The North London derby - time for Arsenal to grow a pair

Football derbies rarely stand up to the hype and expectation, but then rivalries in football rarely actually deliver the goods when the teams involved actually meet. Tomorrow's encounter between Tottenham and Arsenal at White Hart Lane does, at least, come at a truly fascinating time for the Premier League, with Leicester City finding themselves unexpectedly in the "it's theirs to lose" position, with Spurs - who were hardly regarded as stalking horses back in August - holding something of the psychological upper ground over their near-neighbours Arsenal.

If, though, one expectation has come good, it's the manner with which Arsenal have frustrated yet again with their own shortcomings. In August we were - as is tradition - entertained with predictions that this would "definitely" be their season, and that Arsène Wenger's signing of Petr Čech was a masterstroke (though now he's out for the next three or four weeks with a calf injury, perhaps less so). And, yes, the fact that they're still in-principle challenging for the title pays certain lip service to that general belief.

But then, to anyone with even basic perception, the facts remain as plain as the noses on our faces, that Arsenal are doing just what they always do - dozing off in January and then scraping into the Champions League.

Perhaps that's what Wenger wants? Perhaps he holds so much power around the Emirates Stadium (and there is plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest that he does) that the Arsenal hierarchy have no greater ambition than ensuring the turnstiles keep turning and that perpetual European qualification each season can be measured in terms of revenues, profits and a business model, rather than exciting the fans.

Because it can't be fun to start a season with so much self belief that predictably and, apparently, relentlessly, it comes unstuck once the Christmas decorations have been taken down. Arsenal fans surely can't be satisfied with the relative mediocrity of European qualification each season without anything really meaningful to show for it. And, clearly, they're not.

"I have never heard the Arsenal supporters as angry as they were at the Emirates on Wednesday night when their team lost at home to Swansea," Thierry Henry has written in The Sun. "They were less patient than I have ever known, booed one of the manager’s substitutions and groaned every time a pass went astray or a tackle was lost. The stick that Arsene Wenger has been getting is not personal. People judge what they are seeing, although some maybe go too far in the way they express their unhappiness."

Wenger has hit back with a statement that reflects both his perceived lack of passion and his legendary myopia: "Thierry Henry has his opinions. He has not found the measurement of the fans' angriness, of 60,000 people, straight away - because he sits in the best seats of the stadium."

I'm not going to trot out the old 'boring Arsenal' trope because they are, or should be, better than that. But you can't help pointing the finger at Wenger's demeanour as the reason for Arsenal's 'just so' record in recent seasons.

I'm sure any of the Premier League's perennial strugglers would love to have Arsenal's problems, but even I find myself exasperated at Wenger's apparent inability to deliver on the potential. He talks a lot about his team's mental strength, but when it comes to actually applying it, they fail. Look back over the 2007-8, 2010-11 and 2013-14 seasons, when Arsenal had the league's whip hand in the first few weeks of the new year. This season, as in those, history has repeated itself.

Even their remarkable 2-1, dying-seconds victory over Leicester on Valentine's Day should have been the spur to climb to the very top and make camp. And, yet, they haven't won since and are now six points adrift of Claudio Ranieri's league leaders, and three points behind the North London rivals they meet tomorrow.

Football purists are drawn to Wenger because of his footballing intellect and the fact that he has clearly produced teams of elegance and impact. But that reputation is fading before our eyes and if we were to be honest, league positions and European competition oddly mask this fact. The gap between greatness and failure isn't much. Look how Chelsea went from all-conquering champions to relegation-threatened disappointments in the space of just three playing months, only to be picked up again as the Premier League's form side under Guus Hiddink.

This actually prompts comparison between Wenger and his bête noire, José Mourinho: because Chelsea's stunning demise from August to December was clearly the result of the wrong pyschology, attributable to Mourinho's own negativity. Wenger might have the same problem, albeit with a more attritional effect. Yesterday, Arsenal's Alexis Sánchez told US satellite broadcaster DirecTV: "With the players we have, I believe we can win the Premier League. However, sometimes we lack the hunger, the mentality that we are winning 1-0 when we go out on to the pitch. Sometimes we lack this hunger to believe that we can be champion." Isn't this exactly the malaise that befell Costa, Hazard, Fábregas and Co.?

Contrast that with Tottenham: 66/1 outsiders to win the Premier League title when the season began (Leicester, by the way, were 5000/1...) they were expected by several pundits to end the season no higher than 6th. That could still happen, of course, but Mauricio Pochettino has confounded the experts with his young side, one that still shows deficiencies, especially up front, but which has applied greater resillience and without all that much hyperbole, either. Moreover, he has brilliantly exploited the travails of Manchesters United and City, Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal - all of whom were predicted, in August, to complete the top five.

Compared with Wenger, there is an air of absolute reality about Pochettino. He is neither daunted by the challenge of tomorrow's derby, nor stoked up on hubris to take it for granted. "It’s not a decisive game," he says, "but it is important for us and for them." He knows that the points distribution between the top five can still change as the run-in looms, but his reaction to Wednesday's defeat to West Ham - a game that could have taken them top - contrasts with the blustering from Wenger.

As a Chelsea fan, I'm clearly conflicted as to whom, out of Spurs and Arsenal, I'd like to see win more. Which is why, like almost every football fan in England and, I believe elsewhere, I hope Leicester City go on and pull off the unprecedented. Nobody deserves the league title more out of any of the teams in sight of the prize, even if in the north-eastern part of London there remains a residual sense of entitlement.

As those of us in south-west London have had to concede, bloodlessly it has to be said, success is not only earned, but the effort requires the right mindset. If Arsenal still want to go for it - and there's nothing saying they can't - their manager needs to end the torturous pondering and instill in his team a sense of achievable achievement. And, to put it crudely, a pair of bollocks.