The North London Derby: Can Tudor Start his Spurs Journey With a Win?

This weekend’s North London Derby has become a much more interesting fixture over the last few days because Arsenal unexpectedly dropped points at Wolves in the middle of the week and inevitably Tottenham have sacked Thomas Frank and appointed Igor Tudor as interim until the end of the season. The derby this weekend matters because it’s a chance for Arsenal to put their midweek blip behind them and re-establish what could potentially be an eight-point lead over trailing Manchester City.

For Tottenham, the best they could realistically hope for is a draw. A historically dreadful injury crisis that they have been in the midst for some time has dragged them into a relegation fight. Additionally, Tudor will have had very limited time on the training pitch and as a result his tactical methods will not have had enough time to sink into the players. Tudor has quite a unique way of playing football – it is possession based in a 3-4-2-1, however because he likes his two wide centre backs to play so high and wide, at times the system can look like something that is effectively a 1-2-4-3 in possession of the ball.

The reason why this is a particularly risky way of playing is because it leaves a massive amount of space in behind for the opposition to break into, which is something that Arsenal are becoming increasingly adept at doing, in games against other big six teams. This is thanks to the pace of players such as Bukayo Saka and Eberechi Eze amongst others.  For Arsenal though the derby is an important game. A big win in the derby would be a statement to say that they are not going to give up their place at the top of the Premier League without a fight. 

What has tended to happen is that after one bad result Arsenal have had a tendency to collapse slightly. But the fact is that they have got too much quality for that to happen now, for example if Gabriel Martinelli is unavailable, they can play Leandro Trossard instead, and likewise if Declan Rice is unavailable, they can replace him with Martín Zubimendi. In defence they have got depth across the backline which few clubs across Europe can compete with.

One suspects that if Arsenal are going to beat Tottenham, and the expectation is that they will, then the way they will do it is in the way Arteta has taught them to play i.e., dominance of possession in a 3-2-5 or three-box-three structure with the ball, which has one of the full backs tucking inside to form a back three whilst the other comes in field to create a double pivot, whilst looking to pin Tottenham back into something like a 5-4-1 low block. The overall game state when Arsenal are in possession would therefore look something like this. 

The key to Arsenal being able to break Spurs down will be moving the ball at a high tempo with plenty of incisive short passes and movement between the lines. Part of how this could be done would likely involve Gyokeres dropping off to link the play almost as a false nine sort of role whilst Zubimendi for example drifts into the space he vacates on the last line. 

Derbies are often won by a moment of serious quality by an individual. That is likely to be what will happen again on Sunday, but the fact of the matter is that Arsenal currently simply have more players capable of a piece of magic than Tottenham Hotspur do. 

By: Benedict Flanagan

Featured Image: @GabFoligno / Catherine Ivill / Getty Images