Potentially the biggest North London Derby ever takes place tonight with Champions League qualification up for grabs for Arsenal.
Tottenham and Arsenal have faced each other many times before. They’ve competed for fourth place over a season many times before. They’ve played against each other at pivotal moments in the calendar many times before.
Never has so much been riding on it than now, and this cleverly rescheduled North London Derby will define the season for Spurs and Arsenal.
Particularly Arsenal, for whom the spoils of victory are so heinously enormous, they could define not just this season but a new era.
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After consecutive 8th place finishes, Mikel Arteta entered 2021/2022 with the youngest team in the Premier League. He has guided them to the cusp of the Champions League, perhaps ahead of schedule.
It’s the first time Arsenal fans have truly felt connected to their team in over a decade. To win away at Spurs, and seal Champions League football for the first time since 2017, would catapult the likes of Ramsdale, Tierney, Saka and Martinelli into genuine folk hero status.
The Champions League would accelerate the Arteta project and allow them to push on faster than anybody thought. As well as that, it will feel like the final balm on the wounds of a Gunners fanbase that has been defined by division and cantankerousness since 2007. The resolution of an identity crisis, the dawn of a new day, a coming of age of young heroes.
An Arsenal victory will reap so many rewards, you’d imagine Spurs would rather blow their stadium up than let all of that happen. That’s the level of opposition Arsenal will face in the North London Derby.
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A win for Spurs would bring the gap behind Arsenal to just one point with two games left. Tonight, Tottenham fight to stay alive.
The fascinating psychological factors at play make this game impossible to predict. How do Arsenal play, knowing they don’t need to win, but that a win would crown their season? Do they approach with caution and never quite get going? Will the magnitude of what can be achieved make them nervous or will they be assertive, knowing they hold the advantage?
Do Tottenham give them the hardest game of their lives, or will they be disheartened after ceding the advantage to Arsenal twice so far in the league?
It will also be the first time Arsenal finished above Tottenham in the league since 2016 if they win. The symbolism of Arsenal reclaiming supremacy over their fiercest rivals cannot be ignored. Tonight is a battle for the future of North London.
