GETS FIRST CLASS HONOURS
Arsenal must get used to being second best as Spurs show their class in derby
AT times it felt like there was just Petr Cech. There he was, leaping to save from Christian Eriksen’s free-kick and sprawling at the feet of Erik Lamela. And there he was again, pushing away Kieran Trippier’s strike.
Just one goal decided this north London derby but that did not tell the story. Or rather, it did not do justice to the passage of play for 25 minutes after half- time, when Tottenham, relentless, young and hungry, simply overwhelmed their opponents at Wembley.
There was a time when Spurs were a team co wed by their neighbours. That time is no more.
‘ Fantastic,’ said boss Mauricio Pochettino. ‘Those 25 minutes we played amazing football. We created a lot of chances. We had the capacity to push them. Our players were fantastic.’
He had earned this moment. His team are up to third in the Premier League for now and face Juventus in t he Champions League on Tuesday. In the last three Premier League games, in which Manchester United have been swatted aside, Arsenal well beaten and Liverpool held, Spurs have demonstrated that they now ought to be ready for Europe’s elite.
Harry Kane, inevitably, was the man who did beat Cech, his seventh goal in seven Premier League games against Arsenal. Something tells you that Kane still has neither forgiven nor forgotten the decision Arsenal made to let him go as a schoolboy.
‘In the last three years I’ m repeating that he is one of the best strikers in the world ,’ said Pochettino. ‘Sometimes you believe that it’s because he’s my player and I try to praise him. But I’m telling you and I tell you again, from my experience in football, he’s one of the best.’
While Kane was excellent, Mousa Dembele was immense in midfield and Eriksen as precise in his delivery as we have come to expect. The performance of Ben Davies suggests Danny Rose would not be missed if he chose to leave and Dele Alli shone brighter than he has of late.
And yet there were that many chances for Tottenham they must have been fearful of what was to come. And therein lies the more-significant point of this clash of north London rivals: nothing much did come.
There was a moment, with 30 seconds of injury time remaining, when Mohamed El nenyf ed Alexandre Lacazette. As he pulled the ball past goalkeeper Hugo Lloris, the Arsenal fans who had not departed already prepared to celebrate an unlikely point. The strike, by a fraction, was wide of the far post and Tottenham survived. And had they not, most would have felt an injustice had been done.
For Arsenal revivals are not what they used to be. One week is all it now takes to puncture the optimism. Everton had proved accommodating guests last Saturday. This was a more realistic assessment of the club’s predicament.
Arsenal deployed the cavalry. They ended up with six attacking players on the pitch, though not Henrikh Mkhitaryan, nowhere near as effective as last weekend.
They may be nine points off the top four by today with just 11 games to play, Arsene Wenger accepting that another season outside the game’s elite beckons.
He had set his team to play on the counter-attack in the opening 45 minutes and felt they should have made more of that opportunity. ‘In the first half, the game should have been finished,’ he said.
‘ We missed opportunities on counter-attacks that are not miss-able at our level, with the final ball. But we should have lost the game in the early part of the second half by more than one goal and we were destabilised by the goal they scored. Overall it is mixed feelings as, in the first half, with a bit more quality with our final pass, we win this game.’
Arsenal did engage for the first 15 minutes of the game. And had Jack Wilshere’s fine ball for Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang not been flagged offside in the 12th minute they might have played a fuller role in the game.
But for all Wenger’s talk, the outstanding chance of the half was Kane’s, heading over from six yards. What Arsenal did well was to frustrate and control Spurs, the very qualities they have been said to lack in recent years.
Yet this Tottenham side are rarely contained. Their breakthrough came in the 49th minute thanks to a delightful cross from Davies. Delivered just perfectly into the box, it allowed Kane to evade both Laurent Koscielny and Shkodran Mustafi to head home decisively.
Buoyed by the goal, Tottenham found their st ride and were magnificent in all but finishing. In the 52nd minute Kane glanced a header wide; in the 56th minute he had a thunderous volley pushed away by Cech and a minute later Cech was again called into action to tip away Eriksen’s free-kick.
Wenger’s response was to abandon caution, with Aubameyang going wide left, Lacazette coming on as centre forward, Alex Iwobi playing wide right and Mesut Ozil reverting to the No 10 role. Yet initially all they could muster was a curling shot from Wilshere which produced a fine save from Lloris.
Tottenham remained relentless. Alli poked a chance wide, Cech pulled off a fine save from Lamela and Eriksen dropped the ball into the path of Trippier in the 76th minute, yet drove straight at Cech. Arsenal were just hanging on.
That they recovered somewhat to threaten at the end is to their credit. But it did little to suggest the north London pecking order is changed for now. And they may have to get used to being second best.