The Gunners travelled to the Tottenham Hotspur stadium on Sunday, to play their last pre-season friendly against arch-rivals, Tottenham Hotspur. The match between the two was the final match of the Mind Series being played for mental health awareness before Arsenal kick off their campaign against newly-promoted Brentford in the Premier League. But far from being just a friendly being used up for fitness, both teams got fired up as the match got heated up to claim the bragging rights in the North London Derby despite the game being a friendly.
Both the teams made a number of challenges and fouls, Dele Alli also received a yellow in the first half after tackling Nicolas Pepe recklessly. But it wasn’t only the players that got involved, Arsenal’s gaffer, Mikel Arteta was involved in a spat with Danish international, Hojbjerg shortly after the second-half started. The midfielder slid to attempt to keep the ball in play but almost caught Mikel Arteta, Hojbjerg thought that Arteta was standing too close to the sideline and fiercely told him to get back into his technical area.
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Arteta had none of it as he responded by putting back his finger at the Spurs midfielder telling him to be quiet before pointing at Hojbjerg’s chest. The situation quickly got heated up before Granit Xhaka defended his manager and sorted the two. This incident fired up Arsenal’s players even more, as they quickly received two yellow cards shortly afterwards.
Ultimately, Spurs and Hojbjerg had the last laugh as Heung-Min Son scored the winner as he fired the ball into the right bottom corner with only 12 minutes remaining on the clock, leaving Arsenal no time to make a comeback. With this, Arsenal suffered their third loss of the pre-season, without winning a single game prior to their opening game against Brentford on 14th August.
