Two images bookended William Saliba\u2019s latest social media post and, taken together, they captured the tone of Saturday\u2019s north London derby. Saliba\u2019s running battle with Tottenham became the defining feature of an imperious defensive display made up of scuffles, pinches and pokes, shirt pulls and sly jabs in the ribs.<\/p>\n
Richarlison produced a spectacular strike from 40 yards, spearing a consolation over David Raya while Spurs trailed by three goals, yet it was Saliba who emerged as the dominant figure. With Gabriel injured and watching from the dugout and Piero Hincapi\u00e9 making his first appearance in a north London derby, Saliba assumed the mantle of Arsenal\u2019s aggressor in chief.<\/p>\n
Tottenham\u2019s frontline, including Richarlison, were largely muzzled. Arsenal limited Spurs to just three shots, none inside the penalty area, and an xG of 0.07, the lowest recorded by any team across all 119 Premier League games this season. Declan Rice captured the mood with a comment beneath Saliba\u2019s post: “Locked up.” No wonder Mikel Arteta “enjoyed every minute of it.”<\/p>\n
Sunday\u2019s victory is the opening point in a busy week for Arsenal. Saliba faces a different test on Wednesday night when Bayern Munich visit the Emirates and Harry Kane represents a tougher proposition. Unlike the demonstrably tactile Richarlison, Kane\u2019s game is laced with subtlety; Saliba has twice faced Kane at the Emirates before and the England captain found the net on each occasion.<\/p>\n
Chelsea will provide another challenge next weekend for an Arsenal backline missing Gabriel. Enzo Maresca began the trip to Burnley with a front pairing of Liam Delap and Jo\u00e3o Pedro, while Marc Guiu impressed off the bench with a goal as he pushed his case for more minutes.<\/p>\n
Saliba\u2019s social post underlined a clear on-field message: in a derby dominated by Arsenal, his physicality and presence set the tone and offered a warning about the tests still to come this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Saliba’s social post capped a combative display as Arsenal dominated Spurs, limiting them to 0.07 xG<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4666,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,172,187],"tags":[1162,1019],"class_list":["post-4667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-epl","category-tottenham-hotspur","tag-analytics","tag-creative-players"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4667\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}