This is the first time that Arsenal have come up against our biggest rivals Tottenham in a pre-season game for over 30 years, and there is probably a very good reason for that.
A mixture of Arsenal and Spurs fans is always going to be a volatile affair, even if they met in a pub after a local flower show, so if any Arsenal fans infiltrate White Hart Lane tomorrow it is surely going to be very adrenaline-filled if my experiences are anything to go by.
But this game has been arranged for good causes with half the money going to charitable entities like MIND and the clubs foundations, so we can hope for a pleasant game, but you can bet that no-one wants to lose. As Tottenham’s Ben Davies told the official Spurs website: “If you play teams like Arsenal, Chelsea… there is no ‘friendly’ feel about these matches,”
“It is going to be a competitive game and we all want to win. It puts down a marker for the season. I thought we played much better in the second half at Chelsea, we dug in, and that was a decent result in the end, especially with players still to come back into the team.
“We’re all looking forward to Sunday. It’s a long time since we’ve played in front of a big crowd at the stadium and we’re all looking forward to having them back in there, not least for a north London derby!”
But there is actually a MIND Series trophy at stake (please stop with the trophy room jokes!) and as Chelsea beat us last week (we were robbed!) and drew 2-2 with Spurs in midweek they are currently top, BUT if Spurs beat us better than Chelsea did, then they could top the table.
We must not let that happen, and if we can win by a big margin then the goals count in the weird scoring system and maybe we could finish top (ED. Need to check this).
Whatever happens, this will NOT be a friendly game!
Darren N