Why Arsenal's sneaky substitutes enraged Tottenham's set piece coach in derby defeat

Here are our Tottenham talking points after their heavy North London Derby defeat at Arsenal in the Premier League on Sunday evening

Apologising has become a habit at Tottenham Hotspur. There always seems to be something to say sorry to the fans for.

The Spurs managers do it and the players regularly do it, yet it wore thin for the supporters a long time ago. There's more apologising at the north London club than daring and doing and Sunday brought another example of exactly that.

Tottenham have not won at the Emirates Stadium in the Premier League for 15 years but still managed to find a new low on their latest visit.

This was not a battle of two north London rivals. It was more akin to an FA Cup match with a lower league side making their way to a big Premier League club and hoping to cling on, frustrate and nick something, anything from a set piece.

Thomas Frank's tactical set-up for the match said it all. It sent a clear message to his players that they were not good enough to take on an understrength Arsenal side in a straight shoot-out.

Starting with a back three, hitting the ball long to a lone striker, hoping for set piece gains, playing the percentages and utilising Kevin Danso's giant long throws is all good for a manager's first competitive match, when his philosophy and ways are not firmly imprinted yet.

However, more than three months into the season and it's difficult to see exactly what the Dane has imprinted on this Tottenham side in terms of a positive, attacking style of play.

He pointed to Mikel Arteta having had six years to build his Arsenal side, but more than three months as well as another month of pre-season should be enough to put in processes that lead to a team at least being able to create chances.

To have an Austrian international's arms being your chief creative threat is not exactly what Danny Blanchflower envisioned when he said: "The game is about glory, it is about doing things in style and with a flourish, about going out and beating the lot, not waiting for them to die of boredom."

Opta declared after this latest game to apologise for that Frank's Spurs are responsible for the two lowest xG totals in a Premier League game this season, against Arsenal (0.07) and Chelsea (0.1). This is a team that is meant to dare and do, but right now it's doing neither.

Even Frank himself said when he arrived in June: "I always say this one-liner: if you don't take risks, you also take risks. So it's important we take risks. Risk is you need to play forward."

This current Tottenham side is about as risky as being hit by a feather-stuffed pillow covered in bubble wrap.

football.london asked Frank what disappointed him most about this dire derby display and the 52-year-old paused and exhaled, looking around the room.

"Where should I start? This is of course hugely disappointing that we didn’t perform better in the game against Arsenal, our biggest rivals. I can only apologise to the fans for that," he said.

"I was very confident on Friday when we spoke that we would be competitive today and we weren't over the 90 minutes. We tried to come here and be aggressive and press high and in spells go after them. We didn’t succeed with that bit. We didn’t manage to get near enough to them in the situations we could.

"It means we got pushed back and got a little too passive. It looks like we are running after them. When we finally got on the ball we were not good enough to get out of those situations.

"No matter how painful it is to admit, they are definitely six years down the line and we are four months down the line but even with that I was still expecting much more from us today. Not that we could dominate over 90 minutes, but that we could be as competitive as we were against Man City and PSG."

Being competitive should be a base requirement rather than a goal. Blanchflower never said the game was about 'being competitive'.

At the Emirates Stadium on Sunday, Tottenham mustered just three shots, which all arrived in the second half and came from outside the box. Two of them were from the boot of Xavi Simons, who was not deemed worthy of starting and instead had to be brought on at the break when it had all gone wrong after the half hour mark.

Before that, Spurs' tactics appears to be indeed to wait for everyone inside the ground, including their opponents, to die of boredom.

It's not a sustainable way to play football for a side like Spurs and it got the result it deserved.

Of course the scriptwriters would delight in ensuring that it was Eberechi Eze who tore Tottenham apart. Spurs tried to sign the 27-year-old in the summer only for a phone call from Arteta to send him to his boyhood club.

Not only did Tottenham gift the England international the first hat-trick of his senior career on Sunday but they allowed him to score pretty much the same goal three times, learning nothing from each passing strike from the edge of the box.

It had all begun with Leandro Trossard's touch, turn and hit from Mikel Merino's lofted pass into the box.

The Spurs fans' misery was only briefly interrupted by a wonderful Richarlison goal from just over the halfway line, following a tackle from Joao Palhinha, who appeared to be the only visiting player who got the memo that they were playing in a derby.

This game though was all about Eze showing what Tottenham had missed. He had seven touches in the Spurs penalty area during the game. The visitors' combined total in the Arsenal box was four.

Instead they were left rooting for hopeful punts up the pitch to stick with Richarlison, which they rarely did.

Then there was Danso's long throw, which in the end was only really utilised once and was followed by vociferous complaints from Spurs' restart coach Andreas Georgson about the Arsenal substitutes who had stood around the touchline the centre-back needed to launch his throw from.

Whether that was a planned, disruptive move from Arteta or his own set piece coach Nicolas Jover, who used to work for Frank, or simply unfortunate was unclear but it certainly wound up Georgson.

Frank says set pieces and long throws should be focused on because they are big routes towards goals and he's right, but they need to be in addition to creative attacking football, rather than used as the dominant approach.

It should be made clear that Frank does not want to play dull football and his Brentford teams over the seasons have produced some exciting stuff and scored plenty of goals with the likes of Toney, Mbeumo and Wissa dovetailing up front.

But he needs to find a way to get this Spurs team clicking quickly up front because the club's fans will not have the patience to wait for the likes of Dejan Kulusevski and Dominic Solanke to return and then spend further weeks getting sharp, or for the January transfer window and the first test of the new Lewis family push to improve the club.

"It is concerning, of course. We are working very hard to try to make [the creativity] better but sometimes it’s not only playing out and finding a nice pass but also in a game like this if you see some of the situations where they won it high, Arsenal, then there was a little bit more open space," Frank told football.london.

"We didn’t win it enough in those situations and then create from that. For me the creativity, I know it was very low, but it was not my biggest concern today."

It should be one of Frank's biggest concerns, because Tottenham supporters can forgive an unclean sheet if the team is creating and scoring at the other end.

Even Guglielmo Vicario couldn't be bothered to complain about Eze's first goal flying past offside Arsenal players in his line of vision.

"I think the way the game went it wouldn't have changed anything. There were three people in front of me so of course they impacted me, but we didn't lose the game for that," the goalkeeper told Sky Sports.

Former Spurs striker Les Ferdinand was a pundit on Sky for the game and did not hold back on the performance and the tactics from Frank.

"Tottenham were that bad today. It's embarrassing to watch. Halfway through this game I was hoping I could go in the box with Michael McIntyre. I didn't want to watch anymore," he said.

"You can't come to Arsenal in the North London Derby and not put everything on the line. I think the manager got his tactics wrong today. He came here to be negative and to sit back and try and hold Arsenal off, and I think that just sent out the wrong message to the players, because they just couldn't get out again.

"Arsenal scored the first goal, and that was it. Tottenham were done."

It was put to the Spurs head coach about his tactics and whether he had set the tone for the whole miserable day with his formation.

"I’m a very big believer that no matter what system you play you can be successful. I completely understand the question and I will always take the full responsibility. The full responsibility will always be on me today when we didn’t perform," he said.

"I picked a team that played 5-4-1, changed it at half-time, very clever, one minute into it they scored. 3-0. Then the rest is history after that.

"What I would say is that no matter if we played another system we needed to be more aggressive and better in the duels. That doesn’t matter to the system but I need to take responsibility for everything today."

He added: "You can say that [it sent a message to the players], but there are so many ways you can see it in that aspect. I've seen lots of teams, including my own team, playing also 3-5-2 or 3-4-3, being very aggressive, positive, forward-thinking. That was not the case today. So I don't think it's about the system."

Xavi did provide at least a little more thrust to Tottenham's play, even if as Frank said, Arsenal scored within a minute of the formation change.

When asked why the Dutchman, full of confidence after his midweek goal for the Netherlands and improving displays for Spurs, did not start, Frank simply said: "Yeah, 'he's been] better, better. I think that was a tactical decision. Wilson has done well. So it's one of him or Xavi or Wilson."

Odobert was too weak for this North London Derby. He touched the ball just 23 times and not once in the Arsenal box. He only played one pass all game. The Frenchman's attacking stats after the game were otherwise mostly a run of zeroes, apart from one successful dribble.

That's not to single out the 20-year-old for nobody came out of the game with any credit apart from Palhinha, whose eight tackles were double the total managed by anyone else in the Spurs line-up, and Vicario for keeping the scoreline to just 4-1.

Richarlison added his name to Erik Lamela's in scoring a remarkable, world class goal in a dismal North London Derby defeat. Otherwise the Brazilian was constantly second best.

As were the full-backs Destiny Udogie and Djed Spence, with the latter dipping in performance levels in recent weeks at the same time as making it clear to everyone on social media - albeit in a good-natured way - how good he thinks he is. Sometimes you've got to let your football do the talking as he had done in turning his Tottenham career around and earning that England call.

Those the team look to through the spine of the team - Cristian Romero, Micky van de Ven and Rodrigo Bentancur - hardly set an example for anyone while Mohammed Kudus looked exactly what he is - a player coming back from weeks out.

After the game, Frank took an ill-advised move in pointing everyone back to last season.

"There's definitely a lot to work on still. I think it's fair to say that we are very disappointed and unhappy with the performance today. I don't want to run away from that," he said. "As I said, I apologise to the fans.

"I think it's also fair to say where we're coming from. We finished 17th last year, and we've tried to build something, which today didn't look like we'd tried to build something."

It certainly didn't look like anything had been built and to point to the 17th place will only also draw people's eyes back to the European trophy that same side won under Ange Postecoglou rather than putting out their best team in the Premier League's final months. It was also Frank who said back in his first press conference that he wanted to build on what Postecoglou had done.

The Australian's side went to the Emirates in January earlier this year during their injury crisis, with a centre-back pairing of Radu Dragusin and 18-year-old midfielder Archie Gray in front of new young back-up goalkeeper Antonin Kinsky.

They narrowly lost 2-1 while taking more than three times the amount of shots Sunday's Spurs team had in them, while also hitting the woodwork. They had 21 touches in the Arsenal box to this current side's four.

A defeat is still a defeat at the end of the day, but that Frank had his first choice back line out there and a defensively set-up team, yet shipped four goals and needed a wonder goal to get anything back is a poor look.

The two ways to win a fanbase's heart is to impress in the derbies and win at home in front of 60,000 or so of those supporters.

Frank is struggling with both and the fixture list is not looking to help him. Wednesday brings a trip to Paris to face the European champions PSG, who will not be in the same physical state as they were in August.

Then comes what now seems a huge game at home against Fulham on Saturday night, which will come without Spurs' suspended skipper Romero after his fifth booking of the season, before a trip to a Newcastle side that have just vanquished Manchester City. Then comes a home game against Frank's old team Brentford.

2025 closes out with the Champions League home tie against Slavia Prague before considerable tests away against a resurgent Nottingham Forest, a home game against Liverpool, who surely cannot remain in their slump, and then a trip to Crystal Palace, who currently sit fifth in the table with just two defeats to their name.

Frank needs to find a way forward. Tottenham have thrown out as many managers as they have apologies in the past six years and the Dane needs to prove that he can be as adaptable as everyone expected him to be and wedge something into the revolving door.

He is at a club that is going through plenty of change behind the scenes, but on the pitch it feels like it's stuck in the same pattern of flip-flopping from one type of manager to another, with little sense of direction.

The doubts are already growing among the fanbase about the football being produced, the meekness of the derby displays against Chelsea and Arsenal, the continuation of the dreadful home form and some are already questioning whether the step up is too big for the former Brentford boss.

In appointing Frank though, Spurs did their homework. They used data modelling to identify 50 coaches that would suit what they were looking for, including a number of hypothetical candidates that they knew would not be available in order to ensure a full and detailed comparison matrix.

To ensure the best possible chance of avoiding mistakes of the past, they drew up a list of 10 criteria for prospective candidates, including a track record of playing attractive football, developing young players and good communication skills with the media as just three of them.

When all of the criteria were taken into account, it resulted in a shortlist of four candidates for the position. All of the prospective quartet held meetings with the club and Frank was the unanimous choice of the board and technical director Johan Lange.

That all points to Frank having the ability to produce more than what he and his team are currently showing.

The Dane needs to come out swinging. He must listen to his own mantra: "If you don't take risks, you also take risks."

No more apologies, no more xG starting with a zero and certainly no more meek and timid performances. To dare is to do. It's time to be Frank, not sorry.