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LONDON. — Beyond the obvious importance of north London bragging rights and English Premier League points there wasn’t anything very remarkable about Arsenal’s 1-0 win at Tottenham in April 2014.

A second-minute goal from Tomas Rosicky gave Gooners the spoils but Spurs fans had learned not to expect much more from a team on their second manager of the season and featuring the likes of Sandro, Younes Kaboul and former Emirates striker-turned-villain Emmanuel Adebayor. But history provides context and almost nine years on, that spring day takes on added significance as the last time Arsenal won at Spurs in the league and, until May last year, the last time they travelled up the Tottenham High Road looking down on their great rivals in the English Premier League table.

In 2022, the final Champions League place was on the line and, for the Gunners, it did not end well. But now, after almost a decade spent coming to terms with seeing Tottenham emerge as more significant players in the league and in Europe — if not in the trophy stakes — this Sunday Arsenal finally make the short trip north with a justified sense of superiority; top of the league, confident in their identity and their upward trajectory while their hosts become increasing enmeshed in self-doubt and uncertainty over their future both on and off the pitch.

Tottenham’s current, ageing squad feature two holdovers from that game nine years ago at the old White Hart Lane, with Hugo Lloris still between the posts and Harry Kane, a callow unused substitute in 2014, now just one touch away from becoming the club’s greatest ever scorer.

Back then Spurs were a club in transition, seven months removed from the sale of Gareth Bale to Real Madrid and with the players signed with that windfall proving less than the sum of their parts. In the dug-out, Tim Sherwood had replaced Andre-Villas Boas. The appointment of Mauricio Pochettino as manager would prove transformative but was still more than two months away.

In 2014, Arsenal still ruled north London, the Arsene Wenger era had a few years left to run and his veteran team were Champions League regulars and active participants in the title race.

Victory that day left them third in the table, just four points behind leaders Chelsea, but in hindsight their previous game gave a more accurate reflection of the club’s true direction of travel — a Champions League exit to Bayern Munich the latest chapter in a European relationship punctuated by diminishing returns.

Before long, Champions League football in itself would be beyond them.

The youthful Arsenal team leading the club’s current title charge were too young to have taken on Spurs in 2014 — Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Martinelli were only 12, Thomas Partey and Granit Xhaka the only two out of their teens — but there is one man who remembers what it was like to walk off the pitch at Spurs as a derby winner. — Metro.