If you were looking for even an approximation of the blood and thunder of a North London derby 6,000 miles from home, then you would not have gotten it in Tottenham’s 1-0 win over Arsenal in Hong Kong. The great heavyweights might have faced off, but this was little more than a sparring match, both sides keeping plenty in reserve for the real clashes to come.
As such, over indexing events on the field this afternoon would be unwise, all the more so given that the field on Kai Tak Sports Park looked more akin to a coastal grassland than either the Emirates or Tottenham’s ground. Did the shanked shots of Kai Havertz and Martin Odegaard tell us that their shooting boots are nowhere to be seen a fortnight and change out from the Premier League season? Maybe, but perhaps 16 shots turned into one on target might be more indicative of the playing surface than anything else.
If only there were some part of play where we could discount that! But wait, there is, and perhaps the only meaningful insight we gleaned from this game came when the ball was lofted into the penalty box from those quadrants on the corner of the pitch. After all, Tottenham’s glass jaw was never more apparent last season than from set pieces, a facet of the game that seemed surprisingly uninteresting for Ange Postecoglou as his side allowed 27 of them to be turned into goals over the course of his two seasons of Premier League football.
Such diffidence to dead balls was never going to continue with Thomas Frank in charge. His Brentford side had long since identified set pieces as a hidden weapon at which they could torment the Premier League’s best, Arsenal among them, and the immediate swoop to bring Andreas Georgson from Manchester United on Frank’s appointment spoke to a side who were determined to do more when the ball was out of play.
No one knows the value of high-grade corner delivery better than Arsenal, who scored from 12 of them in the last two seasons. And yet the Gunners seemed powerless to stop two of them from smashing into David Raya’s posts in a devastating first half. Pedro Porro began by bending one over the great herd gathered at the front post, the ball bouncing just outside the goal line before smashing the stanchion, while on the opposite flank, Mohamed Kudus bent one with such ferocity that it flew back off the post only for Richarlison to guide it away from goal.
Raya seemed utterly rattled to be on the receiving end of what might be termed the Ben White treatment, Spurs placing a white shirt on the Arsenal goalkeeper and testing his confidence on coming for balls that flew menacingly towards him. Might the shakiness he felt after those corners explain the sloppy pass the Spaniard made into central midfield on the stroke of half time, Myles Lewis-Skelly having his pocket picked by Richarlison before Pape Matar Sarr drove in the game’s only goal from range. In a Premier League match, it would surely have been an arduous wait for that goal to be confirmed as Richarlison’s challenge was assessed from every possible angle for evidence of a trip. Instead, the Spurs contingent had something to cheer.
As for Arsenal, there’s probably not too much to worry about when it comes to their own set pieces, even if 13 corners did not result in much stress on Spurs’ goal. For one thing, they are without the best set piece player in the world, Gabriel Magalhaes, rehabbing an injury issue that flared up early in preseason. Forty percent of the xG & 43% of the goals Arsenal allowed from set pieces in the Premier League came after the big Brazilian tore his hamstring. By the time of their season opener at Manchester United, he should be good to go. And much as there were questions over a possible Richarlison foul for the Tottenham goal, VAR would surely have taken a long, hard look at the extent to which Raya was impeded if any of those corners resulted in goals in a proper match.
Still, for Tottenham, this is a sign of meaningful and significant improvement. A team who have spent two years giving up cheap goals because they did not deal with set plays have brought in one of the best in the business at exploiting them. It is already showing.