Football does everything to you. At halftime I went up to our bedroom where The Management was packing away some clothes and I said “that was bloody brilliant”. I was beaming from ear-to-ear and she sagely said to me “remember, it’s only half time, and we were at Newcastle on that fateful day”. I nodded, went downstairs, then took a call from my mate Johnny who when I recounted that conversation with the wife, said to me “nah. This Arsenal team is different. They won’t let this slip”.

Well eventually that was true, but not before they made us all rather nervous at the end of that game, eh?

That last three minutes plus injury time felt like about an hour. Time slowed, every second took four times as long, I was just waiting for the inevitable. But we hung on, we once again take the three points at their gaff, we’re just about keeping City at bay (for now) and we can still dream the impossible dream.

But rather than start at the end, let’s start at the beginning, as Arteta announced the same side that pummelled Chelsea. But we didn’t control Chelsea like we did the Scum and they started the brighter of the two teams. You’d expect that though; North London Derby on their own turf, the crowd in loud voice, the hope that they’ll be derailing our attempt at the title. We were sloppy too. There were a couple of Trossard misplaced moments and on set pieces we looked less secure than we have done for most of the season.

But not as bad as Tottenham. Saka’s in-swinger really should have been dealt with but Hojberg made the mistake, the ball flicked in and we were up and running on 15 minutes. I gave a shout of delight in my living room but it wasn’t too loud; we’d scored on 15 minutes and there would be a lot of football to be played.

The second shout on 27 minutes was a little louder though. Michael Dawson tried to argue the toss at halftime that Kulusevski should have gone down and it would have been a penalty, but I’m not having that and if that was for us I’d not have been complaining with it not being given. There just wasn’t enough contact. James Maddison’s dive was embarrassing, but the way we moved rapidly from front to back was brilliant. Take a bow Kasi Havertz because his diagonal ball to set Saka off was brilliant. He’s played in nine NLDs now and that was his third goal for us, having also scored the penalty in our game against them earlier in the season. Hopefully it’s the start of him being a constant threat in these games and both he and Havertz delivered the end product that ultimately helped us win it, because goal number three was another great one from Kai and at the time it felt like it was game over. He’s got 13 goals and six assists this season and given that for half the season (almost) he was playing as a left eight, it is a pretty good goal return given what many of us (me included) said about him as a striker at the start of the season. He was a threat all day and I thought he, Saka and also Odegaard were immense. Martin’s form is fabulous right now and he dictated play in that midfield and looked majestic. The way our build up play flows through him and the way he retains control of the ball is mesmerising at times. Kai and Saka will get the plaudits for their impact from a goal output perspective, but Odegaard deserves as much credit for the win yesterday. It was a real captain’s display.

If this was any other game and any other opponent, you’d think that we’d just see out the game, but this is the North London Derby. Strange things happen in this match. I remember Cesc inexplicably putting his hand in the air from within a free kick wall to gift the Scum a penalty back in the day, as an example, so I was not surprised to see us shoot ourselves in the foot on 65 minutes. It was terrible from Raya to give the ball straight to Romero, an absolute gift to breathe life back in to Tottenham because up until that point we’d done 20 minutes of the second half and looked in total control. But suddenly they were emboldened and although we did steady the ship for about 10 – 15 minutes after that, as the match reached it’s conclusion we were to give away they penalty to make it a horrible ending when it should have just been fun. Ramsdale made a couple of mistakes like that yesterday when he was number one last season and whilst there is no doubt that Raya is more calm on things like  taking crosses, etc, he’s made a couple of ricks this season that make me wonder about the difference between the two – it’s not that massive I have to say and mistakes like yesterday, for a guy who is 28 and not a kid, need to be looked at.

As for their second goal, the penalty, it feels almost inevitable in this fixture that somebody gets a pen. Earlier in the season it was us, for many year’s it was Harry Kane stepping up to score an obligatory penalty, but we can’t really complain too much about it’s award. Rice didn’t see Davies and he slipped in ahead of him as he was clearing it. It’s unlucky from Rice but it is what it is and the score suddenly had a scary look to it.

Thankfully we held on though and we now have a week until Bournemouth next Saturday. We are sitting on 89 points and as Saka said yesterday after the game it does feel as though we’re going to need to win our remaining games to stand any hope of winning the league. I still can’t see it because I think City go on to win their remaining easy fixtures, including away to The Scum in six days, but we’ve got to just keep on doing our bit and hope for some kind of miracle.

That’s it from me today. Enjoy your Monday and I’ll be back tomorrow with some more thoughts. We’ll be recording a Same Old Arsenal pod later this evening at 9pm, so if you fancy joining us, you can find us here.