sport news Arsenal of years gone by would have cracked, but Mikel Arteta's side served ... trends now

A minute or so after the final whistle, after Mikel Arteta had leapt into the air on the touchline and being enveloped in the embrace of his assistants, Arsenal's players raced over to the corner of the steepling Tottenham Hotspur Stadium where they had stood throughout the game in the midst of the enemy.

The Arsenal supporters were delirious. They were lost in their joy. Declan Rice handed his shirt to a fan, Bukayo Saka saluted the supporters. 

The Arsenal fans turned and taunted their Spurs counterparts in the section beside them. Their exultations were unconfined.

They shall think themselves accursed, those Arsenal fans who were not here on this St Totteringham's Day. Because, let's face it, St Totteringham's Day was the very least of it on Sunday afternoon. 

This result was about so much more than ensuring they finished above their north London rivals this season.

On one level, it was about avoiding the humiliation of blowing a 3-0 half-time lead, which Arsenal almost contrived to do. Imagine that. 

They would never, ever have lived that down if they had allowed Spurs to snatch a point and ruin their title hopes all at the same time.

But this 3-2 win was about far more than that. It was about taking a giant step forwards toward winning their first Premier League title for 20 years by winning on the Tottenham High Road and going four points clear, temporarily at least, of Manchester City at the top of the table.

City remain the favourites, of course, because they tend not to lose at this stage of the season and if they win their next five games, they will win the league. 

But Arsenal served notice here that they will make them fight all the way for that title and that they will not lose their nerve in the process.

This win was another riposte to those who were claiming a few weeks ago that Arsenal were choking. 

They responded to those claims by beating Chelsea 5-0 on Tuesday night and then accelerating into a 3-0 lead before the interval at Tottenham, where many expected Spurs might upset them.

Instead, Arteta's side outclassed their local rivals for much of the game. They exposed Spurs' defensive limitations and played some magnificent counter-attacking football of their own. Kai Havertz, once again, was superb.

And even when David Raya handed Spurs a lifeline with an absurdly ambitious attempt to play out from the back, Arsenal clung on. 

In other years, such as 2022, perhaps, when Spurs swept them aside here, Arsenal would have cracked under the pressure. This time, they clung on. The title race looks as if it is going down to the wire.

'This is where we have to stand up and make it happen,' Arteta had said before the game and that is what his team did. 

Arsenal had not won back-to-back away league games against Spurs in 36 years and now they chose the right moment to put that righ

Arsenal took the lead after a quarter of an hour. Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg, who had been preferred to Yves Bissouma in midfield, got just the wrong side of Takehiro Tomiyasu at a corner and when the Spurs midfielder stretched to reach the ball curled in by Saka, he inadvertently nodded it high past Guglielmo Vicario into the net.

Saka cupped his ear to the Spurs fans behind the goal, which was met with exactly the kind of reception one might expect but Arsenal's players then went into an earnest huddle before the game restarted. The message seemed to be that now was the time to concentrate and not let the lead slip.