Winning ugly is beautiful

Spurs 0-1 Arsenal 

In line with tradition, before all north London derbies I am filled with a sense of dread. The things that have been evident for so long leave my mind and I assume the footballing equivalent of the prone position. I just can’t help it.

Turns out I should trust what my eyes, and the league table, have been telling me for several years. For as well as knowing how to win with beauty, we are also experts at digging in and winning pretty much any other way.

For the record I don’t think we won ugly, I just liked the headline. But I do think that, shorn of two of the players who make Arsenal tick in the middle of the pitch, we just dug in and won a different way. 

One of the abiding mysteries of the post-Vieira Wenger years was how we eschewed height and strength and leaned in on technical ability. We went from a big team to quite a small team, and it worked a lot of the time, but when the chips were down we also struggled to impose ourselves. 

Now look at us though. At 5’ 10” Jurrien Timber was our smallest defender yesterday, but what he lacks vertically (he is hardly small anyway) he makes up for with the horizontal skills of strength, determination, positioning and canniness. Look, I know that line doesn’t work very well. But I’ll leave it in anyway.

We have the best defensive unit in the Premier League, and yes, I do say this with my red and white varifocals on. I wouldn’t want anyone other than Saliba and Gabriel marshalling my defence. I wouldn’t want anyone other than White causing psychological merry hell and – sorry Zinny, Riccardo and Tomi – but Timber is going to take some shifting at left back.

I also wouldn’t want anyone else when it comes to seizing opportunities at the other end. Nicolas Jover’s set piece army won it for us again. We keep doing it. And yesterday’s opponents keep falling for it. 

Shout out to Trossard and Havertz for working their socks off and helping out Jorginho and Partey, and while the final decision didn’t quite work for Martinelli (as it hasn’t for a while) you cannot fault his lung power.

And that’s the thing I love about this team. We will lose a few times this season, of course we will, and things will go against us – they already have. But we really hate losing, and I’m prepared to wager that there won’t be many – perhaps any – games this season where we will look at them at the end and wish they hadn’t left something on the pitch, or squeezed every last ounce of willpower out of themselves. 

Desire and togetherness is a magic gravy. I love it.