Arsene Wenger may be a poor loser who has conjured some improbable comments in the wake of defeats, a man with an apparent inability to see many of the events on the pitch and a manager who has been reluctant to accept and address the shortcomings of his teams, but he is essentially a rationalist in an irrational environment.
The Frenchman recognises the absurdities and the hyperbole of Premier League football. In one respect, his analysis of the apocalyptic scenario of Tottenham Hotspur finishing above Arsenal was magnificently rational.
“In 20 years it’s happened once,” he said after Sunday’s 2-0 defeat at White Hart Lane ensured St Totteringham’s Day will not be on the calendar in 2017. “Mathematically it has to happen once,” Wenger added. The law of averages dictates as much. Sooner or later, it would transpire.
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Yet Arsenal’s concern should not be how often it has happened, but how often it will. It is easy to assume an individual occurrence has a permanence – it is another part of English football’s capacity to exaggerate anything – and gloomy predictions can pervade in the wake of a loss.
But it also feels there has been a decisive shift in the balance of power in North London. Tottenham have not merely taken Arsenal’s place in the top four. It seems as though they have appropriated their identity. As Arsenal’s standards have slipped, Spurs have accelerated beyond them using methods all too familiar to Wenger.
Youth was once Arsenal’s calling card. Now Spurs have the Premier League’s youngest team. Wenger was the bargain hunter supreme. Now Dele Alli, the £5 million (Dh24m) buy turned 21-goal midfielder and double PFA Young Player of the Year, looks arguably the decade’s outstanding piece of business.
Arsenal aimed to build around a British core, given its defining image when Aaron Ramsey, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Jack Wilshere, Kieran Gibbs and Carl Jenkinson all signed new contracts in December 2012. Only Oxlade-Chamberlain has offered any real grounds for optimism this season whereas the Tottenham group who committed to new deals, such as Alli, Harry Kane, Danny Rose and Kyle Walker, are more coherent, more dynamic and more potent.
Footballers are improving at White Hart Lane. They used to at the Emirates Stadium. In the same way, whereas many clubs, Tottenham foremost among them, seemed to spend years searching for their version of Wenger, now Mauricio Pochettino is the coveted manager. Players evidently want to play for the Argentine and if Arsenal’s current collective say their loyalties lie with Wenger, their performances have provided too few eloquent affirmations.
Arsenal long stood for the future, a future that has never really arrived but which meant they invariably carried the promise of a better tomorrow. Now Spurs do and if they are yet to turn talent into trophies, neither did Wenger’s Arsenal in a nine-year drought.
The scale of the role reversal was highlighted when Arsenal’s record scorer Thierry Henry suggested Alexis Sanchez would be the lone Arsenal player in a combined North London XI. Rewind a few months, to when Arsenal were on a 19-game unbeaten run, and the verdict may have been very different, but go back to various periods in the past two decades and one Tottenham player would have been isolated in a joint team.
Arsenal’s dominance used to be entrenched on micro and macro levels. Wenger was not overhauled by Tottenham in the table or overcome in meetings. He only lost seven of his first 49 derbies. Yet Sunday’s was his 50th. It means Pochettino’s Tottenham have still not lost a league game to Arsenal.
A Tottenham win, even at White Hart Lane, would once have been a shock. Now it felt predictable. It was another indication of the mood swing. While Tottenham face the question if, like Arsenal before them, they can make top-four finishes annual events and kick on to win the title, the worry for Arsenal must be that they become like the Spurs of old, trapped outside the Uefa Champions League places, forever looking on enviously.
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