MOTD: Tottenham Hotspur 2-2 Arsenal

By on March 5, 2016

They billed this North London Derby to be the first in many a decade to have the potential to be a head-to-head decider in the title race.  The match lived up to its expectations, although neither Tottenham Hotspur or Arsenal came away from White Hart Lane with the crucial three points and instead, the real winner was twenty miles west in Watford, where Leicester City picked up a valuable three points to go five points clear at the top of the table and make major strides in their title chase.

Tottenham and Arsenal, meanwhile, were left to nurse their wounds and rue their respective mistakes in a fantastic Premier League thriller that ended at two-all, with goals from Toby Alderweireld and Harry Kane for Spurs, and Aaron Ramsey and Alexis Sánchez for Arsenal.
Arsenal had taken the lead through Ramsey’s first-half flick, yet Francis Coquelin’s rash red card reduced the Gunners to ten men and Tottenham turned the tables with two quick-fire goals around the hour mark.  However, Sánchez snatched a late equalizer just when Spurs began to close out the game and in the end, it was another thrillingly indecisive twist their battle to narrow the title race down to two.

“We showed good attitude and character and I’m happy and proud of our performance and attitude,” said Arsene Wenger, per Arsenal’s official website. “We refused to lose the game.  We have as well big regrets because I could not see how 11 against 11 could have dropped points today. We made a mistake at 1-0 when it was 11 against 11 but even though we had a shock loss and it went to 2-1, we refused to lose the game. We always looked dangerous going forward.”

If Wenger was beating around the bush, he more directly addressed his bitter disappointment from Coquelin’s red card later in his post-match press conference.

“I didn’t have to say a lot to him after that tackle,” said the Frenchman. “He made a mistake and he knows he made a big mistake. At half time we warned him as well and it was a mistake. He wanted to do well and mistimed his tackle and got sent off. You cannot complain about it.”
Nevertheless, Wenger was at very least relieved to nick the point late on, snatching victory out of Tottenham’s jaws.

“We’re very disappointed,” said goalscorer Kane. “We had them where we wanted them, 2-1 up, down to 10 men and we had to finish the game off.

“We needed to score the third or fourth and if we had, it would be a very different changing room right now. That’s football and we have to deal with it.”

Tottenham pressured early on, and David Ospina produced a fantastic stop to tip wide Erik Lamela’s shinned effort from Kyle Walker’s driven cross.  Yet Arsenal had the upper hand with eleven men and Ramsey put the visitors ahead on thirty-eight minutes.  Danny Welbeck drove down the left and attracted three defenders, leaving space for Héctor Bellerín to bomb down the right wing.  Welbeck cut the ball across the box to the Spaniard, who pulled his shot slightly wide, and Ramsey instinctively flicked the ball into the back of the net from six yards.

“I anticipated Hector maybe pulling his shot a bit and thankfully it fell to me, and it was one of those ones that you just react to quickly and I was glad to see it go in,” said Ramsey.

Arsenal were confident in the lead, but Coquelin’s red changed the dynamic of the game.  The French youngster went in for a reckless challenge on Kane down the left wing and came crashing down to the ground just a moment too late, bringing down the English forward, and with him, Arsenal’s title odds.  Coquelin had put his hands too his head even before his momentum had stopped him on the sideline.

The Gunners valiantly held their ground, but Alderweireld poked home a corner at the near post to bring Tottenham level on sixty-nine minutes.  Just on the other side of the hour mark, Kane bagged a third after dispossessing Arsenal down the left and charging into the box, before curling a beautiful, audacious strike around Ospina and into the top right corner of the net.

“We were chasing the ball down, Dele got there first and did a lovely little back heel,” said Kane.  “I got the ball out my feet and thought ‘why not?’ and as soon as I hit it, I could see it going to that far post. To see it go in brought out a lot of emotion. From there, you just want to finish it off and win the game and be happy for the rest of the week.”

It was Kane’s fourteenth goal in eighteen Premier League London derbies and the 136th goal in the history of the fixture in the Premier League, more than any other matchup.  Yet Sánchez made it 137 with fifteen minutes to go, breaking in down the right channel on the end of Bellerín’s through ball and gaining a foot of space on his defender to slide a low finish into the bottom-left corner of the net.

The goal was Sánchez’s first in nearly 150 days and it couldn’t have come at a more pivotal time.  It took a lot of pressure off of Wenger in his post-match duties, but nevertheless, the plethora of cameras still bore down his neck after the match.

“I must tell you that the pressure from our supporters is relentless and I’m in a good position to tell you that,” he said.  “We have to deal with that. We have to go on a run again. We play on Tuesday night an important game and then we will see if we will play in the FA Cup or the Premier League. We want to win our games.”

They need to win basically every one of their remaining nine league fixtures if they want to overtake Leicester at the top of the table, sitting eight points off the top and three behind Spurs.

Homepage photo credit: Chensiyuan (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

About Alex Morgan

Alex Morgan, founder of Football Every Day, lives and breaths football from the West Coast of the United States in California. Aside from founding Football Every Day in January of 2013, Alex has also launched his own journalism career and hopes to help others do the same with FBED. He covers the San Jose Earthquakes as a beat reporter for QuakesTalk.com and his work has also been featured in the BBC's Match of the Day Magazine.