Arsenal review: Five reasons why we won the derby | Analysis | News

Every win against Tottenham Hotspur is something precious, and Sunday's 1-0 victory on the other side of North London will also be remembered by our fans for a long time.

But why did we manage to return to N5 with all three points? Adrian Clarke has happily rewatched all the footage and examined the match's stats to find five key reasons why we're still smiling 24 hours later:

The decisive moment

Let's start with our winning goal, the 24th we have scored from a set piece since the start of the 2023/24 season – a Premier League high.

At first, Tottenham Hotspur goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario thinks he has an easy job, with no one (not even Ben White!) trying to close down his space in the six-yard box. Cristian Romero has the unenviable task of man-marking Gabriel at the penalty spot.

As Bukayo Saka runs to take the corner, White and Saliba, in a planned move, drag their markers into the Spurs goalkeeper's area. The Italian goalkeeper deliberately allows the defenders to make physical contact directly in front of Vicario, gets trapped and can neither come out to strike nor catch the cross.

When Saka's ball was perfectly passed into the box, Gabriel only had to evade Romero's attention and his cleverness and aggressiveness secured him the win. Gabriel thundered a free header into the net to secure the points for us. It was his tenth header for the club.

Turn off Spurs

This was only the second time that Tottenham had failed to score at home in the Premier League under Ange Postecoglou. Although the stats show that our neighbours had 63.8% possession, our disciplined defence meant they created very few goals. Their expected goals rate of 0.71 was the third lowest under Postecoglou and their worst in a home game during that time.

Our game plan was to press high when we had the opportunity, but generally we stayed in a deep 4-4-2 block that out of possession often resembled a 5-3-2, with one winger dropping back to help and the other moving inside.

With this tactic, we wanted to slow down the hosts' attacks, create more space for the creative talents in the central areas and allow Jorginho and Thomas Partey to operate in smaller areas where they only had to cover short distances.

The compactness of our formation can be seen in this still from the end of the first half, in which Gabriel Martinelli steps in at left-back:

By retreating into a deeper block, the Gunners forced Tottenham into a barrage of hopeful crosses into the box, most of which we parried with ease. Players like Gabriel (8), Kai Havertz (5) and Partey (4) cleared a total of 32 balls and deserve huge praise for their positioning and determination to win aerial duels.

Arsenal's liberation strikes against Tottenham

Kai's big change

Mikel Arteta's team needed an attacking player who could hold the ball for the others, apply aggressive pressure, win his aerial duels and also be a goal threat. The in-form Havertz fulfilled all of these criteria.

It's very unusual for centre-forwards to have the most touches in a game, but that's exactly what happened here, as the German had 51 touches in this north London derby. This shows how hard Havertz worked to get moving, both in and out of possession, so it was no surprise that he covered 10.77km; on the day he was bettered only by Jorginho (11.09km).

He also won eight of 13 aerial duels, including several decisive clearances from his own penalty area.

It was also Havertz who did an excellent job of holding the ball under the pressure of the counterattack that led to our corner. He anticipated Leandro Trossard's volley into open space, sprinted from deep and won a race against the speedy defender Micky van de Ven:

And once he had possession of the ball, he thought it was a support run for Martinelli, who passed it straight to Bukayo Saka, who won the decisive corner for us.

Left combo click

White, Martin Odegaard and Saka have always had good chemistry, making them incredibly difficult to beat, but in this contest our combinations on the left side shone the brightest.

Jurrien Timber, who was quick-witted both with and without the ball, was involved in some effective moves to support Trossard and Martinelli. Trossard and Timber played six accurate passes forward (3 each) to the Brazilian winger, who got himself into some excellent positions. His six successful dribbles also showed how confident he was with the ball at his feet.