Arsenal cannot win the Premier League title on Tottenham‘s patch this season, as they famously did at White Hart Lane almost 20 years to the day of Sunday’s meeting, but another prize is theirs for the taking.
A win for Mikel Arteta’s team would keep them in pole position, ahead of Manchester City – who play Nottingham Forest later in the day – but also bring about “St Totteringham’s Day” for the second year running. A draw would do the job in that regard, but would be a hammer blow to their title challenge.
For those not versed in the intricacies of the north London derby, St Totteringham’s Day is an occasion celebrated by Arsenal fans after their team has mathematically ensured finishing above Spurs in the league table.
An Arsenal victory this weekend would take them to 80 points, 20 clear of Tottenham, who will have five games remaining and a maximum of 15 points available.
Although the concept may have lingered before, the St Totteringham’s moniker was believed to have been coined in the noughties at the peak of the Arsene Wenger era when north London bragging rights were exclusively held in Highbury.
The Gunners finished above Spurs in the table for 21 consecutive seasons between 1995-96 and 2015-16, famously denying their rivals Champions League qualification on three occasions. The 2005-06 season was the year of “lasagna-gate”, 2011-12 saw Spurs finish fourth but miss out after Chelsea won European football’s prized pot, and in 2012-13 Arsenal pipped them by just a point.
When Spurs fell behind Arsenal on the final day of Leicester’s title-winning season after a 5-1 mauling by already relegated Newcastle, it looked as though the curse may be eternal. Taunts of coming “third in a two-horse race,” followed, adding another chapter of ignominy to the Spursy tome.
Then came a power shift, with Spurs securing a higher league placing than Arsenal for six seasons running between 2016-17 and 2021-22. Arsenal fans will contest that a changeover ever took place given their team won two FA Cups during those six years and Spurs, as everyone is always at pains to remind them, won nothing.
But those twin triumphs over Chelsea at Wembley only served to mask a malaise that had long taken hold. Arsenal were in the grip of an identity crisis. They had ambitions of clambering back to the top but fundamentally lacked the tools to get there. They were the Premier League’s equivalent of Connor Roy, the hapless brother in Succession whose ambitions of reaching the White House are rooted in name and reputation alone.
The recruitment in those wilderness years was a mess. A ramshackle mob was assembled, containing defenders incapable of defending, midfielders prone to being overrun and attackers gifted in the art of goalscoring, but not in work ethic.
They spent £72m on Nicolas Pepe, a transfer that, for a time, looked like the most egregious waste of funds in Premier League history, until Todd Boehly rocked up with his giant chequebook at Stamford Bridge.
Dissaray on the pitch was matched off it. There were protests against Wenger, the Kroenke family, Unai Emery, everyone. Granit Xhaka was booed off the pitch and gave some back. Arsenal Fan TV monopolised the misery, sewing further seeds of division among a divided, disenchanted fanbase.
All the while, Spurs were on the up. They had an exciting young team, spearheaded by English talent and bound together by Belgians, moulded together by a progressive, up-and-coming Argentine coach. They played entertaining, modern football, pushing the full-backs on and tucking the wingers inside, hounding opponents in groups of twos and threes. They bloodied the noses of Real Madrid and reached a Champions League final. They were too busy having fun to usher St Arseringham’s Day into the rivalry’s lexicon.
Only by hitting the reset button themselves have Arsenal managed to swing the pendulum back to N7.
To say that Arteta has attempted to emulate what Mauricio Pochettino – a former teammate at PSG and a manager whom he regards in high esteem – did at Spurs would be simplistic. The principles underpinning projects undertaken at most football clubs, including superpowers like Real Madrid, are broadly the same. Invest in youth, build from the back, press from the front.
But there are similarities in how Arteta has rebuilt Arsenal to how Pochettino transformed Tottenham. He jettisoned underperforming stars with big egos on even bigger wages, replacing them with younger, hungrier tyros. They pressurise their opponents relentlessly, swarming as a mass of red shirts as their opponents gamely try to pass their way up the pitch. They have a beloved homegrown talent taking the penalties and a Scandi playmaker pulling the strings.
Pochettino’s Spurs were the great nearly team of the last decade of English football, years of progress ultimately distilled into one runners-up place in the league and two cup final defeats.
“It’s going to be something that I live with for the rest of my life that we didn’t win anything at Tottenham,” a pained Eric Dier told Gary Neville on The Overlap earlier this month. Others who have moved on have offered similarly regretful sentiments.
Winning a trophy is the next step for Arteta and his exceptional team to avoid such disappointment.
Jamie Carragher received pelters from Gunners for his Daily Telegraph column headlined “Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal in danger of becoming like Mauricio Pochettino’s nearly team at Tottenham,” after the 2-0 loss to Aston Villa, for ignoring their FA Cup success under Arteta in 2020.
Fans had a point, but so did Carragher. The group that beat Chelsea in an empty Wembley four years ago is completely unrecognisable to the current crop.
None of the 11 starters are part of Arteta’s squad now – Kieran Tierney, on loan at Real Sociedad, is the only one still under contract – and six of the nine substitutes have left too. Bukayo Saka, Reiss Nelson and Eddie Nketiah are the only survivors and were all on the bench that day.
Arteta won that trophy with a team built for someone else; this side, his side, constructed meticulously over numerous transfer windows hasn’t won anything yet.
Beating Spurs would inch them closer to that goal, ramping up pressure on City who also have to play at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, a ground that has been unkind to them, before the season is out.
Arteta and his players have their sights firmly fixed on the glistening gold of the Premier League trophy. Being crowned kings of north London they hope will be just a signpost on the path to glory.
