Arsenal let down by senior pair in heavy Tottenham defeat

The game everyone had been waiting for was over by the half hour mark. An occasion such as this one was deliberately rearranged four months later to build up some tension, only for Arsenal to pour cold water over any excitable flames.

It was never going to be anything other than a grind. A battle of the mind and the body at a stadium that had yet to host this fixture with a capacity crowd was always going to push all the players to their limits.

Managing those emotions and channeling them into an effective and well organised performance was the biggest task for Arsenal.

Two of their players failed at that more than the rest.

Arsenal let down by senior pair Rob Holding and Cedric Soares in heavy Tottenham defeat as Premier League top four race blows wide open

Granit Xhaka looked nervy from the off – most seemed to – yet none seemed to be more overawed by the game than Rob Holding and Cedric Soares, albeit in differing circumstances.

The bottom line with Cedric is that he’s an average footballer who occasionally plays well. That’s him in a nutshell. When he doesn’t play well he is average which, for an average footballer, happens an average amount of times. Like a mid-table Premier League team there will be good days and bad days. This was a bad day.

Heung-min Son will frighten the best defenders in the world so it was expected that he’d give Cedric the run around, yet positionally he was(is) never stood in the right place, while anyone with more physical prowess, which is most, overpower him in duels.

Looking on edge, that will have contributed to him facing away from the play when he used his body to try and shove Son in the box. It was a soft penalty, yes, but it was a penalty. With the right angle it is clear that he has eyes only for the South Korean, whether he exaggerated the contact or not.

A senior player letting his team down. Unfortunately for Arsenal, the other player who did that was stood right next to Cedric.

Mikel Arteta has been blamed for his use of a back four with Holding being tight and aggressive on Son, but there is nothing he can do about the recklessness of Holding’s actions. From the very first minute he was too hot-headed.

It’s a derby, one where you want to see a bit of meat on the challenges and a few choice words said. That fire and passion is what this fixture brings. What Holding did was go far above the threshold, kicking Son in the back in an earlier instance and then hauling him down needlessly having been too tight and skinned near the halfway line.

Paul Tierney rightly brandished him a yellow card, with the second one inevitable.

Wanting to maintain a physical superiority over Son, Holding then inexplicably forced himself into the forward for a long ball over the top that he was never, ever, getting anywhere near. While Son’s body is positioned low, an elbow is shoved into him for the most moronic contact of the whole game. There was absolutely no need.

From the outset Arsenal had their right side, which was the most vulnerable against a world class winger, completely at sea. Two of their most experienced and senior players folded under the lights and contributed to the heaviest derby defeat since 1983.

It leaves Arsenal another man light in defence for a game they simply must win, a situation that was supplemented by the loss of Gabriel to injury.

While the pair have contributed significantly over the course of the season, they let the team down at a pivotal moment. In game that could have been historic, events will now be banished to the archives never to be seen again.