Arsenal 2 Tottenham 1This time Arsenal appear in little danger of peaking too soon. In their opening 12 games last season their form soared, sagged, then started to take off again. Now they are on more of a plateau with the old brilliance glimpsed in flashes but the football less spellbinding than it was.
Even so, Arsene Wenger's side, unbeaten in the Premiership, are still top, whereas a year ago they lay second with four fewer points. Saturday's victory over Tottenham, moreover, guaranteed that they stayed beyond the immediate reach of Manchester United and Chelsea.
When Arsenal visit Birmingham City on Saturday week for what looks like a muck-and-nettles encounter, the string of suspensions imposed by the Football Association following the fracas at Old Trafford will have begun to bite.
With Martin Keown and Patrick Vieira injured, Wenger has had to reorganise his defence and midfield, and losing Lauren for four games may not be too great a handicap after the way the Cameroonian all but presented Spurs with two goals.
Against that, the absence of Ray Parlour even for one match is something Arsenal could do without. The resilience he gives the midfield in Vieira's absence is not easily replaced.
There were times on Saturday when Parlour alone prevented Tottenham getting a stranglehold on the play between the penalty areas. David Pleat's continued use of the excellent Ledley King, usually a centre-back, as a midfield anchor with licence to go forward gave Spurs the sort of influence Highbury is more used to seeing from Vieira.
The form of Dennis Bergkamp could be crucial for Arsenal in the next few weeks. The Dutchman, who had looked off the pace against Dynamo Kiev three nights earlier, brought a measure of calm and accuracy to Arsenal's movements once he had replaced Gilberto Silva for the last half-hour.
At that point, with Tottenham mounting a solid defence around Dean Richards and Anthony Gardner, the prospect of Pleat's side achieving Spurs' first league victory at Highbury for 10 years was fast approaching reality. Thierry Henry might spin and weave, Nwankwo Kanu twist and turn and Robert Pires dart and delve, but Spurs, with Kasey Keller alert and agile in goal, were unyielding.
Perhaps they should play Arsenal more often now that Pleat has rekindled something of the spark that had gone out of the team under Glenn Hoddle.
Darren Anderton played as if he had never been near a treatment table. Having given Tottenham the lead after five minutes, when he pounced on a ball from Robbie Keane that had ricocheted off Lauren, Anderton continued to attack and defend in equal measure and typified the attitude of the team as a whole.
But for the late tackle by Leicester's Muzzy Izzet three weekends earlier, which put their leading scorer, Frederic Kanoute, out of action with an injured ankle, Spurs might have been beyond Arsenal's reach by half-time. As it was, the weak back-passes from Lauren that twice left Jens Lehmann exposed both fell to Helder Postiga, the £6.25 million Portuguese striker from Porto who has yet to justify his fee or his job description with a goal.
Postiga's timid attempts to beat Lehmann offered Arsenal a reprieve, but they still needed more than a modicum of good fortune to win the match.
Henry may have looked offside as he peeled away from the Tottenham centre-backs to gather Parlour's pass, but closer examination suggested he had been in line with the last defender when the ball was played. Keller managed to deny Henry a goal but Pires scored from the rebound.
With 11 minutes remaining Bergkamp and Kanu worked the ball to Freddie Ljungberg, who after bringing it square towards the penalty area produced a shot that glanced off Stephen Carr's attempted interception and looped high beyond Keller into the net.
If Arsenal can give such a fitful performance and still win maybe they will regain the Premiership title.
Even in defeat Pleat was entitled to take satisfaction from his team's performance. "We weren't a lightweight Tottenham today," he said. "We traded punches, not physical punches, against a team with a lot of pace and a lot of strength."
From today Pleat will be calling himself "acting manager" because "caretaker makes you sound like a scruffy bugger". But if he has not exactly been a new broom at White Hart Lane, the fright Spurs gave Arsenal showed their season need not gather dust - provided the team keep working at Saturday's rate.
