Away wins in the north London derby are rare, but Arsenal have won their last two trips to Tottenham. This weekend, with their visitors missing key players, Spurs have a fantastic opportunity to dent their rival’s title hopes.
If Tottenham were being honest with themselves, they needed something to level the playing field.
Spurs have looked across north London enviously as Arsenal have gone from strength to strength under Mikel Arteta and forced their way into the title race in a way that their rivals haven’t truly managed in the modern era.
The gap between the two has gradually got bigger over the last couple of years, with Spurs enduring an entire season out of European competition last season while Arsenal went toe-to-toe with Manchester City for the title.
This season, Arsenal are still holding out hope of going one better and winning the Premier League for the first time since 2003-04; the best Tottenham can realistically hope for – in the league at least – is qualifying for the Champions League.
The two come into this weekend’s north London derby in very different places.
So one-sided have the last two meetings between the rivals been at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium that those in red would have been much more confident of a positive result in this game when the fixture list came out.
But now, Spurs have reason for hope.
For starters, football’s first £100 million bargain, Declan Rice, got the first red card of his senior football career against Brighton for two uncharacteristically silly yellow cards. He’ll miss Sunday’s game through suspension, which is a huge blow for Arteta. Rice started 37 of Arsenal’s 38 Premier League games last season and came off the bench in the other one.
But there was more bad news to come during the international break, as Martin Ødegaard limped out of Norway’s UEFA Nations League win over Austria on Monday with an ankle injury about which the national team’s doctor has since said: “Injuries like this take a minimum of three weeks. Anything else is a bonus.” He is a huge doubt for Sunday.
Ødegaard is arguably even more important to Arsenal, having started 101 of their last 105 Premier League games. He plays a crucial role out of possession by leading the press, and is also one of the team’s biggest attacking threats. Only six players have contributed more goals and assists in Premier League games since the start of 2022-23 than the Norwegian (40) and none of them play in central midfield; for Arsenal only Bukayo Saka (54) has.
For Arsenal to lose one of these key players for the north London derby leaves a big hole to be plugged. To potentially lose two is something far closer to a midfield crisis, particularly with a crunch game at Manchester City following a week later.
From Tottenham’s perspective, if Ødegaard were to miss out as well as Rice, they would be given a very significant glimmer of hope heading into Sunday’s game.
The chasm between the sides has been portrayed most starkly in Arsenal’s last two trips to N17. First, there was a comfortable 2-0 win in January 2023, in which Arsenal were 2-0 up by the time Spurs had even had three shots.
That was followed by April’s 3-2 victory, a game in which Arteta’ side raced into a three-goal lead by the 38th minute, and although they wobbled in the last half hour and conceded twice, those goals came from a disastrous error from David Raya and a penalty, and the visitors were very good value for the win. The scoreline flattered Ange Postecoglou’s side in his first home game against Arsenal.
Those games signalled a massive shift in power. Away wins in the north London derbies are usually extremely rare, and Arsenal had picked up two in a row without much difficulty at all.
Ahead of that first win, just 11.5% (seven out of 61) of north London derbies had been won by the away side – the lowest proportion of the 93 fixtures to be played at least 30 times in the Premier League era. Back then, there had been no away win in a league meeting between the sides since March 2014, when Arsenal won 1-0 at White Hart Lane thanks to a Tomás Rosicky winner.
Even after those two recent wins for Arsenal, just 14.1% of Premier League north London derbies have been won by the away side – the fourth-lowest proportion of fixtures to take place at least 30 times, and the second-lowest proportion of fixtures to take place at least 40 times.
A full-strength Arsenal would be huge favourites to make it three in a row weekend, but without two of their most important players, Spurs have the chance to end Arsenal’s winning streak. This is an opportunity they cannot afford to pass up.
Postecoglou’s side have made a very mixed start to the new campaign. There have been plenty of positives in their displays, with the team comfortably dominating possession and creating chances freely in all three games so far, but results have been all-too-typically inconsistent.
According to our expected points model, which uses expected goals data to simulate how each match should have ended based on the quality of chances the sides created, Spurs deserve to be three places higher in the table than they actually are. In other words, their results haven’t entirely reflected the quality of their performances and the chances they have created/conceded.
But creating chances is not even half the job. Spurs have been far too wasteful in front of goal; they should have put both the Leicester and Newcastle games to bed long before they conceded the final goal of the game too easily to draw and lose those matches. They are familiar issues – worryingly familiar, one might say.
They clearly do have enough to cause Arsenal problems, though. Arsenal had the stingiest defence in the Premier League last season, allowing their opponents just 28.4 xG, and conceding just 29 goals, but Tottenham were responsible for more of those expected goals than any other team (3.9 xG) and as many actual goals (4) as anyone else (level with Fulham – also 4).
This season, Arsenal have already given up 3.5 xG in their three games so far, which is more than five other teams (with the fairly major caveat that they played a sizeable chunk of the Brighton game with 10 men). Aston Villa forward Ollie Watkins missed two huge chances against them.
In Son Heung-min, Spurs have a forward who loves playing in these games. He scored three goals in two games against Arsenal last season, and now has eight goals in north London derbies in the history of the fixture. Only three players have been more prolific than him in those games (Harry Kane – 14, Emmanuel Adebayor and Bobby Smith – both 10).
Arteta might well choose to approach this game like he does games against City and Liverpool, where his priority is stopping the opposition rather than attacking freely and looking to score goals. If Thomas Partey and Jorginho both start in a double pivot in front of the defence, Spurs might find it difficult to find a way through, and Arsenal will always pose a threat at the other end, even if their attacks are more limited to quick breaks up field and set-pieces. All three of their goals in last season’s 3-2 win at Tottenham came via these means.
But given the absentees from Arsenal’s first-choice midfield – not to mention new signing Mikel Merino, Takehiro Tomiyasu, Riccardo Calafiori and Gabriel Jesus all either being confirmed out or very doubtful – Spurs have a massive opportunity to reinstate the home advantage that has become a staple of the north London derby in the Premier League era.
One game won’t change anything about the gulf between the sides. They are on different planets right now, with wildly different hopes and expectations for the season.
But derbies aren’t just about long-term aims. Bragging rights mean a lot to the fans, and in a period when there has been precious little to gloat about for Tottenham supporters, this weekend is a big opportunity to give them something to cheer about.
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