16 Conclusions on new Premier League favourites and familiar Spurs failings

There’s a new favourite for the Premier League title after a one-sided North London derby. Hint: it’s not Tottenham…

1. Sometimes 16 Conclusions can be quite a challenge. Sometimes there’s just not that much to say about a game of football. Sometimes it doesn’t really mean anything. Sometimes games are quite evenly matched and the run of the balls at a certain moment settles matters. Sometimes it’s hard to find things to say about both teams and you get accused of bias for focusing on the one that was conspicuously good/bad (bad is much more fun to write about, by the way).

And sometimes there’s a game where one team is so good and the other so desperately bad that it’s nice and easy. Half the conclusions praising the good team, half slaughtering the bad one. Lovely stuff.

2. The headline is that with an eight-point lead and being well worth every point of that lead, on the back of Manchester City’s late collapse at Manchester United, Arsenal are now favourites for the Premier League title. That’s not an opinion, it’s an across-the-board fact with every major bookmaker in the country. They are now firmly on course to achieve something truly extraordinary and have a sufficient cushion to do so should they lose home and away to City over the weeks ahead.

Right now it’s hard to see Arsenal losing those games, though. City have the pedigree but Arsenal have the momentum and belief. Arsenal are the team playing the better football. Arsenal the team playing the more effective football. Arsenal the team playing the more consistent football. City’s current malaise has brought United and Newcastle back into the equation, with only City’s (and, let’s be fair, Arsenal’s) reputation preventing the Gunners being prohibitively short favourites. Certainly if roles were reversed we’d be approaching no offers territory.

3. Arsenal were superb. It’s easy to say Spurs made them look good, and Spurs certainly made them look even better, but there were two sides to this Arsenal performance and result that were of equal significance and will both be equally pleasing for Mikel Arteta.

In the first half, when Spurs were a dreary, confused shambles of a side, Arsenal seized the initiative. They scored two, could have scored many more, and, in a derby that has in recent years come to be dominated by whichever side is at home, exposed the widening gulf that now exists between these two clubs currently heading in wildly differing…