16 Conclusions on Arsenal 4-1 Tottenham: Eze, Rice, Frank and the Premier League title | OneFootball

We shouldn’t have scoffed at Mikel Arteta’s ‘process’ as he leads Arsenal on a trot to the Premier League title, but we absolutely should at Thomas Frank not having one.

That was a stunning performance from Arsenal and another shocking one from Tottenham.

1) The question after an Eberechi Eze-inspired Arsenal pummelled their nearest and detested isn’t if Mikel Arteta will lead the Gunners to the title this season. That’s nailed on barring an injury crisis of stratospheric proportions, or perhaps a season-ender for Declan Rice. It’s whether Thomas Frank will still be the Tottenham manager when Martin Odegaard lifts the Premier League trophy at the end of the season. We suspect not.

2) Thomas Frank must know that Tottenham are a football club of a standing where kicking long and playing for second balls is frowned upon, by the fans, the media, even the players.

While in this season of long throws and direct football we may not be far off a point where the goalkeeper of a ‘big team’ need not even wave his arms to signify he’s about to launch a goal-kick to his defenders as it’s once again the norm, we’re not there yet. Righty or wrongly, it’s still something for the unskilled underdogs.

It was fine at Brentford, for whom Mark Flekken launched 72 per cent of his goals-kicks under Frank last season. But not as Spurs, whose fans have aired justifiable gripes about the style of football already, despite Guglielmo Vicario booting just 36 per cent of his.

There was a notable uptick in what apologists might describe as long passes but are little more than hopeful hoofs at the Emirates, as the difference between the goalkeeper playing the ball short and a team actually playing out from the back was made abundantly clear within the first ten minutes.

Spurs were merely delaying the hoofs as a combination of Arsenal pressure and a Tottenham midfield unable to deal with it made playing through the lines a pointless and dangerous task.

3) The series of free-kicks Vicario took from inside his own half briefly worked. Not in causing Arsenal any problems at the back – two of them went straight out of play – but we suspect scoring a goal was secondary to their designed purpose of slowing the game down to crawling pace.

After a fast Arsenal start saw Declan Rice force a save from Vicario after an excellent flick through by Eberechi Eze, we endured 20-odd minutes of fits and starts thanks to niggly tackles as Tottenham realised they couldn’t win this game of football by playing football.

4) At that stage we feared for a game we’ve seen fairly frequently from Arsenal this season, where – not for the want of trying – they fail to work out how to break through opposition teams in open play and rely on a set piece. But boy did they figure it out.

The moment of realisation came to nothing other than a free-kick, when Bukayo Saka nutmegged Micky van de Ven and was brought down by Rodrigo Bentancur, but the space opened up in the middle of the pitch by one of the Arsenal forwards – on that occasion Mikel Merino – joining Saka on the right saw them then plough that particular furrow for the rest of the game to destroy the visitors.

5) The way Rodrigo Bentancur and Joao Palhinha were attracted to the ball on that side was poor for the first goal, laughable for the second and head-in-hands depressing for the third.

The danger isn’t there. Spurs were playing five at the back, and if one of the three centre-backs can’t double up with Destiny Udogie against Saka then one of the two defensive midfielders should be enough. It wasn’t, but you get the point.

On each occasion one of them did go, but they were then followed with no purpose by the other, leaving one or more of the Arsenal forwards, firstly Merino to assist Leandro Trossard, and then Eze, to take full advantage of an ocean of space bang in front of the Tottenham goal.

They were both caught flat-footed and flailing as Eze danced between them for his first goal, and as a pair of midfielders essentially useless in the build-up, in the team as destroyers, this was a harrowing outing in which their lack of football IQ was brutally exposed.

6) That IQ is entirely at odds with that of Merino, who was described as “a dream for a manager” by Thierry Henry ahead of kick-off thanks to his ability to play in multiple positions.

We don’t quite know why Richarlison and Mohammed Kudus stood and watched him stand on the ball and look up before playing the pass for Trossard, but it was a delightful clipped delivery over the Arsenal defence from a famously difficult straight position.

After two goals and an assist against Bulgaria in October, Spain boss Luis de la Fuente hailed Merino as “an exceptionally complete player with great adaptability”. Merino plays every game for his national team and we suspect there may come a point this season – after this performance, in just his fifth Premier League start of the campaign –  where Arteta finds a consistent spot for him. Don’t ask where.

7) Despite Arsenal winning 64% of the Premier League games Gabriel has played in since arriving five years ago compared to just 40% without him, the narrative even ahead of kick-off was that his absence for this game and the next few won’t be a problem for Arsenal.

And while Piero Hincapie’s full Premier League debut turned out to be the gentlest of introductions to life in the English top flight, and we will require some sort of attacking threat from an opposition team to make a real judgement of his quality, the knee-jerk reactions will be wholly positive.

With Cristhian Mosquera in reserve of the reserve, what now might just be the greatest quartet of centre-backs at any club on the planet is one of the reasons, made plain in this exhibition of football against their bitter rivals, why Arsenal are destined for the title.

8) Eberechi Eze is another reason.

Just think, he was days – hours even – away from joining Tottenham. He didn’t really try, and failed dramatically, to hide his joy at this outcome of that sliding doors moment in August, smiling more and more broadly after each brilliant goal of his hat-trick.

Displaying quick feet for the first and outstanding finishes off his left and then his right, featuring perfect controls, for his second and third, Spurs granting anyone that much space was a madness, made all the more ridiculous because of the wonderful skill he has and did show in those positions in devastating fashion.

Mikel Arteta will love how annoyed Eze was after a fourth shot from a similar spot was saved by Vicario and  seeing him charge back towards his own goal deep into the second half to prevent a counter-attack before playing an impudent pass to Declan Rice under pressure.

Eze had been very good already this season, but this will be the game remembered as the one when he truly came home.

9) “Tottenham have not had one single shot and that is unacceptable.” Gary Neville said at the end of a first half in which Spurs had completed just 22 passes in the opposition half – the fewest of any team in a half of football in the Premier League this season.

Frank said before kick-off that Spurs would “embrace controlled chaos” in a game which “will probably end up as a mad house”, but it looked more like his side had walked into a house of horrors believing it to be the gift shop.

Come the end of the game, Spurs had had just two shots – one timid effort from outside the box from Xavi Simons, and Richarlison’s outstanding goal. Kudus did nothing and we genuinely forgot who was playing on the opposite wing and just had to check. Wilson Odobert, by the way.

The huge problem, as highlighted by Gary Neville on commentary, was that they had “no idea how to play a pass through midfield”.

10) The clash between what the players have been told to do and what they feel they should be doing was made clear in first-half stoppage time. The first of two free-kicks just inside their own half was pumped aimlessly into the Arsenal box by Vicario and comically dismissed by an Arsenal player back to the Spurs goalkeeper’s box to jeers from Gunners fans and moans from the travelling supporters. Sergio Romero took charge of the second and played a ten-yard square ball.

Frank said the performance was “completely the opposite of the intention” but it’s far from the first time this season when we’ve got to the end of a game not knowing what that intention is.

And while he’s absolutely right in saying “we didn’t win enough duels”, Tottenham’s path to victory can’t be based around “winning second balls”. There needs to be some sort of plan.

11) We’re 12 games into the season and while Tottenham are ninth, they’re five points off Chelsea in second and just two behind Crystal Palace in fifth, which will likely be enough for Champions League qualification as it was last season. Decent results through a relatively gentle run against Fulham (H), Newcastle (A), Brentford (H) and Nottingham Forest (A) would put Spurs back in a good position and feeling rather more positive.

But there will be two huge factors in the minds of Spurs fans questioning whether Frank is the man to take them forward: the style of football and the way their two nadirs have come against their most bitter rivals in Chelsea and Tottenham.

“You sense it and feel that this is important,” Frank said on the North London derby ahead of kick-off. “You feel it from the fans and the staff. This is the big one.”

And yet they put in a performance like that. Failing to motivate the players this game and for their other insipid display against Chelsea is damning of a manager who can expect plenty of calls for his sacking from a fanbase who have nothing to hang their hat on right now.

“As a collective we didn’t fight,” Vicario said, in an almost word-for-word post-match assessment as after the clash – if you can even call it that – against Chelsea. Again – damning.

12) Richarlison scoring one of the great consolation goals for Tottenham will come as little consolation to the Tottenham fans who will now likely have to endure more of him leading the Spurs line with miscontrols and by ducking out of headers.

Some goal though. Good from Palhinha to pinch the ball off Martin Zubimendi as the Spaniard dawdled, and really wonderful from Richarlison, who almost had to run round the ball to get that perfect connection to lift the ball over David Raya from deep.

13) Among the most concerning things for those hoping for an Arsenal slip-up in the title race, aside from Chelsea(?!) being their closest rivals, now six points behind them, is what they have in reserve.

They didn’t have their £64m striker here, nor the £65m attacking midfielder who played as striker for them last season, and that lack of a Proper No.9 no longer seems to be a problem for them. Nor does them not having their captain Martin Odegaard or their best centre-back, in a game where their most potent early-season attacking threat, Noni Madueke, returned and looked just as sharp as he did before he got injured.

Leandro Trossard was brilliant from the supposed left-wing weak-spot, scoring the opening goal after an excellent darting run and looking as confident as he’s ever done for Arsenal, playing ahead of Gabriel Martinelli, who was a menacing ‘finisher’ this season before he was forced out of action.

Myles Lewis-Skelly came on for a stoppage-time cameo as he can’t get in the side ahead of Riccardo Calafiori after his astonishing breakout season.

We’re relying on an injury crisis of monumental proportions to thwart an Arsenal side which has been put together impeccably by Arteta and Andrea Berta. It’s not easy to think of a time when the difference between the best and the rest in the Premier League has been quite this big.

14) Declan Rice might be the one irreplaceable. No Arsenal player completed more passes (65), won more aerial duels (4) or tackles (3), he would have scored had he not spanked a volley quite so perfectly, and his assist for the first goal could easily go unnoticed but was glorious in its simplicity. The goal doesn’t happen if he takes a touch rather than rapping that pass first-time into Eze after the Spurs clearance.

The calm, aggressive authority he now exhibits in midfield is magnificent. And while Moises Caicedo may be better at winning possession and Ryan Gravenberch superior on the half-turn, there is no midfielder in the Premier League with Rice’s all-round game.

15) “When you see one you see the other one,” Henry said in analysis of Saka and Jurrien Timber’s combination on the right, and it does look like they’ve forgotten to untie that rope between them that managers sometimes use in training to ensure the correct distances.

Saka getting neither an assist nor a goal in a 4-1 victory is strange but he and Timber were crucial to the first three goals, in drawing the Spurs midfielders out like moths to a flame before delivering balls into the middle.

And they’re just as in sync defensively, working back as one to snuff out any attacks down their side, in quite the contrast to whichever poor Liverpool right-back is tasked with playing behind Mohamed Salah on any given day for Arne Slot’s side.

16) That synergy speaks to Arsenal as a whole. And while cynics – us here at F365 included – have scoffed at ‘the process’ and Arteta leading the nearly-men next-season wonders at Netflix FC for the last three seasons, we get it now.

As Jamie Carragher said in the studio after the game, in the previous three seasons there was “always a better team than them”, and while it was fun to suggest they bottled title races that was never really the case. They were on a journey (christ, listen to us) to get to this point of dominance.

And that would give rivals hope that they can indeed throw it away this season if they weren’t quite this dominant. They’re a near-perfect team who tore their neighbours to shreds playing some wonderful football under a manager who knows – and perhaps has always known – exactly what he’s doing to lead them to the Premier League title in 2026.

Frank is at the beginning of his journey at Tottenham, but it’s one which already looks doomed as those Tottenham fans enduring their second nothing performance in quick succession to their most-hated rivals will have wanted to be anywhere other than the Emirates stadium as the ‘oles’ rang out, aside perhaps from Sky Sports’ box with Michael McIntyre.