Arsenal are desperate to win the north London derby - but Tottenham have set the bar even higher

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In his press conference yesterday, Arsene Wenger bristled at the suggestion that Arsenal are underdogs heading into the north London derby on Saturday.

Having first unceremoniously cut off one journalist who had started his question by politely noting that Arsenal had been the dominant team in the area for “a long time” – “for 20 years,” Wenger muttered – he then insisted that his side would be playing to win this weekend.

“I think Tottenham are a good side but we have the quality to win this game and that’s what we want to show,” he said, perhaps more out of hope than expectation.

“In the table we need to make some ground up on the top teams. But at home we have been strong.”

Wenger is right, Arsenal do have the quality to win this game. But then again, Tottenham are more than just a good side. They are one of the best in the country and – if their Champions League exploits this season are anything to go by – one of the best in Europe, too.

In fact, Tottenham shouldn’t just be aiming to win this match, they should be aiming to dominate it. Three points are three points, but Spurs have the quality to put a serious beating on this erratic Arsenal side, whose defensive inadequacies were ruthlessly exposed in their last Premier League match against Manchester City.

Like Wenger, Maurico Pochettino is always careful with his words and so it is little surprise that he has repeatedly declined to indulge the press pack by discussing ‘statement’ wins. After the recent 3-1 victory over Real Madrid, surely the most impressive performance during his four years at the club, that is virtually all he was asked and yet Pochettino saw the win as a culmination of many months of hard work.

A gradual improvement rather than some sort of statement win out of the blue.

“After wins against Real Madrid, Liverpool or Manchester United it’s always statement, statement, statement,” he said with a resigned smile when pressed on the topic. “It’s about our performance every week and trying to keep things moving on.”

But Pochettino is no stranger to the psychology of football, as revealed in a recent book written by the journalist Guillem Balagué, which features a lengthy section on the Spurs manager pontificating on the mysterious ‘energy’ that surrounds us all.

“Since those early days I’ve had the ability to notice something powerful that you can’t see, but does exist,” he writes. “A vital force, an energy field that makes the world go round, an aura that accompanies people, which gives lots of information about them. It’s in my skin, I feel it.”

Pochettino then knows precisely how psychologically valuable a big win over their bitter local rivals will be ahead of the hectic winter period, during which clubs will cram in 11 rounds of fixtures in just 47 days. And winning comfortably in Arsenal’s own back yard will reassure his players that they have the quality to hunt down Manchester City, after successive failures attempting to do the same to Leicester and Chelsea.

If one criticism can be made of Pochettino’s time at Tottenham it is his record away from home against the Premier League’s top tier, with the Argentine winning only one of his previous 16 away fixtures against the league’s best. This match now provides him with the perfect opportunity to change that, with Arsenal comfortably the weakest current team in Champions League contention.

And so while Wenger is insisting in his press conferences that Arsenal can beat Tottenham, Pochettino should be claiming in his that Tottenham can beat Arsenal and more. Three points of any description would be a triumph for Wenger’s side. For Tottenham, the expectations have been set higher.