Arsenal 4 Tottenham 1
Arsenal are now the title favourites, if it wasn’t obvious before this game Arsenal are the clear favourites for the Premier League this year. With Liverpool’s horrific form this year and Chelsea being relatively inconsistent it looks like Man City will be Arsenal’s only rival for the title this season and with them losing to Newcastle on Saturday it looks like this years title is Arsenal’s title to lose already.
Eze gives Arsenal the spark they were missing last year. In the past when Martin Odegaard has been injured Arteta has adapted by playing someone maybe out of position weakening the team as a whole but this year it’s different. This year it feels like Arsenal have 2 starting players for each position allowing the team to keep playing at a high level in the Premier League and Champions league. Ebere Eze is the perfect example of this, whilst his first few months at Arsenal haven’t been unbelievable, his performances have been improving and it’s culminated in an absolutely brilliant hat-trick in the North-London derby against Spurs.
From a Tottenham perspective this was an absolute disaster from minute 1 to minute 90, the line-up to begin with was put out to purely nullify Arsenal in playing 3 centre backs and a pivot of Bentancur and Palhinha. Spurs had to score the first goal if they wanted to get anything from the game. What’s worrying the most from Tottenham is that yet again they created next to nothing in the match creating an xG of 0.07, Richarlison’s goal from the half-way line saved a bit of face for Spurs but it looks like Tottenham fans are losing some patience with Thomas Frank at the minute.
Spurs’ poor form against the quote on quote ‘ big sides’ continues. Other than the City game at the start of the season Tottenham have looked really poor when playing against the better teams so far this season, it started with the Bournemouth game at home where Bournemouth were by far the better team throughout the game and could have won 3 or 4 nil on another day. Then again against Chelsea at home Spurs created a measly xG of 0.10 at home which nearly broke a Premier League record, a slightly better performance against Manchester United where they should have had 3 points but threw it away in the end and now an abject performance against their biggest rivals. Frank simply has to change something in these games that can create more chances from open play and try to get the fans back onside.
Arsenal vs Chelsea next week will tell us how good both sides are. This Sunday it’s 1st vs 2nd in the Premier League at Stamford Bridge in a game that could make or break a season for both teams, if Chelsea win they go 3 points behind Arsenal and with Cole Palmer probably coming back in the equation, Chelsea would be building momentum going into December. If Arsenal win they would go 9 points ahead of Chelsea and stay 7 ahead of City assuming they beat Leeds at the Etihad on Saturday. Whilst not a title-decider yet, the game on Sunday is huge for both teams and their aspirations for this season.