Eleven points and four places might make it feel like there’s a huge chasm between Arsenal and Tottenham right now but there isn’t.
In fact, I don’t see too much of a gap at all between the two rivals going into today’s north London derby.
In another season, with the same squads, I could see Arsenal sitting in fifth with Spurs in the top two if Harry Kane and Heung-min Son were really hitting their straps.
After all, we’re only talking about a handful of results separating the two sides and I can’t help but wonder whether this Spurs team would be behaving differently if they had a bit more confidence about them and a manager who was a bit less volatile.
Someone who’s maybe a bit more like Mikel Arteta and less like, well, Antonio Conte.
I’m not saying that if they were to swap managers it would make all the difference.
Just that, if Spurs’ players had had a few more of the cuddles Arteta undoubtedly gives his men than the b******ings Conte undoubtedly gives his, I wonder if they would be in a better position all round.
Now, I know a lot of people will read this and say, ‘That’s nonsense, Collymore, look at the foundations Arsenal have put in place and the way they have built on them’, and I understand that.
But, player for player, I just don’t see a massive drop-off between the two squads.
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Of course, there are some players for Arsenal who are playing better than their Tottenham counterparts and will be assets for longer. Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Martinelli for starters. But let’s take two more teams in the top five, in Manchester City and Newcastle, as an example.
While both are getting results at the pointy end of the table, if you were to build a squad from both sets of players then, 99 percent of the time, you’d take City’s, yet when you look at the Arsenal and Spurs squads it’s nowhere near as geared in the Gunners favour.
Yes, their players are in better form and feel better mentally about life in general, but that can change at any time, just as it can at Spurs.
What we’re seeing at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium right now is a football club where most of the main protagonists are mardy.
Whether that’s Conte, the owners, Harry Kane and his future, or individual players, it’s clearly not all sweetness and light there, which is what happens when you’re not getting the results you’d like to.
But I can easily see Conte being allowed to leave in the summer if and when what’s building comes to a head.
Because I can imagine owner Joe Lewis and chairman Daniel Levy thinking, ‘Let him moan and if we finish outside the top five let’s biff him off’. That’s because they will then have got rid of a central problem which is Conte keeping saying, ‘I have to spend money if this is going to work’.
If you’re looking at the realpolitik of Spurs, then I don’t think they will massively spend and buy three or four players at £40million to £50m a pop.
So then it’s about how much can they spend to keep the Italian happy and I’m not convinced they will or can come up with the kind of number that would appease him.
That’s why it wouldn’t surprise me to see Mauricio Pochettino making an emotional return to the club once this season is over.
With or without Kane, everyone would feel great to have the old boss back, and the board and supporters will know he doesn’t need a £200m budget.
Poch would be happy to give youth a chance and, quickly, they’d have back the feel-good factor they had for the first two or three years after he first arrived at the club.
