Delight: Samir Nasri celebrates after scoring Arsenal's
opening goal
To win from two goals
down requires character and belief. But to win after being casually
outplayed and embarrassingly outclassed demands qualities which
Tottenham may not have known they possessed.
For 45 minutes, Arsenal had
played like the team they have always threatened to become. Cesc
Fabregas was assembling one of those inch-perfect, jaw-dropping
displays which lifts him high above the Premier League herd.
Pulling all the strings and stroking all the damaging passes, he
was ablaze with inspiration, seemingly incapable of error. And all
around him, his lieutenants played their parts with thrilling verve
and chilling precision.
When Arsenal are in this mood,
nothing in England
comes remotely close to them.
Certainly Spurs were incapable of offering them a tackle, much less
a spirited argument.
They took the lead in nine
minutes, when Samir Nasri chased a Fabregas chip and Heurelho Gomes
made a nervous advance at the ball. The attacker persevered, the
keeper lost track and Nasri squeezed the chance through one of
those angles which an ordinary player might consider
impossible.
Dutch of class: Rafael van der Vaart celebrates
after scoring from the penalty spot
The half ended with
something remarkable. Fabregas caressed a 15-yard pass with the
outside of his foot into space which nobody else knew existed. It
was so fine, so subtle that poor Chamakh did not see it until it
was upon him. It symbolised the quality of Arsenal’s football, and
it was also the last time they had reason to feel good about
themselves.
Redknapp worked on his forces
at the interval. He restricted the productivity of Fabregas and he
coaxed his team to fiercer effort. And the wonders
unfolded.
The vital early goal came
within five minutes, with a long ball from defence touched on by
Rafael van der Vaart to Gareth Bale. Frustrated for 45 minutes,
Bale retained sufficient composure to strike a careful finish
inside the far post with the outside of his left boot.
Done arm: Arsenal's Cesc Fabregas gives way a
penalty to block Rafael van der Vaart's free kick
Twenty minutes later,
a Van der Vaart free-kick was knocked aside by the raised arm of
Fabregas. It was the clearest penalty you ever did see and
Tottenham were level as Van der Vaart sent Lukasz Fabianski the
wrong way.
Still Arsenal should have
retrieved the game, but as Arsene Wenger later conceded: ‘When we
have to deliver, we can’t.’ Laurent Koscielny missed a mundane
header from a few yards, then Theo Walcott came on, missed a decent
chance, and was never seen again. And amid all this chaos, Spurs
won it.
Leaving his mark: Younes Kaboul escapes the
attentions of five defeanders to head past goalkeeper Lukasz
Fabianski
Koscielny lunged at
Bale and from Van der Vaart’s free-kick, Younes Kaboul procured the
deftest of touches to send the ball bobbing into the corner of the
net. A team who had not taken the points at Arsenal since 1993 had
emerged clutching all three. In the space of 45 minutes, form had
flown out of the window and the shape of the championship had been
critically reformed.
Wenger was a dignified loser.
‘If you look at the stats, it’s a mystery how we lost the game,’ he
said. Then he realised how hollow that sounded, since football is
about far more than the simplicities of statistics.
‘We put ourselves in the right
position, and we failed,’ he said. ‘That is something which is
difficult to swallow, but we have to accept it’.
Redknapp started to revive the
speech he made to his players on Friday. How Chelsea and Manchester
United are not quite the sides they once were. How
Manchester City are ‘OK, but not what we expected them to
be’. And how Spurs are getting closer and closer to teams they once
feared.
He insisted that he meant
every word. ‘I wouldn’t be saying this if I had a bad group of
players,’ he said. ‘I’m not silly.’ Silly, he isn’t. Yesterday in
north London, he and his team made a powerful case.
Somebody’s going to win it. Why not Spurs?
Can't look: Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger, claimed
he did not see the Cesc Fabregas hand-ball that led to Rafael van
der Vaart's penalty equaliser
