The Tottenham manager Mauricio Pochettino certainly had his players ready to fight Arsenal in the North London Derby this weekend and they certainly seemed to want it more than us. They dominated the game and it looked like Arsene Wenger’s team were not prepared to fight or even go forward and try to hurt them until the last five minutes of the game.
The Spurs boss was obviously happy about beating their ‘sworn enemy’ but he says that he doesn’t care where Arsenal are in the table, he just wants to make Tottenham into a side that can challenge for the title and he feels that his side have hit top form. “After United, Liverpool and now Arsenal, this was a very tough period,” he said. “I think we showed great maturity, great character and the performance was so good. For me, it has been one of the best periods since I’ve been at Tottenham. Arsenal is our sworn enemy and I know what it means, the derby, but we don’t care if Arsenal are behind us, or where they are.
“It is more important to build something special at the club with these players. We are winning because we are building something special in the Premier League. We are close but not so close to win the title – but getting closer, no?”
They are certainly a lot closer than Arsenal this season, and they were last season too in fact, but they are a very long way from challenging Man City just yet, and it is still ten years since they won a trophy of any kind, so they can hardly start bragging about being a bigger team than Arsenal just yet.
But Saturday’s result still hurts a lot. A LOT!
Darren N
We are attacking team my foot. Wenger should better start playing all his attacking players every game for the rest of the season to stand a chance of smelling top 4. Pathetic and sluggish defence and midfield.
Arsenal 5 Everton 1.
Magnifico.
Arsene is a genius.
Extend his contact.
Mkhi is the new Messi. Auba the new Henri.
The football is sublime. Arsenal is on track for glory.
A week later.
Spurs 1 Arsenal 0.
Absolute shy-te.
Wenger is clueless. Sack him now.
Mkhi is a Man Utd reject flop. Auba is over rated.
The football is garbage. We want our Arsenal back.
.
.
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A week later……
The win, but mostly, the performance against Everton was an anomaly. Whereas the defeat, coupled with that insipid performance against Spurs was normality.
Absolutely nobody, and I reiterate, NOBODY said Wenger’s a genius when we won Everton. Stop with the lies trying to create conflict.
You have actually spoken to EVERYBODY!
Won United home
Drew Pool away
Won Arsenal home
When we:
Lost United home
Lost Pool away (drew at home)
Won Spurs away (and lost away of course)
Wenger cannot handle any pressure. And this is reflected on players. It’s clear as day.
Exactly. And it’s been the same for so many years now. We loose out to almost every top team every year-
It’s scary how it can be allowed to continue.
4 months till Russia v Saudi Arabia 🙂
I think by criticising Lacazette, (“he missed chances because the signing of Auba has dampened his confidence”) he’s in the early stages of easing Laca out. I could be mistaken but nothing Wenger does surprises me anymore
Well, Giroud got to be our first choice striker for 4 years and never did he score more than 16 goals.
When it was his first season, he struggled as is Lacazette struggling. However Giroud was allowed to keep his Place, but strangely Laca loses his place.
Wenger absolutely has his favorites (Mertesacker, Ramsey, Iwobi, Giroud..) and his non-favorites (Podolski, Perez, Lacazette..).
As long as you are a yes-man and agree with everything Wenger says, you’re in the team. If you think he might be wrong, it’s bench time.
i am an Arsenal supporter since Charlie George scored to win Arsenal the double in 1970/71. And i have not seen an Arsenal team like this with no fight in a NLD ever. Every 50/50 ball in the whole game was won by a Spud. That really got my gripe more than the soccer we played. No fight, so we deserved to lose. Do not try and blame one or 2 players, the whole team must stand up and take the blame. I have never seen my team play so mush back and side passes as i have seen this season. I love AW, but even i am now thinking we might need a change.
We just ain’t good when the opposition closes us down, our players like space and if you watched the game Spuds when they lost the ball they got it back in seconds working together as a team, that’s what you have to do to stop good teams play like we did at Chelsea first half of the season,
Back to the drawing board 🙁
Weird. We go 16 years unbroken in UCL. We finish above the spuds 20 years running. We win 3 trophies in last four years. Pochettino has NEVER won a trophy. The spuds last won the league in 1961 and their last FA Cup was 20 odd years ago, yet we are lambasted by a manager who has zero credibility. Yes we lost 1-0, yes we need a new manager, yes we are crumbling blah, blah, blah. NOW he’s not interested in where we are. How’s your trophy haul going?
Bitter much?
Time to face facts. Signing Auba, Micky and Ozil new contract is brilliant if you can get them all playing together. So much work is needed to get back to where we should be. This morning has been horrible as we were lucky not to get absolutely battered (scoreline). They’re all reveling in it this morning and I work with 3 of them…
They are better than us. I honestly believe there are about 3 or 4 in our whole squad that would get in theirs, let alone starting line-up. The thing I hate the most is how everyone seems to want to believe that we are still in front of them. Winning the FA Cup is great but it’s just papering over the cracks. We aren’t very good. I can see them winning the CL this year too and us fighting it out to win the Europa league.
It was only a matter of time until they took over… gone are the days when just turning up was enough to beat them!
I do sympathise with you (working with spuds) I’ll have to put up with a couple at darts this week! I hope it’ll go back to them being in our shadow, but right now for the forseeable I don’t see it happening ??????
We have the history, but last year and this year, they are clearly better than us. In fact they also were 2 years ago until they couldn’t win the title and lost interest in the end.
They have less expensive players and smaller salaries.
So why are they better than us??
They have a manager, who organizes the team well, makes every player work hard and develops players individually.
And Wenger? He does none of the 3 above. Maybe he did 10 years ago, but now he is getting 90% out of the team and the players.
Oh well at least Agent Sanchez is doing his job at Manure …
When “English Darlings” aka Spurs win anything of note… scratch that… win ANYTHING at all, then we can start talking about them. I’m sick of hearing how good they are, and how smart their manager is because they haven’t really achieved anything yet. As of right now, the only thing they can brag about is finishing above us ONCE in 20+ years. That’s ridiculous. Yes, they seem to play better at the moment but is it going to last? Will Kane stay? What about Eriksen? Guys with ambition will want to leave sooner rather than later in search of trophies AND more money. Spurs can’t offer either. So enough about them who by the way are just in as much danger of not getting top 4 as we are. City, United, Pool, and (probably after today) Chelsea will be all ahead of them. They are NOT winning CL, yet we have a good shot at Europa league. Some might disagree but I like to be optimistic, at least for now.