Maybe the world isn’t ending after all. Or at least, not yet anyway. For Arsenal, and indeed the Premier League, the title race is still alive, still twitching, like a dog kicking out in its sleep wondering whether to wake up.

The past week has felt like a point of crisis for Mikel Arteta’s team, with cup defeats, points dropped, the attack and midfield gripped with a kind of ennui football. Certainly the energy around this team can often seem manic, overly low then overly high.

But Arsenal played with a concentrated spirit at the Emirates Stadium and were good value for a 2-1 defeat of Tottenham that leaves them just four points behind Liverpool, and with their season narrowing towards an extended league pursuit through the spring.

If so it will be against the head. Liverpool have enough fresh air to swallow a tricky run. There is also zero suggestion right now that Arsenal are coiled to hoover up every available point from here like relentless nihilistic sideways passing avengers. But just off the shoulder of the leaders, still to find your best form. This isn’t a bad place to be.

It certainly felt like that at the end, as Freed From Desire pounded around the stands, as Freed From Desire must on all such occasions, as men in quilted coats hugged and bobbed in the aisles. But this was also a victory that contained information. The side is good. The side is together. The side is also still struggling to find the most liberated version of itself. Playing in this fashion Arsenal just won’t score enough regulation goals – generic, unbranded goals, open‑play goals – to win the routine games that make you champions.

This comes from the same methods that have brought progress under Arteta. And that progress is measurable, patently present. You can point a stick at it. They win more games. The football is better. They’re a lock in the Champions League spots again. Intensity and control are good. Too much intensity and control, perhaps not so much.

Both sides of this dynamic were on show in this game. Arsenal’s winner close to half-time was a rare thing, a trad Arsenal goal. All the components were there. Thomas Partey’s hard-pressing steal of the ball, Martin Ødegaard with the shuttled pass, the neat spanked finish from Leandro Trossard. Left side, open play, actual designated attacking player. It felt like a break from the everyday, a date-night kind of goal. You know, we should do this all the time.

Either side there was again evidence of a slightly manacled dependence on set pieces. In a sense Arsenal have built themselves a scaffold with their success down this route, something that has maybe tipped into a dependency. Step away from the stagey set pieces. Mix it up. Take a short one. Smell the roses. My name’s Declan. And I’m 10 minutes clean.

Those patterns were there right from the start. The air was misty under the lights, the kind of soft, cosy January haze that seems to put a roof on the world. It felt like most of the opening half-hour was spent watching the yellowy Premier League ball traversing that sky, hanging there all alone against the cold white lights, punted and butted back up into the firmament, football as a game of the skies.

Arsenal even went behind from a Spurs set piece, well taken by Son Heung-min , but aided by some dozy marking and a weak pirouette from William Saliba as Son executed his volley. And so Arsenal went back to hammering at that nail. At times, as Ødegaard settled over another dead ball there was a weariness to the whole show, like watching a career magician saw someone in half for the four thousandth time.

Rice’s delivery was off most of the game. Bukayo Saka has many qualities. Putting the ball in the same spot every time is one of them. Taking him out of this version of Arsenal is like the England rugby team losing Jonny Wilkinson.

But it does also work. The seventh corner of the half brought the equaliser, one of those moments when Rice’s slightly risky punted delivery really works. Gabriel’s movement forced Radu Dragusin to head on to Dominic Solanke and from there into the Spurs net. Was this another masterstroke? Arsenal: so good at set pieces they’ll make you score a self-assisted own goal.

From there things began to settle. There were some really good performances. Trossard was good. Myles Lewis-Skelly was excellent, a really good, fearless, modern kind of full-back. Spurs played well, and showed heart chasing the game. Arsenal showed the same to hold on.

And so we go on. By an accident of the calendar Arsenal will go to Anfield on 10 May, with a need simply to be in touching distance at that point. There is even some low‑key talk the reappearance of David Moyes in time for the rescheduled Merseyside derby is some kind of title‑race intervention, an albatross on the skyline, the resurrection man, anointer of kings, which only really works if you haven’t seen Everton much. But still. For all the intensity, the free‑floating angst, this thing is still running.