Pace of change since the last Emirates NLD could give you whiplash

The last time Spurs played at the Emirates their largely theoretical midfield featured Tanguy Ndombele and Dele Alli. An awful lot has changed in a year…

Others will no doubt have their (baffling and incorrect) views, but the North London Derby is the Premier League’s best local (key word, that) derby and by a wide margin.

There are lots of reasons. Proper historical and thus increasingly petty aggro for one, based chiefly on something to do with the First World War and Arsenal’s acquisition and retention of a top-flight status they have never relinquished in more than a century but mainly their ‘invasion’ of North London.

It’s a fact that leads many Spurs supporters to refer still to ‘The Woolwich’ because of something that happened decades before they were born. That’s what derbies should be about: mutual loathing based on half-remembered trifles. None of your ‘friendly derby’ rubbish.

Both fanbases are fun and easily riled. Let’s generalise merrily here. Spurs fans are, if only for reasons of self-defence, a largely pessimistic and self-deprecating lot yet quick to anger, often when forced to defend enjoying a period of time when they had a likeable team and manager playing incredible football but didn’t actually win anything.

Arsenal fans, on the other hand, believe either that the sky is about to fall in or a new dynasty of richly-deserved greatness is afoot for this most special of football clubs. Often in the same week. Theirs is an existence which requires simultaneously holding the view that Arsenal are a great and grand club of huge import, yet also one so ineffectual that shady forces running English football have – for reasons unknown – successfully waged a conspiracy to keep the hapless wee Gunners down.

And both fanbases hold cult-level if wildly differing opinions on Harry Kane. Whatever happens in any NLD, basically, there will be enjoyable meltdowns in the aftermath.

But for the last decade or so, the primary reason why the North London Derby and its Kentucky Fried Chicken-style rebranding as the NLD has been the best local derby in the league is the fact that, for better or worse, it has nearly always actually mattered. It is not just the cliched battle for local bragging rights in the offices and playgrounds on Monday morning; it tangibly impacts the season.

Last year was the sixth time in the last 10 seasons there has been less than a game separating the pair in the final league table and the fifth…