Arsenal 'surprised' by Tottenham manager Mauricio Pochettino's defensive tactics, insists Theo Walcott

1/45
Sam Long6 November 2016

Theo Walcott has admitted Arsenal were "surprised" by Tottenham's tactics in today's north London derby.

Mauricio Pochettino often deploys his side with a traditional four-man defence but switched to three central defenders at the Emirates Stadium.

Kevin Wimmer, Jan Vertonghen and Eric Dier made up the three-man defence while Danny Rose and Kyle Walker played as wing backs.

The Gunners struggled to get to grips with the formation early on but eventually went in front on the stroke of half time after Wimmer turned Mesut Ozil's teasing cross into his own net.

The visitors drew level when Harry Kane stepped up to slot home from the spot following Laurent Koscielny's foul on Mousa Dembele and Walcott says the hosts were caught out by Pochettino's tactical tweak.

"Yeah it did [surprise us] - completely to be honest," Walcott told BT Sport.

"Middlesbrough did it against us. You see a lot of teams now starting to do it.

"Chelsea are probably the best at doing it at this moment of time and it was difficult to break down.

"It was a difficult game, we had good periods in the game, but we didn't manage to finish our chances.

"These games are about working hard for the team, maybe we will look back on it as a good result."

Spurs remain unbeaten and stay fifth in the table on 21 points while Arsenal are third and three points better off than their rivals.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in