Arsenal look to get their title charge back on track on Sunday afternoon when they travel up the Seven Sisters Road to take on north London rivals Tottenham Hotspur.
The gap at the top is now just two points after Manchester City fought their way past Newcastle United on Saturday night.
Spurs may be languishing towards the bottom of the Premier League, but with a new interim manager in the form of Igor Tudor, could they cause an upset?
The Athletic’s Jay Harris and Art de Roche — Spurs and Arsenal correspondents respectively — look ahead to the match…
How is the mood among the fans going in to this derby…?
Harris: Morale has been low as Tottenham’s fanbase struggle to come to terms with the reality that they are in a relegation battle. Last season’s calamitous performances in the Premier League were supposed to be a one-off.
The atmosphere at the stadium has been toxic for months and Arsenal’s arrival on Sunday had been filling supporters with dread. That gloom should be lifted at least slightly following Thomas Frank’s dismissal last week. Frank failed to bond with the fans but they will back interim head coach Tudor.
The Croatian spoke about playing “offensive football” in his first interview with the club and those words have been a welcome tonic for supporters who quickly grew sick of Frank’s pragmatic tactics.
Arsenal’s midweek slip at Wolves will also give hope that Spurs can get something here after all.
De Roche: Morale is similarly low among Arsenal supporters. That midweek draw dented hopes of finally lifting the Premier League, and ultimately, brought back a familiar and foreboding feeling ahead of the run-in.
If ever there was a game to act as a pick-me-up for the fanbase, this would be it. The north London derby is significant no matter the gap between the teams in the league, and the away support will have fond recent memories of these encounters with Arsenal winning their last three at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
There is no doubt that the home crowd will take joy from pointing out Arsenal’s midweek hiccup early on, but that could be exactly what Mikel Arteta’s players need to hear to get into gear. Not just this weekend, but for the rest of the season too.
What are the aims for the rest of the season?
Harris: Spurs need to start picking up points quickly to move away from the relegation zone. They are yet to win a league game in 2026 and have only tasted victory twice in their last 17 league fixtures. Spurs are struggling to cope with an injury crisis for the second season in a row and it will be a difficult task for Tudor to arrest their plummeting form. Tudor confirmed in his first press conference on Friday that only 13 senior players took part in training before this match.
Frank managed to guide them to a fourth-placed finish in the initial phase of the Champions League, which means they will face either Atletico Madrid, Juventus, Galatasaray or Club Brugge in the last 16 next month. Depending upon your outlook, those games are either a welcome distraction from their domestic woes or an extra burden on a squad already stretched to its limit.
De Roche: Arsenal’s aims have not changed despite the disappointment at Wolves. They will still be looking to mount a charge to win the Premier League, and beyond that, at least the Carabao Cup too.
There is a feeling that they could (and maybe should) have had a bigger advantage at the top of the league, but now they know they are in a battle. There is next to no room for error now, which may be a tough task for a team which has won just two of their last seven in the league.
While results in 2026 have been frustrating, Arsenal’s schedule has been relentless. Next week will be the first time this calendar year without a midweek fixture. With Chelsea coming to the Emirates after the short trip to Spurs, this could be a pivotal week if Arsenal use it the right way.
Who has impressed you most in the opposition team this season?
Harris: Jurrien Timber is probably the best right-back in the division. He is an exceptional one-v-one defender, offers a threat going forward and is incredibly robust. It feels like all of Tottenham’s full-backs only offer one of those attributes.
In midfield, Spurs sorely miss someone with the ability of Martin Odegaard to cut opponents open with incisive passes.
De Roche: This feels like very slim pickings. Injuries are a big factor, as Dejan Kulusevski has been a player I’ve enjoyed watching in past seasons, but this year it feels like Micky van de Ven takes this by default. He seems like one of Spurs’ most reliable players, when fit, especially when alongside Cristian Romero. It probably says a lot about both teams that both picks have been defenders, though.
How do you expect your club’s manager to set up for this game?
Harris: During his time in charge of Marseille, Lazio and Juventus, Tudor largely favoured a 3-4-2-1 formation. Two No 10s would roam behind the central striker and it brought him short-term success in all of those roles. Tudor could replicate this with Spurs by putting Xavi Simons and Mathys Tel behind Dominic Solanke or Randal Kolo Muani, who thrived under Tudor at Juventus.
But Tottenham’s squad has been wrecked by injuries. Key players including Pedro Porro, Mohammed Kudus, Rodrigo Bentancur, Destiny Udogie, Dejan Kulusevski and James Maddison are unavailable.
Tudor admitted in his first interview with the club that he needs “to find the best system that suits the players that are available at this moment”. He has a limited amount of time to come up with the tactical approach at Spurs.
De Roche: This has become a bit more difficult to predict given that Arteta has said that there is a big possibility that Kai Havertz and Odegaard will be available after their respective injuries.
Havertz’s return from injury helped improve Arsenal’s performances towards the end of January and start of February, but he played in the position of Odegaard (and now Saka) in recent games.
Arteta could play all of them by using Odegaard in midfield, Saka on the wing and Havertz up front, or could get more creative depending on how long each can play. That trio would give Arsenal’s attack a much more familiar feel to previous seasons, which could help.
Further down the pitch, who starts at full-back now becomes an interesting decision. Timber is Arsenal’s second-most used player this season in all competitions behind Martin Zubimendi, and has not had the impact he did earlier in the season of late.
Ben White was fatigued towards the end of the FA Cup match against Wigan Athletic, but this could be a timely opportunity to bring him back into the fold to provide more attacking threat on the right. On the left, even though Piero Hincapie scored his first Arsenal goal at Wolves, Riccardo Calafiori has looked better in the role and is back fit.
Those units across the pitch could be key to Arsenal looking like a team in rhythm come Sunday.
Reason to be optimistic?
Harris: All of the pressure is on Arsenal, especially after that draw in midweek. Everybody is expecting Spurs to get rolled over because of their horrendous form, the lack of players available and what happened when these two sides met in November. But if Spurs come out fighting — and benefit from ‘new manager bounce’ — they could give Arsenal a nasty surprise.
De Roche: Arsenal have a few factors in their favour. They usually come away from the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium with three points, they have beaten five of the six new managers they have faced this season and have a better squad than Spurs.
Application from start to finish will be a major factor in the result.
Their last three away wins over Spurs have come in different ways too. Last season was more of a smash-and-grab 1-0 win, but the previous season they were 3-0 up at half-time. There will be uncertain moments, but this particular fixture has shown Arsenal can handle wobbles. They just need to rediscover that ability after sizeable ones against Wolves and Brentford.
Reason to be pessimistic?
Harris: Spurs were embarrassed by Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium last year. Eberechi Eze, who Spurs tried to sign in the summer, scored a hat-trick for his boyhood club to really rub salt in the wound.
Arsenal have underperformed in the league in 2026 but they have a frightening amount of attacking talent to choose from. Radu Dragusin is still working his way back to full sharpness after missing 11 months out with an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury and he has to contend with Gabriel Martinelli, Noni Madueke, Viktor Gyokeres, Bukayo Saka and more. Captain Romero is only one game into a four-match ban. If Tudor does go for a back three, midfielder Joao Palhinha will probably have to fill in at centre-back again, alongside Dragusin and Van de Ven.
De Roche: While Arsenal tend to do well at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, this season their away form has not been as strong as it once was.
Five of their seven draws have come away from home. Looking back to their previous title races with Manchester City, they only drew three away matches apiece in 2022-23 and 2023-24.
Their two most recent away matches (Brentford and Wolves) have also ended all square despite them taking the lead. That partly comes down to matches being left open, to which Arteta said: “What we can do before that (conceding when ahead) to prevent that happening is still improvable, and in the attacking process, the first half we had very different outcomes. In the second half as well, a very, very open situation. We didn’t even finish with a chance. So, a lot of room to improve.”
How about a prediction…?
Harris: I suspect Spurs might lose but it will certainly be a tighter game than the 4-1 defeat last year. I’m going for 2-1 with Simons scoring for Spurs.