Arsenal rubbish but Arteta brilliant in pre-ordained NLD that raises Postecoglou doubts

The most obvious goal of all time in a game we could have started and finished writing about before it kicked off. Arsenal were rubbish, Mikel Arteta is brilliant and is Ange Postecoglou a one-trick pony?

You won’t hear it said on commentary as it tends to be a backhanded compliment reserved for plucky underdogs playing against vastly superior opposition, but Arsenal are an incredibly ‘well-drilled’ football team.

They have outstanding footballers capable of doing wonderful things in possession, but it’s the speed with which they transition from attack to defence that most clearly differentiates them. In a game like this, when it never quite happened for them on the front foot, it’s that ability to get back into shape within five or six seconds of giving the ball away which means they will remain Manchester City’s greatest challengers for the Premier League title.

Arsenal controlled the game without the ball, which is an incredibly useful thing to be able to do when you’re so sloppy in possession. They gave the ball away 12 times in a first half in which Jorginho – a man brought in on the pretence of a ‘midfield crisis’ but who actually typically starts big games like this in order to control them – completed just 12 passes. Thomas Partey alongside him completed nine.

And yet, at half-time there was a sense that they had Spurs exactly where they wanted them, harbouring a false sense of security courtesy of the Gunners’ lack of threat but with five of their players on yellow cards thanks to a mixture of referee nit-picking, derby-day tempers and an absurdly attacking XI that necessitates last-ditch tackles in areas of the pitch that are far from typical of teams that see defending as more than a distraction from the actual football.

We were prepared for more of the same, with Arsenal wall-adjacent if not with their backs firmly against it, but defending with the poise and efficiency we’ve become accustomed to while waiting for a bit of quality on the break or – more likely – from a set piece. It was the most predictable of all goals .

Arsenal scored more set piece goals (22) than any other team in the Premier League last season and only three teams conceded more than Tottenham (16), with two of the contributors coming in this fixture five months ago. Time enough you would think for Ange Postecoglou to coach his defenders to mark and his goalkeeper to show a semblance of authority under crosses, but not so.

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Guglielmo Vicario had already flapped at one and made the strange decision to move back towards his line rather than coming to collect or punch a cross that ended up on Gabriel’s head roughly four yards from his goal. Cristian Romero, who had produced some sublime defending moments before to have us wondering – as we often do – whether there is anyone better in world football, was shoved aside by the goalscorer absurdly easily to provide a timely reminder of his flaws.

The quality of the teams from dead ball situations is one of the key reasons why Arsenal will be in the title race and why Tottenham can’t hope to be anywhere near it; their respective responses to the goal provide further evidence of that reality.

Timo Werner and Wilson Odobert came on and delivered several crosses into David Raya’s midriff while Gabriel and William Saliba stood untroubled in the Arsenal box.

It’s difficult for a Postecoglou side to go more gung-ho given the starting point, but there’s got to be a better solution than making substitutions and hoping for the best, which appeared to be Postecoglou’s response to going a goal down, with his players if anything becoming less effective when chasing the game.

It felt like they always were though. They may as well have given Arsenal the goal they were always going to score and while Postecoglou may well point to his team’s intensity to explain why the opposition were quite so bad on the ball, he would surely forgive the fans for wondering ‘if we can’t beat Arsenal when they’re like this, what hope to we have of ever beating them?’

The Spurs boss will also claim – quite reasonably – that they should have won all three of their Premier League games before this. They certainly dominated possession, as they did here. But to point to that statistic as a metric for how unfortunate his team have been doesn’t quite chime with his desired label as leader of the top flight’s great entertainers.

And while others may well do – chances created, passes into the final third etc. – every game they fail to win will result in more and more pundits and fans using his ‘it’s who we are, mate’ mantra against him. Because the response to that is obvious – your way isn’t working, mate.

Arteta will clearly have wanted to see more from his attacking players and will quite rightly give his whole team props for the way in which they defended together. But this is more a win for him than them having drilled his team to such an extent that in an away game against their bitter local rivals they looked in total control despite having so much less of the ball and using it so poorly when they did have it.

Title credentials are assigned to teams winning when they’re playing badly, and we can think of no better example.