It was far and away the most exciting and encouraging result of Unai Emery’s tenure at Arsenal so far.
Amid the kind of febrile atmosphere expected in a north London derby, Tottenham were blown away by an Arsenal performance of manic intensity, breathless speed and tactical dexterity.
The result saw the Gunners leapfrog their neighbours into the premier League top four, while extending their impressive unbeaten sequence in all competitions to 19 matches.
There’s no question Emery’s Arsenal are more resolute and harder-to-beat than the often brittle teams put out by Arsene Wenger.
In just a few months, Emery has figured out how to extract maximum effort and reward from his players and appears to have a knack of making match-defining changes to tactics and personnel at just the right moment.
At the Emirates Stadium on Sunday, he introduced Alexandre Lacazette and Aaron Ramsey at half-time, transforming a match they were losing.
During the course of the match, Arsenal deployed three different systems, switching between them effortlessly depending on the flow of the match. It certainly left Tottenham outwitted by the end.
But there is a freshness and a ferociousness about Arsenal’s play this season that suggests the Emery era will be a successful one.
Though it is surely too soon for Arsenal to be challenging Manchester City for the Premier League title this season, they can certainly make gains in one of the cup competitions.
The facts and figures of the season so far suggest that Emery does have further work to be done in order to improve Arsenal defensively.
At this point last season under Wenger, they had kept seven clean sheets in 14 Premier League fixtures and conceded 16 goals. This season, it’s just two clean sheets and 18 conceded.
But thanks to their greater firepower further up the field, the concession of these goals just isn’t translating into defeats this season.
They paid around £17million to sign centre-half Sokratis Papastathopoulous from Borussia Dortmund over the summer, while veteran right-back Stephan Lichtsteiner arrived from Juventus on a free.
In addition, Bernd Leno was bought in for £19.2m to offer competition for Petr Cech between the posts and the German has successfully usurped Cech to become Arsenal’s No 1 in the opening months of the campaign.
There’s no doubt that Arsenal’s back line does remain susceptible to opponents who counter-attack with speed and this is something Emery has acknowledged.
Though he remains stout in his belief that attack is the best form of defence – and that approach is paying off in their results – the likes of City and Liverpool have advanced to another level with their defensive stability this season.