16 Conclusions from Tottenham 1-4 Arsenal: Bottle, relegation, Rice, Gyokeres, Eze, Gallagher | OneFootball

The title race is very much alive and looks for all the world like it will be decided on April 18 when Arsenal head to the Etihad after the Gunners shook off the jitters and gave them all to Declan Rice to claim an 8-2 aggregate win over Tottenham in the Premier League.

Eberechi Eze loves Tottenham far more than Conor Gallagher does, Viktor Gyokeres turned into Viktor Gyokeres and Igor Tudor needs more than Randal Kolo Muani to avoid relegation.

1) The narrative focus ahead of the game was on the delightful prospect of Igor Tudor winning his first in charge of Tottenham to give them what would surely be an unassailable boost away from West Ham to avoid relegation and strike a telling blow to Arsenal’s title hopes in the process.

What we were actually treated to was Arsenal shaking off the bottlejob tag and confirming that if they’re going to lose the title to Manchester City then Pep Guardiola’s side are going to have to be bloody good to beat them to it, while leaving Spurs in a crisis so bleak that they’re looking at their fixtures wondering if they will ever win a Premier League again (or at least until they return from a stint in the Championship).

2) Few will blame Igor Tudor for failing to come good on his “first goal” in his very first game in charge when met with the Premier League leaders in the North London derby, with 29 points separating the teams on the back of a run which has seen his new team pick up four points from a possible 24 under his much-maligned predecessor.

“I like to be positive. I like to play offensive football. That’s my first goal,” he said in his pre-match press conference. But against Arsenal, even an Arsenal that’s just drawn with rock-bottom Wolves, philosophy had to come second to a much-needed uptick in grit and determination as the focus for their week of training.

But offering so little in attack while conceding four goals at home in a game which matters far more to the fans than any other puts him under immediate pressure and may bring his belief in Tottenham avoiding relegation down a tad from “100%”. A toothless attack and a suspect defence is a classic recipe for the drop after all.

3) The mood was different in the stadium, for the first hour at least, as the fans responded to what was an evident increase in fight and intensity from their team.

They roared when Micky van de Ven smashed the ball into the stands to thwart an Arsenal attack in the first minute, booed Eze impressively albeit ineffectively after he snubbed them in favour of the Gunners in the summer and went potty when Yves Bissouma hunted Leandro Trossard down and robbed him of the ball in the 24th minute, which Gary Neville claimed on commentary was “almost like Moises Caicedo”.

The dynamism didn’t last and Tudor bemoaned the “physicality” of his side after the game when asked if he was concerned by their mentality. It’s one of several things in need of improvement.

4) Tudor’s setup, featuring a back five and three midfielder battlers, meant that Tottenham’s best – perhaps only – means of scoring a goal was to take advantage of an Arsenal error. A risky strategy against a side with the meanest defence in the Premier League, but one that threatened to pay dividends even before Rice denied himself dozens of votes in the POTY stakes with one of the blunders of the season.

Piero Hincapie gave David Raya a scare by tackling the ball into the path of Conor Gallagher. A loose pass from Gabriel Magalhaes put Martin Zubimendi in trouble and led to a Spurs cross. Jurrien Timber got himself a yellow card for bringing Pape Matar Sarr down after passing the ball straight to him.

They were more blasé than their recent run of form, the magnitude of this game, the scoreline and the fight displayed by Tottenham demanded. They were too comfortable in those early stages; none more so than Rice.

5) Rice was just about the only player to come out of the draw with Wolves with any credit. While his teammates have shrunk under the pressure to put the Premier League title in Manchester City’s hands he’s remained resolute, as dominant a force in midfield as he’s been all season.

That might explain his nonsense – the need to demonstrate the maximum composure in the hope it will seep into the performances of his teammates. There’s a fine line between composure and complacency, but it was undeniably impressive that he jumped so far beyond that line in one action.

The Andres Iniesta tiki-taka move is ill-advised in midfield for most other than Iniesta and possibly all other than Iniesta when just outside your own box.

Rice’s smile and chuckle in the immediate aftermath suggests it was a mere brain fade, but the normally impeccable midfielder was again the lax culprit late in the game when his side had reached a point of almost unparalleled comfort in any game of football ever, losing possession in the channel to force David Raya into palming substitute Richarlison’s flick off his line.

Side note: If there’s ever been a more gloriously inappropriate example of the ‘calm down’ hands accompanied by the pursed lips, frowning composure face than the one Declan Rice delivered after his goal-gifting blunder we would love to see it. Coming so soon after the waving arms and head pointing to denote the need for high energy and concentration when Arsenal had taken the lead and we have no notes whatsoever.

6) A positive for Tottenham with significant negative slant was the question Kolo Muani posed though his performance: If he’s this good when ploughing the loneliest of lone furrows up front, what might he be able to produce when given some support?

Where that support is going to come from is another harrowing question for Spurs but the strength, technique and football IQ involved in his goal was wonderful. The key to scoring was the beat he took when William Saliba looked to block his shot. The slight delay when lesser strikers would have panicked meant his effort missed the Arsenal centre-back’s outstretched foot and slipped under David Raya.

He showed great poise and finishing skill again in the second half, albeit after a clear push on Gabriel which denied him the goal,  and will have left the Gunners defenders feeling as though they’ve been in a game, which won’t have been the case all that often this season.

Kolo Muani scored six goals in 12 games under Tudor at Juventus but we don’t think… let us just check… yeah, he didn’t score those goals without any help from teammates whatsoever.

7) Raya put the Wolves rick firmly behind him with a commanding performance. We constantly marvel at his agility, displayed as he leapt to get to that late Richarlison chance, but he was also impeccable in terms of the bread and butter: starting positions, passing from the back – long or short, and the almost absurd elasticity he shows when plucking crosses from the air. It’s almost like he’s dancing.

The confidence he instils is at odds with his opposite number. There were no grave errors from Guglielmo Vicario, but there’s always a ‘what the p*ssing hell is he doing’ moment per game and he put the willies up his own defenders after just five minutes.

A few questions: Why go with a diving header when rushing out of your area? Why not look at the Arsenal player threatening to lob you after making that clearance? Why after making it back into the box would you leave the ball for your defender to clear it off the line?

That third query can also be asked of Micky van de Ven, who left Leandro Trossard’s lump forward for a very confused Radu Dragusin to clear as the very last line of defence.

8) The Romanian looked quite confused throughout and increasingly rattled as three further games without Cristian Romero will feel like more than it did before Dragusin took to the field like a steamroller to flatten the track for Viktor Gyokeres to bully on.

He was turned inside out by the big Swede early doors and watched Gyokeres’ shot fizz just wide of Vicario’s far post, lost the striker for his goal, and two errors in the build-up to Arsenal’s third saw him head the ball into a 50/50 challenge won by Eberechi Eze and then get outmuscled by Gyokeres in the next challenge.

9 “Do you want to be part of the noise? Or not? If not, go and do something else, be part of a different club,” Mikel Arteta said in the build-up to one of the loudest North London derbies in Premier League history given its massive repercussions for both teams. His players stuck the earplugs in and are back on the title track.

We all smelt a bottling but even after their captain who’s not the captain made an heroic attempt to send them into a tailspin they didn’t panic. Arteta insisted they would respond and they have, emphatically.

Sure, it’s Tottenham, lads, and perhaps the very worst Tottenham who may not be in this league for much longer, but it’s also their biggest rivals Tottenham. And the difference between this display and what they produced at Wolves was massive.

How or why they were so bad at Molineux needs to be examined, but if that was a display of bottlejobs then this was one of champions and Arteta deserves huge credit for the turnaround.

He was right when he said before the game that “these are the ones we dream about as kids”, but the challenge isn’t in getting his players up for a game like this, it’s in keeping them calm and ensuring they don’t deviate from a plan which worked to a tee.

10) Eze did well in his post-match interview to resist the temptation when asked “why always Tottenham?” to poke fun at the team he was hours away from joining whom many of his friends and family support. “I don’t know, I want to score in every game,” he said.

Five of his six Premier League goals being scored against Tottenham and the other coming against former club Crystal Palace is a very specific, apparently narrative-driven, distribution for a hugely talented footballer who for most of this season has looked like an ill-fitting spare part in Arteta’s system. But again here, as was the case at the Emirates vs Tottenham, provided the maverick lubricant required to turn a robotic football team into one capable of the unexpected.

11) Neither of his two finishes were anything special. He did well to stretch for the opener after a horrible first touch followed a fortunate break of the ball as Bukayo Saka tackled his way past Pape Matar Sarr before squaring it for the playmaker. He could hardly miss the second when the ball bobbled to him after Saka slid in with Vicario.

Eze’s work in the build up to that was brilliant though as he won the ball in front of Yves Bissoma before playing a perfect through ball from Saka after a touch from Gyokeres.

He had that beautiful languid flow to his football again, gliding over the pitch, sliding balls into his teammates and the confidence grew to a crescendo in the second half when he lured poor Joao Palhinha into a challenge on the touchline, put the ball through his legs and floated towards the Tottenham goal.

We think Jamie Redknapp confused any sort of Eze-Gyokeres link-up with “telepathic” chemistry, starved of it as we’ve all been before this game, but the play between that pair and Saka on the right gave a very promising indication of how good a forward line Arsenal might have when/if they get a run of games together.

12) It’s bonkers that Arsenal are 28 games into the season, lead the Premier League by five points and we’re still waiting for their attack to catch fire. Maybe it won’t at all and that’s absolutely fine as long as they win the title, but looking forward to next season they really need to spend some cash on a new left winger. It’s so clearly the weak point in their XI.

Gabriel Martinelli was awful against Wolves and Leandro Trossard wasn’t much better here, creating no chances, completed none of his four dribbles and mainly contributing by doing that ‘wait for a challenge in the back and fall over’ thing which, to be fair, he is a master of.

13) Gyokeres’ strike was jaw-dropping. A genuine “sh*t – did you see that?” moment, finally, from a striker who’s been bizarrely timid in his debut season but was brilliantly brutal here.

The power and whip on that strike after a perfect first touch to set it up from Jurrien Timber’s lovely pass was simply stunning and stunningly simple; the sort of goal it felt like we saw him score most weeks in Portugal, much like his second in what was his best performance for Arsenal by a distance.

Arteta was smiling a good few seconds before Gyokeres scored after Martin Odegaard slipped the ball into his path, which suggested two things: 1) he recognised that his striker had Archie Gray exactly where he wanted him and the Spurs defender was powerless to stop Gyokeres in what looked like a pretty even battle for the ball, and 2) Gyokeres has all-too rarely been put in that position by his teammates this season – when else has Arteta had the opportunity to smile as the bruiser bears down on goal?

What a huge boon for Arsenal and Arteta for Gyokeres and Eze to have found form at this stage of the season. Fingers crossed for Gooners it’s as much about them as the opposition.

14) Conor Gallagher isn’t doing hugely well to dispel the widely-held belief that he’s little more than a willing midfield runner. He’s actually doing rather better to convince the conspiracy theorists that he’s a Chelsea double-agent hellbent on securing Tottenham’s relegation before being welcomed back to Stamford Bridge as a non-playing hero.

The two games Tottenham have won since he joined for £35m he was ineligible for. He’s played four games at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium for Tottenham but his last win there was as a Chelsea player when they spanked Spurs 4-1 in November 2023.

15) The win isn’t as good as a defeat would have been bad for Arsenal. The Premier League title is still in Manchester City’s hands and the way Pep Guardiola’s side saw off Newcastle on Saturday suggests they’re in it for the long haul and may be getting into one of their rhythms at the right time, or indeed the wrong time if you’re of an Arsenal bent.

We’re now close enough to consider who has the toughest run-in but there’s no getting around how massive the Gunners’ visit to the Etihad in mid-April is going to be. No amount of insisting from Guardiola and Arteta that their focus is on the next game will convince anyone that they’re not looking ahead to that clash as a title decider.

But crucially, after Brentford and Wolves and a run of just two wins in seven before this game had us wondering if Arsenal would be meeting City on relatively even terms by that point, we have renewed confidence in that being quite the showdown.

16) More confidence than we have in Tottenham avoiding relegation. Because while a game against an on-song Arsenal isn’t a great barometer of their ability to beat the drop under Tudor, it wasn’t a performance to inspire confidence for their trip to Fulham, who just beat Sunderland 3-1, or the visit of Crystal Palace, who beat Wolves to move six points clear of Spurs. We could go on.

The point is there are no fixtures for a team that’s the only one in the Premier League yet to pick up a victory in 2026 that look particularly winnable, and that’s not changed on the back of Thomas Frank being sacked. Even a trip to Wolves at the end of April is looking a damn-sight trickier than it did a few weeks ago.

The standard of the Premier League this season, which has seen the mid-table broaden significantly and results like Burnley drawing at Stamford Bridge and Leeds drawing at Villa Park feel far les surprising than they have done before, means there are far fewer teams that are ‘too good to go down’ and Tottenham are not one of those few.

We keep hearing that ‘they need players back’, but which ones? Most of the defenders should return before long, but Spurs need creativity and thrust in attack. Mohammed Kudus could be back in April with Lucas Bergvall and they might have Dejan Kulusevski for the last couple, but they won’t have James Maddison or Wilson Odobert again this season.

It’s really bleak and frankly unbelievable that they didn’t spend money in January to aid Frank and now Tudor, who will need all his experience as a ‘fixer’ to patch up a broken football club at very real risk of having 60,000 people watching Championship football next season.