If the last few years have contained enough – largely terrible – news to make it feel like half a lifetime, consider this: Thursday night’s north London derby will be the first to be played in front of supporters at a permanent Tottenham ground in half a decade.
Fans have been forced to watch from afar, or to travel across north London to a stadium that had all the bells and whistles they could want but just never felt like home, particularly as they could see the wondrous building at the end of their street. They are more than ready.
Not that this game needs any upselling. Is this the most important north London derby in decades? Perhaps. You can make a case, at least in Arsenal’s favour, for April 2004 when they won the title behind enemy lines. The 1991 FA Cup semi-final certainly counts too.
But given the kudos, financial reward and competitive interests at stake, May 2022 wins. Both these clubs stand on the edge of their own future, but Champions League football is necessary to turn tomorrow into today.
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The last meeting at the old White Hart Lane became a watermark, even if we didn’t realise it at the time. It was the first season in two decades that Tottenham finished above Arsenal; they have since extended that run in the five years since. Recently, during the post-Pochettino mini-era, that provided only crumbs of comfort. Sixth and seventh is better than eighth, but it’s still not good enough.
That run is now in grave danger. Arsenal’s growth under Mikel Arteta has taken time, patience and the occasional blind leap of faith – just as he said it would – but he is finally building something better. Arteta has picked the 19 youngest starting XIs in the Premier League this season and will make it 20 on Thursday night. That insistence of building around youth was best viewed in his array of attacking midfield babies, all swaggering dribbles and fearless endeavour, but it has been replaced as an emblem by Eddie Nketiah succeeding where Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Alexandre Lacazette failed.
Arsenal hold the cards. Wins over Chelsea and Manchester United didn’t only help to erode a reputation for flunking against their direct peers; it also overcame a bump in the road and gave them a position of dominance in the top-four race. Arsenal can afford to draw on Thursday and they will surely play Champions League football for the first time in five-and-a-half years.
But Tottenham believe that opportunity creates a crack of doubt into which they must rush en masse. Both Tottenham and Arsenal’s seasons have been pockmarked by damaging runs of defeats (both have lost three in a row in the league on two separate occasions). For all the talk of new spirit and new hope, old scars are only ever covered by a thin sleeve.
Beat Arsenal, and Tottenham firmly believe that they will win their other two league matches. More importantly, given the mathematical requirements for their top-four place, if Arsenal lose then Spurs are confident that they may slip again against Newcastle or Everton.
Spurs have good reason to be hopeful. The “form goes out of the window” cliche of local rivalry falls down a little here; there is a clear recent pattern to north London derbies. The away side has not won any of the last 15 fixtures and the last four have been won by the home side.
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But it is that clarity of task that makes Tottenham dangerous. Arteta is adamant that his team will play to win the game – he is not foolish enough to say anything different – but Antonio Conte has a far more simple demand: play on the front foot, attack Arsenal and prove that you belong in European football’s premier competition.
Either way, it promises to be an extraordinary night in north London. Arsenal and Tottenham have met each other 190 times, but never this late in a season’s calendar (barring the pandemic-affected meeting in July 2020). Titles have been won, cup finals have been reached. But never have they met with so much riding on both of their league campaigns, with an opportunity not just to bask in their own victory but compel the other to disarray.
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