Can Tottenham derail Arsenal's title dream?: Big Weekend Preview 02/20/26

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0:11What a weekend the Premier League writers have concocted for us. A title race once again. This is why football is the world's favourite sport, or I guess second after curling. This weekend, Arsenal stagger into the North London derby in the thrall of existential dread. Manchester City attempt to chase them down like Xenomorph from Alien, or at least like Pep's fearsome city in our imagination from seasons yore to delve into all of this and more, prepare you for what you need to know for your weekend pleasure. This is Big Weekend Preview with me, Rog, in LA. Oh, and Roar, Crown Prince of Harrogate on the road.

0:48Where are you, baby? I am in the offices of the very kind Anfield Wrap at the pierhead in Liverpool, Rog. And you've just been to? I've been to Hill Dickinson Stadium to speak to John Howell, who's the head groundsman at Hill Dickinson. The weather in Britain has been quite British recently. And I kind of wanted to go and see what the people who are in the front line of that battle are doing to make the Premier League pitches playable. You know, I arrived in LA last night from London at about 10 o 'clock at night. It was pitch black, but it was still more sunlight on the streets of Los Angeles, even in the middle of the night than I saw the whole time I was in England.

1:21Godspeed. I want to give huge thanks to Bank of America, official Bank of US Soccer and the FIFA World Cup 2026 for supporting the Men in Blazers media network. Discover what's possible in sports and in life. What would you like the power to do? But let's dive right into it. North London derby time. Tottenham Arsenal. Sunday 11.30am Eastern Time on USA. And I'm old enough to remember when this game was let's all laugh at Tottenham. Was that just 10 days ago? And the talk was this could be the earliest St. Tottenham's Day ever. But Arsenal in the middle of winning just 10 points out of their last 21.

1:56Culminating in Wednesday night's horror show. historic implosion against bottom place walls. Really, Arsenal fans' worst fears made real. Stoppage time, blind panic, ultimate collapse. That once-vaunted defence capitulating, the loss of heads, the tempers flaring at the final whistle as the Arsenal players confronted the agony of becoming the first league leaders to let a two-goal lead slip against a relegation zone opponent. Arsenal suddenly throwing away leads, leaking low XG goals for more points. They are five points clear. That's the good news. They played one game more than City. What's going on, Roar?

2:34Because this is February. How are they collapsing now? I think it's a bit early to talk about collapse. I think that's still a little bit premature. As you say, they're still five points ahead. Admittedly, what's happened in the last week or so is that the title is now as much in City's hands as it is in Arsenal. So Arsenal still have to go to the Etihad. Whoever wins that game controls the destiny of the Premier League Championship. I think there's a couple of things playing into Arsenal's slight wobble. I'll go as far as to say it's a wobble. Is that how we measure it, Ro? Is it like different levels of storm?

3:07You're not collapsing. You're definitely not bottling. It's a wobble. Yeah, they're not bottling just yet. It's wobbling, I think. That's the sort of first grade. And then you go up to choking, bottling and outright collapse. I think part of it is fatigue. they like most teams have had a really busy January and there is a bit of an after effect to that the weather probably isn't helping all the games are slightly chaotic at the moment because the pitches aren't great in certainly in a lot of cases and then I think the other thing is you have to say there's probably a little bit of nervousness in there that it looked against Wolves in particular as though Arsenal were cruising conceded a really really good goal to one or other of the buenos no one knows which and at that point suddenly got very nervous at the prospect that they might drop points and that what's the opposite of manifesting just whatever it is they did that I don't think even the buenos know which one of them score when they score and that is the beauty of Wolverhampton Wanderers but Arsenal we're watching a team buckle under pressure rule when really the only pressure they're under seems to be internal or the dominant pressure they're under I mean it really is it's I watch Wolves and then I read a lot of Jean-Paul Sartre and didn't really see a lot of difference from his kind of every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness and dies by chance.

4:28That is Arsenal right now as they come into this one. And Mikel Arteta was forthright on Wednesday night. He admitted, this is his quote, we have to blame ourselves. Just two wins in their last seven. This is not title winning form right now. You know, I just left London. This word on the streets was the B word. I mean, people love to break glass, use the B word at every opportunity. But it's Arteta's job to stop the bleeding right now, to coax goals from a blunt Yocca res, to ensure a bewildered defence suddenly stops those low XG goals, to summon strength from players. I think he is in danger of overplaying.

5:07A lot of scrutiny in the media of the use of Zubamendi, the reliance on Durian Timber or over-reliance. And I keep thinking back to something that Arteta said in 2023, towards the end of the season, another season falling short. He used a cycling concept. I think it was La Paraja. Excuse my Spanish. But it describes how a rider in the Tour de France can just be running so strongly. Just everything feels great. They're confident. They're dominant. They're in optimum condition. And then out of nowhere, I think the phrase in cycling is Aparece La Paraja. the bird appears. And he talked about it, how you can suddenly have blurred vision.

5:46The brain swiftly cuts off oxygen. The muscles, the concentration, claps, everything deteriorates. Lacted acid just floods the blood. The result is of instant and total exhaustion. And I thought back to that when I watched the Wolves game. Could it be that we are watching La Pajara? I mean, possibly, yeah, because the thing that struck me as being Arsenal's likeliest route to not succeed in when everything seemed set for them to kind of basically waltz to the title at this turn of the year wasn't a series of spectacular defeats they don't they're not a team that's going to lose games heavily they're not a team that's going to lose a lot of games at all you know they lost to Manchester United just they got sucker punched by a team that just happened to be in like a golden moment it's the death by a thousand cuts it's dropping points to Brentford because you can't quite finish the game off.

6:36It's somehow allowing Wolves a way back into a game. I think it's possible that, you know, we have seen chokes in English football before that take the form of a team that reaches so high that it can't really win anymore. It feels kind of, it feels like a prison of its own success. I don't think that'll happen with Arsenal. I think what's more likely is that, you know, Arsenal got to the top of the Premier League by playing the fine margins better than anybody else. If you look at Arteta's approach, and this isn't a criticism, you know, he's looked to set pieces and thought that's low hanging fruit let's be slightly better at set pieces than the rest of the league it turns out that it's your massive advantage there is a possibility that what we've seen in the last few weeks as much as it's fatigued as much as it's yeah the pitches are a bit weird as much as it's a little bit of nervousness that what's also at play is that maybe those fine edges have just been shorn down a little bit by Arsenal's opponents maybe teams haven't worked them out particularly I saw them at Leeds two weeks ago and they were incredible but maybe in those really closely matched games their opponents have found a way just to balance the odds a little bit and that's what's happened at Brentford and what happened at Wolves and if Arsenal want to win the title and certainly if they want to win the title stress-free then they need to find a way to get those edges playing in their favour again.

7:50From a Tottenham perspective this team that were dreading this game this fan base who were just in angst about the possibility starting to be a sense that there's something different going on a sense of possibility even relishing the idea of Sunday and doing Arsenal in this moment of, what did you call it, wobble trademark. And most Spurs fans I've spoken to are so relieved that that purgatory of the Thomas Frank era is over, trying to glean as much positivity as they can from every word out of new manager. Igor Tudor, he'll be there to the end of the season. Everything he says seems to be, I mean, it's pretty missionary position, ferryman kind of stuff, but every word is like a golden crumb.

8:3147-year-old Croatian manager, most recently at Juventus from, was it March to October last year. He's opened the ferryman era with, I will say, a dogged determination. You know, his mantra is no excuses, that kind of spirit. He's a bit like, I guess, a Balkan. Sean Deitch, if that thing could exist, got a good track record of making teams immediately better in Italy, give or take. But his Spurs have no wins in eight. it's perhaps Ruhr their greatest strength and Mikel Arteta has zero idea how Tudor's Tottenham will line up which personnel which tactics will they play I think that's an advantage now because teams have so much information on their opponents that they are going into every game forewarned and forearmed and Arsenal have shown themselves countless times to be kind of the best at mastering that information and making the most of it whereas there is an element of mystery about what Tudor will do with Spurs he doesn't he's not a manager who necessarily has a defined style of play.

9:27He's not an avatar for a philosophy like Guardiola. I think his approach will be quite pragmatic. I don't think in terms of aesthetics, it will be vastly different to Thomas Frank, to be perfectly honest. He has this incredible advantage for Spurs fans. And this seems really harsh to say it in that he's not Thomas Frank. That's why Spurs fans have taken to him. He is someone else. He's another adult who is in charge. And they like that. And you're right, as much as Spurs' form is dreadful, as much as Arsenal are much better than them, as much as you would expect Arsenal to win this derby relatively easily, as they did in the reverse fixture.

10:01There's an X factor in the fact that Spurs are now Igor Tudor's Tottenham, in the fact that no one knows what that will look like, in the sense of freshness and possibility that exists at Spurs, in a way that it hasn't for quite some time. So in a way, if they're going to win a derby, it might as well be this one. Yeah, it's so funny watching Tudor. He's got a very, I am the one who knocks five. His press conference this morning, I don't know if you saw it, Jen was asked if he's enjoyed his first couple of days at Spurs. He said, I didn't enjoy because I'm not here to enjoy. I'm here to work. And a Spurs fan immediately tweeted over it, at Billy T is the person's name.

10:40Finally, the essence of Spurs in a manager. No one enjoys this, which I just love. The essence of true football fandom is completely within those words. Roar, Miguel Delaney wrote today, this is the first time that a North London derby has involved both the title and relegation survival since 1934-35. This is Pete Miguel Delaney. When Arsenal were champions and Spurs went down, Arsenal won those games 5-1 and 6-0. Tell us what kind of game you expect Sunday and what score you roar Edarmus. I would think this will start with a huge roar and a swarm from Tottenham because they have that. In those first 15-20 minutes, that's when you see an actual new manager bounce.

11:25The players want to impress, the crowd are up for it, the new manager has the advantage of surprise effectively over his opponents. I think as the game wears on that Arsenal will start to work out what Tudor's doing with Tottenham and also probably realise the great truth that Tottenham, whoever the manager is just aren't that good so I would imagine it will have a yeah, an uplifting start for Spurs but then Arsenal will kind of seize control but in the end I think what you might get is what counts as a moral victory for Tottenham I think it will be a one-all draw with Spurs scoring first I actually think it's going to be ugly.

12:03I think it's going to be nervy. I do think Arsenal fans should be able to look down on your just-breathed tattoos and emerge intact. I think you're going to prevail 2-1.

12:16We just dropped on our YouTube an interview with the truly righteous Eberich Eze, in which he talked about his Arsenal journey, the Spurs hat-trick from earlier in the season. We also play chess. I won't tell you who wins, but the link is in our show notes. And God bless you, the Swedish politician Jan Eriksson. We all know you as a member of the moderate party. We now know you as the dude who talks Spurs dirty in Parliament about how Sweden's economy will uptick if they stop being Spurs. An incredible moment in geopolitics. And I think Jan Eriksson will feel vindicated after a disappointing Spurs loss at the weekend.

12:53Big question for you, Roar. Who are the top four scorers in North London derby in Premier League history? do you know? I would say Thierry Henry. No okay interesting Harry Kane. Number Una. I feel like Steve Harvey. Let's see yes number one 14 goals HK. Ian Wright. God bless I was shocked not to see Big E up there too. Oh so Kane's top on 14. Someone he's very friendly with is in there. Son. Ding number two with eight goals. Wow okay so the top two are both Spurs. Is there any Arsenal representation? There is, and I was shocked. Very, very handsome. Very, very dashing. Ah, Olivier. Oh, close. God bless.

13:36Olivier's dad, Robert Perez. Seven in four place. What a dashing hero that gentleman was. I tell you, the other one completely flummoxed me. This is the one I could not get. I'll give you a clue. He did it slightly by cheating. He scored for both. Not many who've got the nerves across the North London dividing line. Adebayor? Yes. Well, Roar, third place with eight goals combined from playing for Arsenal. Scored six times, scored twice for Spurs because he proper hates the Arsenal. And he also proper hates the Spurs. Don't know how it works. I was just surprised, Roar, not to see the name Richarlison in there.

14:13You shouldn't have been surprised not to see the name Richarlison in there. I had genuinely, until that moment, not thought about Emmanuel Adebayor for such a long time. I'd sort of forgotten he existed. He's in every single list, Ademayor, guaranteed, says Rog, the poor man Steve Harvey. OK, from the hunted to the hunter, Manchester City. Welcome Newcastle United, Saturday afternoon, 3pm Eastern time on Peacock. And I wrote this in this morning's weekend preview newsletter, Raw. I wondered whether Manchester City really are the vicious predator of our imaginations. They're five points back, they have a game in hand.

14:47Should we be fearing Pep's squad as if they are kind of like an alien-like predator in tight blue polyester? Or are they the heavy-legged, low-intensity, slightly confused collective who struggled to clip League 2 Salford in the FA Cup last weekend? They almost seem to me more like a great white shark, which we fear, unless it's washed up on the beach, which is kind of where they are right now. Do you know the answer, Rup? I don't. I think it's a really interesting one because the way it's been presented is very much that Manchester City are capable of winning every game between now and the end of the season because we have seen Manchester City previously do that.

15:23As though there's some sort of institutional memory of how you go on a massive winning run. I don't think we've seen any evidence this season that suggests they are going to put an enormous points total on the board. I don't think there's any reason to believe from what we've seen over the last six months that that's about to happen. but it's really hard because even you try and be cold and rational about it, there is part of you that thinks, well, if any team can make that sort of run, it probably is City, even if they haven't shown us that they might. So it's a test really between what City were and what City are and which you believe to be more relevant, I think.

16:04And finishing off, and what City will be, and raw sticks, the landing, like Kerry Strew Newcastle incredibly never won at the Etihad struggled on the road this season I think they've earned just a third of their points 13 of their 36 away from St. James' Park they did win at Spurs last weekend I'm not sure that even counts Erlin Harlan fit according to a slightly non-committal Pep Guardiola this morning Doku is out injured honestly raw how do you expect this game to go because I kind of think Newcastle's 5 ,061 mile midweek Champions League Odyssey, glorious Odyssey to Carabag will do them in probably as much as their opponents will.

16:45Yeah, I think the travel, given how stretched Newcastle's squad is, given the injuries they have, particularly to Bruno de Mares, just the kind of exhausting effects of it, I think that will play a massive role in this game. It's difficult for Newcastle to compete on two fronts. It's even more difficult when they have to go and play a team of the quality of City that are not competing on two fronts that week because City have had the week off. So I think that will count against Newcastle. I think the fact that they are seeing so much of Manchester City at this moment in time will count against them as well.

17:17They obviously played each other in the Carabao Cup semifinals. That's two legs. They've got each other in the FA Cup in a couple of weeks' time. They are on the same side, in the same part of the bracket for the Champions League. So they could well get each other in the Champions League last 16 as well. I think there's basically a 50-50 shot of that now. Eddie Howe will be sick of the sight of Manchester City. I think this one will go according to form, and that means Man City win. Scuridamus never fails. I actually see this being quite hard to watch. City win 2-0. One more game. Honestly, can't wait to watch because it is so fascinatingly nuanced from a storyline perspective.

17:52Almost like a great Netflix foreign language. I just watched Unfamiliar on the flight from London to LA last night. It made me think of Vitor Pereira going into this game. Forest against Liverpool Sunday, 9am Eastern time on Peacock. the Tricky Trees welcome their fourth coach of the season. But who's counting? Enter. Points, Pints Pereira, open with a 3-0 Europa League playoff first leg win at Fenerbahce on Thursday. I thought it was really interesting after that, listening to their opening goal scorer from Murillo talk about how he went out of his way to praise Pereira. He said, I think Vitor is magic.

18:31Quote, I think he's going to stave us until the end of the season. By the way, I didn't think about I think he's going to stay with us till the end of the season. It depends how he pronounced it, I guess. But he can give us ideas to overcome the bad moment we were going through. When you read it, it was like he was subtweeting Sean Dyche. He said, now I think it is the light at the end of the tunnel. He also admitted, Roar, for managers, for different ideas, it's difficult. Yeah, it must be for the players to kind of reverberate around these different managers, these different instructions. I think in the situation that Forrest are in, I don't know how relevant it is that Pereira is the fourth of the season.

19:09I think they needed a new voice. It wasn't working with Deitch. They are in a very perilous place in the lead, particularly with West Ham kind of gathering strength. So they needed someone who can come in and just try something else. Does they have plenty of quality players, Nottingham Forrest? In that sense, it's the right idea. We know that Vitor Pereira can get teams out of trouble. He's done it. He did it with Wolves. Nottingham Forrest are a lot better than Wolves. and the players also will be fully aware that this is kind of an emergency, that if you're on your fourth coach of the season, then something's gone badly wrong and you kind of need to pull your finger out.

19:40I think that is probably the effect Evangelos Maranakis, leader of men, is expecting. From a Liverpool perspective, Roel, objectively, your recent form, I mean, if you take away the recency bias of the good vibes, beating Brighton comprehensively in the FA Cup, you know, it's been a very, very mixed run of form, which is, I guess, captured by the truth of how this season's been, Roar. Lots of history, as I say these words to you. The reverse fixture. Sean Deutsch's Nottingham Forest won at Anfield, 3-0. That all actually happened. Feels like a decade ago. What do you expect on Sunday? Well, Liverpool have got this unfortunate habit of playing Nottingham Forest when they are in the kind of first flush of romance with a new manager.

20:24It feels a little bit annoying that Liverpool can't get Forest when it's day 38 of Ange Postacodlu's reign, for example. I think this is always a really difficult game for Liverpool because there is a really intense, really passionate rivalry that's slightly one-sided between Forest and Liverpool. The City ground is a difficult place for Liverpool to go. They get a much more hostile reception there than you might expect from the outside for historical reasons. That was a rivalry at the very top of the first division in the 1980s. So I think it will be difficult. Liverpool have improved in the last few weeks.

20:56It's been fits and starts, as we have lived through, Rog. But their form is better. Their performances are better. They were good against Sunderland. They were excellent against Brighton. I think this will be a draw because I can't see either team keeping a clean sheet. So I'm going to go for a two-all draw, which in the circumstances is not ideal for Liverpool, but also the city ground is difficult. So I think you probably take it. I think Liverpool will cruise here. 3-1, I really do. Sobos like burnishing the current legend of Sobo. Give Sobo his duo, or however that phrase goes.

21:32By the way, interesting note, yesterday we released Soccer's Coming Home. An in-depth look at global soccer fandom in America, which analyses the results of a survey taken of thousands of you listeners, our GFOPs, and pairs it with national data from YouGov. It's full of really illuminating stats about how American fandom is similar to European fandom in general, British fandom in particular, and how it is profoundly sui generis and singular. We'll talk about it more on Monday, but I will just say, Liverpool, man, remain America's team when it comes to the Premier League in just such a dominant fashion.

22:07But let's wrap this up, Roar, with a feature we call One More Big Thing. What are you most looking forward to about this weekend outside of what we've already natted about? It is a good set of fixtures this weekend, but I think the one that catches my eye outside of those three is Villa-Leeds. Just because this is Villa's chance, after a little bit of a wobble themselves, to cement third place. You've got a scrap going on behind you with United, with Chelsea, with Liverpool to try and get into the Champions League. Villa have the opportunity in the next couple of weeks to kind of lift themselves above that fray, Rog.

22:36Beating Leeds is a good start. God bless. Saturday, 10am Eastern time, on Peacock, Aston Villa, a.k.a. the team in third place that no one is talking about anymore. And Leeds, I talked about how they are, in my newsletter, a bit like Mickey Rourke's character in Snatch, just like a bare-knuckle brawler who don't mind doling out punishment or taking punishment in equal measure. I love watching that one. My one more big thing, obviously, Everton-Manchester United, which will not blight my weekend because it doesn't kick off until Monday afternoon 3pm on USA. United, yes, that killed me. I've won against Everton, the most of any Premier League team in their history and also I've won on the road, Goodison or the big dick, which is really how it's called, Raw.

23:21More than any other team in league history, they always do us. Don't let the haircut, uber-narrative fool you. Carrick's United, magnificent. Four wins out of five games. The other one, obviously, the draw. Everton can't score. We've lost five of our last nine home Premier League games. I will say that David Moyes has us in eighth place with no fullbacks or anything resembling a reliable goalscorer. is it's honestly alchemy. It really, really is. What do you expect, Ro? Do you have a glimmer of hope for me there? I do. Having seen the pitch up close and personal, Ro, today, I think it looks in great nick for a David Moyes performance.

23:59I think this is one of those games that will ignite Hill-Dickinson Stadium, not the Hill-Dickinson, Hill-Dickinson Stadium. I think this is an Everton win. I think that draw at West Ham, for all the drama of Shesko's late goal, has just halted United's momentum a little bit. And I think Everton will, I mean, certainly get a point. Say certainly. I can see them getting a point. I can also see them nitting it 2-1. God bless you. And regular listeners will know I never predict Everton to win. It's just how I approach life. Yearning, but masking that yearning and cloaking it in. Public defeat so I cannot be hurt.

24:38It's the only way. Here's the scorelines of the weekend. If you don't want them, spoiler alert. Here's how it's all going to end up. take a look, tell us in the comments what you think is going to happen. I would love to hear what you think because that is it for today. I head home on a red eye tonight. I miss my dog so much, Roar. It's a joy to be with you. I can't wait to break it all down. Every last delicious detail of Premier League wonder. We'll be back on Monday, right? I will see you on Monday, Rog, when I will have been through the rain in Liverpool as well. So, you know, we're equally glamorous lives.

25:09You're getting a red eye back from Liverpool to Harrogate? Red eye back to, well, the amount of time the train takes, it might be a red eye to be fair. Yes, I have to go across the Pennines. It's an adventure. I want to give huge thanks to Bank of America, official Bank of US Soccer and the FIFA World Cup 2026 for supporting the Men in Blazers media network. Discover what's possible in sports and in life. What would you like the power to do? And before we sign off, I want to take a moment to reflect on a new show that drops on Men in Blazers media network today. Shoot for the Moon, a new series with the US Men's National Team sensation their moon boy Diego Luna joining us for this series where we'll walk through his incredible journey from promising young raw talent and part-time barista to breakout star for the US national team give it a listen I find him incredibly inspirational the way he's attacked life his own strengths his own weaknesses so honestly making himself vulnerable along the way he really is the best to me of the American experience and the best of this cycle in many ways from an American footballing POV I loved chatting with him.