Former Tottenham midfielder Danny Murphy told BBC Sport: That performance today was as dominant an Arsenal performance against Tottenham as I’ve seen for a long time… there was a massive gulf between the two teams.
The Tottenham system with five at the back – be it a 3-4-3 or 5-4-1, whichever way you want to look at it – can cause the other team problems if, when you’ve got the ball, you are brave enough to push your wing-backs up a bit higher and get up the pitch a little bit and support the front three.
But what happened with Arsenal’s quality and physicality was they just pinned Spurs back so they couldn’t get out, and of course after the second goal which they felt a little bit harshly done by because of the men in front of the keeper, Spurs are then in a real predicament.
Because if you come out and really go after Arsenal you are going to get cut to pieces, and also 2-0 is a mountain to climb because they don’t concede many goals.
But they will be hugely disappointed – they didn’t really lay a glove on Arsenal when I thought after the first 20 minutes, they could have been braver, because they had given themselves a platform to do that.
It is a huge disappointment for Tottenham to lose any north London derby but to lose it in the manner they did was very poor.
They got completely overrun in the end really – outplayed and out-worked and didn’t really hurt Arsenal enough. Yes Richarlison got a great goal out of nothing which I think was their first shot on target, but other than that they caused Arsenal no problems at all.
There was already a little bit of discontent at their home games from their supporters, wanting more. Now, because of that performance today, at Arsenal, that’s going to grow… because of who this performance and result was against.
So the players are going to have to stand up and be counted and Frank is going to learn a lot about his players in the next couple of weeks.
He is going to learn who is up for it, who has got some courage and who wants to get on the ball and make things happen.
