Words & Pictures to Follow: Tottenham Hotspur vs Arsenal
This weekend's match takes us back to North London for a first trip to a stadium that's been described as one of the best new-builds in Europe.
My relationship with White Hart Lane has always been slightly at arm’s length. The ground itself may have been barely a fifteen minute walk from our flat, but we were only there until I was five, and when we moved from there it was a couple of miles further north, out towards the boondocks in Enfield. Five years later, we were on the move again, even further away, into the deepest, darkest Hertfordshire countryside.
My own preference for lower league football—inherited from my father—has meant that trips there for me have always been somewhat sporadic. It was, of course, somewhat easier when you could just turn up and pay on the gate. In the late 1980s, if I wanted to go and see Spurs at home on a Saturday afternoon, for most matches I could just rock up there, hand over some money, and be allowed in.
But as time has progressed since the mid-1990s, going to see them play at home has become more and more of an ordeal, sagas of borrowed season passes and administrative hurdles to have to clear. I couldn’t tell you a specific point at which I might have been ‘priced out’ of any particular market, and to a point it’s an irrelevance anyway. I’ve never had a season ticket at one club in four and half decades of watching footbal anyway, and the amount of top flight football I attend anywhere in person these days is vanishingly small.
It should, therefore come as little surprise to find out that this weekend, for the North London Derby in the Women’s Super League, will be the first time I’ve been inside The Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. My dad has. My sister has. My girlfriend has. But for me, this weekend will be a first time. I’ve heard good things about it, and for someone who spends most of their football-watching time at the sort of grounds that I do, being inside somewhere vast and luxurious is always kinda breathtaking. I’m working to assumption that the seats will be padded. I’m not used this world, you see.
Tickets were not difficult to come by, on general sale on the Spurs website. We secured two behind the goal at the opposite end to the away supporters. It’s a 1.45 kick-off, and you can even watch it yourself should you choose to, since it’ll be live on BBC1. Tottenham Hotspur have been periodically disappointing me for something like 45 years. Can the women’s team add to that this weekend?
The form book isn’t exactly in Spurs’ favour. They’ve lost four of their last five matches, conceding fifteen goals in the process to Chelsea, Manchester City, Liverpool and Manchester United. Arsenal, meanwhile, have won four of their last five, scoring sixteen, including nine in their last two games against Brighton and Juventus. If Spurs supporters are looking for a reason to be optimistic, then at least their team won the last meeting of these two teams at this stadium, a 1-0 victory last December. Arsenal won the return match by the same margin in March.
The Spurs women’s team joined the WSL in 2019, which by coincidence is also the last time that the Arsenal women’s team won the title, having also done so in 2011 and 2012. 7th, 8th, 5th, 9th and 6th has seen them lodged pretty much in mid-table since then and they are currently there again, in 7th place in this twelve-team division. They reached the final of the FA Cup at the end of last season, but were beaten 4-0 at Wembley by Manchester United once there.
The Arsenal women’s team are, of course, the goddam Arsenal women’s football team. 15 times champions of England, 14 times winners of the FA Cup, and the first—and still only—English club to win the Champions League. The problem is that much of that success is now looking increasingly historic. They’ve won the Women’s League Cup for the last couple of seasons, but their last league title was now more than five years ago while their last FA Cup win came in 2016.
Everybody now lives in the apparent shadow of Chelsea and Manchester City. Chelsea have won the last five league titles in a row, while City have been runners-up in six of the last eight seasons. Arsenal have been runners-up once since they last won the title in 2022 and they only missed out by a point, that time around. But the fact that the one league match they have lost this season came at home to Chelsea only serves to reinforce the point that everybody else is still playing catch-up to the top two.
Arsenal have had some degree of tumult already this season. Manager Jonas Eidevall left the club in the middle of October after they won just one of their first four WSL matches of the season and lost their opening Champions League match to BK Häcken of Sweden. Renne Slegers is the interim head coach while a decision over who the permanent replacement should be. They’re currently in 4th place in the table, a point behind Brighton & Hove Albion, who they beat 5-0 last weekend.
And they are obviously the clear favourites to win this game. Spurs may have won their last home meeting against them, but Arsenal won the one before that 5-1 and the meeting before that at The Emirates Stadium 4-0. They also beat them 5-1, 4-0 and 3-0 in 2021 alone. The historical record is lousy and current form isn’t great. There’s plenty of reason to expect this to be a most Tottenhamish experience.
But of course, that’s not really the spirit, is it? You make the journey to support the team, and you hope that this support will make a difference to their performance. It might not be enough, but it’s something. I’m also reliably informed that the pizza they sell there is excellent and honestly, when I pause to think about some of the dreadful food I’ve had to endure at some non-league grounds over the years, that’s something to look forward to as well. How Spursy can they get? Let’s find out!
Words and pictures to follow, on either Sunday or Monday morning.
Image by VariousPhotography from Pixabay.