Arsenal may be stumbling in the title race but they still show aimless Tottenham the road to success | OneFootball

By Thursday morning, a lot had changed around Tottenham Hotspur. The Arsenal result from the night before had naturally sent a charge around the club, given that the derby is next up. They’ll suddenly be facing a team enduring their own crisis. This has been amplified by the shift that comes from a new coach, no matter who it is. While there have been questions about Igor Tudor, he has spent most of his time so far seeking to implement his own game model. It’s foundation-first.

There have already been a few quips about how Thomas Frank would have overly focused on Arsenal, a factor that had started to grate some of those around the club.

They – and Arsenal – are also conscious of how the atmosphere on Sunday is going to be different. The toxicity that surrounded Frank will be gone, at least temporarily. The derby will only amplify this better mood.

That suddenly creates a new danger for Arsenal. This could be an especially bad week.

But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a longer-term risk for Spurs from some of this, and that goes beyond the threat of relegation.

This is the first time that a north London derby has involved both the title and survival since 1934-35, when Arsenal were champions and Spurs went down. Arsenal won those fixtures 5-1 and 0-6.

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Thomas Frank was sacked by Tottenham last week (AFP/Getty)

This season feels very much up for grabs at both ends.

But if Frank occasionally overstated the exact quality of Arsenal, and recent results make even discussing feel mistimed, Spurs would be unwise to ignore the wider point.

The club hierarchy are currently trying to figure out a way out of this unprecedented mess, but there is a good roadmap across north London.

The very fact Arsenal are so disappointed right now is at once a sign of their progress. Better to be frustrated in a title race than nowhere near. They are competing.

Spurs chief executive Vinai Venkatesham should know about that journey better than anyone at the club, since he was on it.

The official was part of a wider team led by former executive vice-chairman Tim Lewis, former sporting director Edu, the ownership and – of course – Mikel Arteta, in making Arsenal a serious operation again.

The hierarchy first stripped everything back, removing all old pretensions and hang-ups to rebuild anew. Arteta decided on an identity and went there.

Another irony in the eternal intertwining of these two clubs is that this Arsenal have almost represented an upscaled version of what Mauricio Pochettino’s Tottenham Hotspur were, right down to the style and an initial emphasis on youth.

Above all, though, Arsenal have had a clear sense of where they are going.

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Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta (John Walton/PA)

Spurs haven’t really been able to say that since Pochettino took them to the Champions League final in 2019, but arguably even earlier.

Since the club lost the Argentine’s singular focus, they have been a mess of different ideas. It says much that all of 2025, 2023, 2021 and 2019 were cast as restarts when they really just perpetuated the same cycle.

A significant cause was the one constant at Spurs: Daniel Levy. The former chairman is still widely respected in the game for how he gradually built the club, but there were increasing criticisms about how virtually everything at Tottenham was done according to his preferences. Even executives at Arsenal quipped about how it was Levy’s way rather than the Spurs way.

It arguably says more that, outside Pochettino’s time and brief bursts like Antonio Conte’s Champions League qualification or Ange Postecoglou’s Europa League triumph, the club has been most associated with a dismissive eponymous adjective: “Spursy”. They are now a club who receive most attention for things going wrong.

The ultimate example might be the Eberechi Eze negotiations, which was one of Levy’s last acts.

Except, the departure of someone as central as Levy has now naturally left a huge vacuum, and one that threatens to swallow up the whole club.

It is actually even worse than the obvious symptom of the lack of decisiveness over Frank, and how the complete absence of a plan saw them allow a dysfunctional situation to become one where relegation is a genuine risk.

Put bluntly, Spurs have no idea what they are, and multiple sources insist there are still not enough football people at the club to figure this out.

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Eberechi Eze was in talks with Tottenham before joining Arsenal (John Walton/PA Wire)

Those same sources point to how Tudor was previously a name raised by former director of football, Fabio Paratici.

This is a club badly in need of ideas, and especially one central idea.

As is often the case, it’s impossible not to feel some of this should be obvious, to the point it’s almost boring to repeat in a media article.

Spurs themselves even pronounce it before every home match. There are the inevitable references to Danny Blanchflower’s famous speech proclaiming that “the game is about glory… about doing things in style and with a flourish”.

This again feels incredible to say about one of the wealthiest clubs in football, but it should not have taken them this long to decide on a football ideology that evokes this; to appoint managers and sign players that fit into this.

Again, it should be obvious, but it hasn’t been properly tried at Spurs in years.

One fair argument right now is that the club do not currently have the football expertise to start going about such a project. Other Premier League figures are insistent that Spurs won’t be able to properly do anything like that until there is a change in ownership.

The rumours there refuse to go away. Many potential buyers are said to be interested. The Lewis family, however, are still described as “capricious” on this subject.

And of course it wouldn’t be modern Spurs without some other layer of complication.

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Will Mauricio Pochettino be in charge at Tottenham next season? (Reuters)

Although it is usually at this point of one of their frequent coaching changes that they try to start thinking about the future and the biggest danger is a sense of drift, this time could see them get cut adrift.

They have to stave off relegation. Even the mere risk of this can affect preparation for next season, as Spurs may have to start considering two different plans.

The target will still be the same. They want to return to Pochettino after USA involvement in the World Cup ends.

The hierarchy feel the fanbase needs unifying after such a divisive period, and there is no better candidate. Pochettino’s football ideal, to be fair, also fits into that kind of Blanchflower proclamation.

But should this be based around one man? Is that not a superficial plan in itself? Is it even the same man as in 2019, let alone 2014, when Pochettino offered the fire that was necessary?

There is yet another little twist in how Arteta suddenly faces up to precisely the problem that Pochettino did, and potentially peaking at the wrong time, of not taking the project to fulfilment. Of maybe ending up with no title.

Spurs could have a significant say in that – but they know the club needs to be about so much more. Arsenal are still going for everything, while their great rivals still just need something.