The final 28 minutes of Arsenal’s game against Spurs was exactly what we were expecting before the match, it’s just a pity Unai Emery ruined it for the first 62 with his team selection.

There was much hand-wringing before the game that, despite starting Auba, Laca, and Pepe together for the first time, Emery had opted to stick three defensively-minded, creatively-stunted midfielders behind them. Turns out, it wasn’t their lack of creativity that hurt us but the space they left in the middle of the park.

Arsenal kept Spurs waiting in the tunnel before kick-off. I don’t know if it was deliberate, but I hoped it was. I imagined more swagger to the Arsenal players as they sauntered up alongside the Tottenham wannabes, projecting onto them the increased confidence we’d all been feeling ahead of this match.

Still, at the back of my head there was that little voice. It was the part of me that’s been kicked stupid by Arsenal over the last load of years, the naive idiot in my heart that wants nothing more than a team he can believe in.

We started brightly and dominated, safe in the knowledge that Spurs haven’t won in the league against Arsenal at the Emirates in nine years and haven’t won back-to-back games against us since 1925/26.

I should have known as I banged on all week about how Christian Eriksen had never scored against Arsenal that I was practically begging the footballing gods to slap me in the face and they duly obliged, Arsenal caught on the counter in a manner late-era Wenger would have been proud of.

While many in the defence failed, you can’t help but wonder why Sokratis tried to head a ball near the halfway line he could clearly see Granit Xhaka going for. Both missed it and the whole pitch behind just opened for Spurs to stroll into.

That was the point Emery should have admitted his mistake and brought on Dani Ceballos or Mesut Ozil for one of his midfielders, but he didn’t.

There was, of course, still time before halftime for Xhaka to make David Luiz feel better by giving away an equally ridiculous and unnecessary penalty, just to make sure we knew how bad Emery’s set-up had been in case there had been any doubt.

We pulled one back through a Lacazette thunderbolt, but all the talk at the break was about the stupidity of both Xhaka, for his ‘tackle,’ and Emery for his midfield selection.

No changes came at the break to the frustration of everybody, but Arsenal did look better and started to dominate once again. They pressed more and forced Spurs back, but it was just three minutes after Lucas Torreira was replaced by Dani Ceballos that Matteo Guendouzi came alive. His floated ball to Auba was expertly studded home. 2-2 and there only looked like one winner as Ceballos and the youngster grabbed hold of the game.

It’s amazing how quickly Spurs players lose the ability to stand upright when they aren’t winning and as they started throwing themselves around the pitch trying to win a penalty, it looked like the game could swing either way.

In the end, Arsenal left themselves too much to do and not enough time with the right personal to do it. There are serious questions to answered over the international break about how different this game could have been had Dani Ceballos started from the first whistle.

A draw isn’t the worst result in the world, especially from a losing position of two-nil down, but the fact is we should never have got into that position against this Spurs side and we have only ourselves to blame.

Again.