“Painful” and “No Fight” – Tottenham apologizes for its display in the derby defeat

Danny Murphy, the former Tottenham midfielder, told BBC Sport: Today was as dominant an Arsenal v Tottenham performance as I’ve seen in a long time…there was a huge gap between the two teams.

Spurs’ five-man system at the back – whether it’s 3-4-3 or 5-4-1, whichever way you want to look at it – can cause problems for the other team if, when you have the ball, you’re brave enough to push your wing-back up a little and get up the pitch a little and support the front three.

But what happened with Arsenal’s quality and physicality was that they pinned Spurs at the back so they couldn’t get out, and of course after the second goal which felt a bit harsh because of the guys in front of the keeper, Spurs were then in real trouble.

Because if you go out and really chase Arsenal, you’ll get hacked to pieces, and also 2-0 is a mountain to climb because they don’t concede many goals.

But they will be very disappointed – they didn’t really lay the gloves down on Arsenal when you thought after the first 20 minutes they could have been braver, because they gave themselves a platform to do so.

It’s a huge disappointment for Tottenham to lose any derby in north London, but losing it like that was very bad.

They were completely outplayed in the end – they were outplayed, outworked and didn’t hurt Arsenal enough. Yes, Richarlison scored a fantastic goal out of nothing and I think it was their first shot on target, but other than that they didn’t cause Arsenal any problems at all.

There was already a bit of dissatisfaction at their home matches from their fans, who wanted more. Now, because of this performance today, at Arsenal, this will grow… because of who this performance was and the result against.

So the players will have to stand up and be counted and Frank will learn a lot about his players in the next two weeks.

He will learn who is capable, who has some courage and who wants to get on the ball and make things happen.