The stuff of club history, and maybe future champions. If it’s still far too early to say this will be seen as the day when Mikel Arteta’s side won the 2025-26 title, it is undeniably the afternoon that Eberechi Eze launched himself as an Arsenal player. Scoring a hat-trick in a north London derby will do that, especially when it was just the fourth in the history of the fixture and the first since 1978. There was of course the added edge that he was so close to signing for Tottenham Hotspur in the summer.
They could barely get near him in this 4-1 defeat. Even some within the club were rolling their eyes that this is the essence of Tottenham, but it’s bigger than that. Eze took charge, and took off. The supreme third goal was some way to crown it all.
There was an electrifying sense of purpose about Eze from the start, which is a lot more than you could say for Spurs. It’s instead hard to know what their purpose was.
They got the defeat their approach deserved, and were fortunate it wasn’t much worse. Even allowing for attacking injuries, the depth to which Spurs sat deep was galling. Up until Leandro Trossard’s clever opening goal, it was like all they actually wanted to do was create a massive physical block around their own box. Thomas Frank set out with three centre-halves and a lot of bulk around them. Get through us if you dare. Oh.
If we’re talking about fateful days and memorable afternoons, Frank’s approach instead made the first part of this game feel like an eternity.
And still all it took was a moment of delightful ingenuity from Mikel Merino for Trossard’s opening goal. Arteta and his staff are known to be aggravated at how pundits talk about the Spanish international as a “defensive midfielder” and the way Arsenal’s approach is treated, feeling there is nowhere near enough attention paid to how teams like Spurs – and even Manchester City – sit deep against them.
Arsenal certainly did all the attacking here, at least until it was 3-0 and the game was over. It still could have been 5-1 or 6-1 even after Richarlison’s wonder-strike from 40 yards.
Merino’s attacking quality set everything off. Amid a mass of bodies, the 29-year-old arched the most artistic little clipped pass. On receiving it, a momentary thought was that Trossard could have finished it first-time, but his smart turn and finish ended up being fully justified – if also deflected.
It was also full impact. Despite the historic Arsenal events that happened after the goal, that was pretty much it for the contest. Game over.
Spurs had been so geared into one very fixed approach, that was like they couldn’t shift emphasis. Hence Eze immediately got Arsenal’s second and his first – even if there was considerable debate over whether it should have been ruled out for offside. Spurs couldn’t dispute that it was deserved.
Arsenal had played all the football. Spurs just looked so empty. To which there is now going to be a different discussion.
“Are you Tottenham in disguise” the Arsenal fans gleefully sang … but which Tottenham?
Can this club only go from extreme to extreme, from Ossie Ardiles and Glenn Hoddle to George Graham and Jose Mourinho?
This derby approach was the diametric opposite of everything Ange Postecoglou attempted in the Premier League, if not the Europa League.
There can be an in-between, which was what Frank was supposed to supply.
Numerous mitigating factors exist, from injuries to the fact it’s still relatively early for a manager trying to reconstruct this team, but this was still a lot worse than it should have been.
They couldn’t have had too much complaint if the difference was five or six, especially amid some of the flurries in the second half.
Eze had brought the win to another level with a smart finish at the start of the second half, but it was his third strike that really displayed his own escalating qualities.
The playmaker exquisitely curved the ball into the top corner, after a coruscating break ended with Destiny Udogie careering off in the wrong direction. There’s that old Geoff Green line about a fire engine going to the wrong fire, but Eze was ablaze.
Against that, all Spurs had was Richarlison scoring with an admittedly spectacular speculative strike. A hit and hope. They should have much more than that.
It’s Arsenal who have Eze, though, and he has shown exactly why. It might yet lead to the title itself.
This felt a significant weekend, especially with Manchester City dropping points and an Arsenal trip to second-placed Chelsea up next.
It was undeniably Eze’s day, as he goes down in history.
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