Another week, another minor gravity wave sent barrelling through the Premier League’s top four. Last week it was Leicester City who seemed to have struck a decisive blow in the long-range drive for the line. This week it is Tottenham Hotspur who catch the eye – and who seem to be opening the throttle at just the right moment.

Victory at the Etihad Stadium makes it seven straight wins in all competitions for a team who won only three of their first nine in the league but have found a seductive hard-running rhythm through the winter. And which now seems to be thrumming along with a compelling momentum and with an increasingly seductive, well-grooved set of methods.

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Much has been made of Spurs’ running power, not to mention the endless positional drills that fuel the current run of five league goals conceded this year. At Manchester City on Sunday another aspect of Tottenham’s game was clear, too, the power and craft of a fine central midfield that spoils as well as creates, and which uses the tactical foul as cleverly as any recent Premier League frontrunner.

Not that the ultimate fate of the current arm-wrestle at the top of the Premier League is any clearer, even after Sunday’s thrilling double-header. In the wake of which it will be tempting to blow once again with the wind, to suggest that north London is on the rise, gearing up for a two-team breakaway in the final 12 games of this brilliantly uncooperative season. That Manchester City – favourites 10 days ago – are now decisively listing. And that Leicester have stumbled a little for the first time.

The truth lies somewhere in between. In reality, Leicester will take great heart even in defeat by Arsenal in a game that was, Claudio Ranieri maintained, overwhelmingly affected by the referee’s decision to send off Danny Simpson for a debatable second yellow card. Similarly, Spurs benefited from a soft penalty call at the Etihad, without which City might have fancied their chances of mounting another of those bludgeoning second-half victory drives. Small details drive the narrative. Albeit we are now approaching a stage where small details – sharp edge of the endless variables leading up to them – are all that’s left.

As such, attention will naturally turn a little more to Tottenham’s current run of form: the most interesting part of which is that their best qualities seem to speak directly to the obvious challenges ahead, an unavoidable clash of high-energy football and an energy-sapping schedule.

First, though, those methods. Never mind the penalty decision at the Etihad, the move before it was just as telling as Mousa Dembélé snapped away from Fernando, Fernandinho and Yaya Touré with thrilling power before feeding the ball on to Christian Eriksen, and from there to Danny Rose. A similar move made the second goal, this time Érik Lamela driving through City’s tender rump before nudging the perfect scoring pass through to Eriksen.

Either side of which, Spurs’ central unit was the decisive force in the match, not only in terms of yardage covered, or craft, but in the increasingly effective mean machine aspects to this team.

There is an assumption that Tottenham’s running game is something Mauricio Pochettino has borrowed from his “football father” Marcelo Bielsa, his coach at Newell’s Old Boys and Espanyol and a manager who once declared “running is understanding, running is everything”. Collectivism, fraternity, the thrill of working as one assembled unit: these are all very Bielsa-esque ideals.

It is also where some might see weakness now. Bielsa may have the world’s finest coaches fawning at his knee but one thing he does not have is a collection of titles. At times his teams have tended to wilt in the face of what is in effect an impossible task, a vision of endless movement that can leave even young, fit players on their knees. Pochettino’s Spurs have played 36 matches so far. They could have 24 more to go if they progress in Europe and the FA Cup. That’s an awful lot of running.

This isn’t a Bielsa team, however. Pochettino’s approach has other classically Argentinian shades, most notably in Spurs’ ability to spoil in the clinches when required. At the Etihad, Tottenham’s central triangle of Eric Dier, Dembélé and Eriksen outworked and outpassed Fernando, Fernandinho and Touré, taking 245 touches to their 168 and making 195 passes to 129, figures skewed a bit – but not much - by Fernando being substituted.

Beyond this, when they weren’t making the game, they broke it up. City’s players were fouled once for every two and a half minutes they had the ball (Spurs were fouled in possession every three minutes, 45 seconds). Overall Spurs have committed 329 fouls this season, compared with City’s 273, with that cute, well-drilled midfield their most effective spoiling arm.

Dembélé, Dier and Lamela have all fouled far more than they have been fouled themselves, with Lamela, the Premier League’s secret clogger, leading the way with an astonishing 47 fouls committed to 20 suffered. If the fact Eriksen, by comparison, has committed only three fouls all season is startling, the implication is clear. This is a well-rehearsed tactic, an expertise in breaking play that both interrupts the opposition and offers Tottenham’s own ceaseless runners a series of tactical breaks.

The next few weeks will demonstrate this ability to manage the tempo. Leicester have 13 days off, if anything a disadvantage, an opportunity to lose that hard-honed mid-season rhythm. Spurs play three times in the same period, twice in the Europa League.

What happens when the title race resumes will be doubly fascinating. There were hints in Arsenal’s victory at the weekend of a major Premier League team taking Leicester seriously at last as tactical peers and genuine title contenders. Arsenal did tailor their game to Leicester’s strengths. Héctor Bellerín’s first-half runs were curtailed a little in favour of tracking Jamie Vardy when Laurent Koscielny was elsewhere as Arsenal passed Leicester’s flyer between their two quickest defenders. With the midfield runners taking fewer risks at first they also crossed more than at any other time this season, with Olivier Giroud excellent as the lone front man. Leicester were hardly found out and will feel unlucky to lose but the point is Arsenal did adapt to a powerful opponent, as they have at times in the last year.

As yet nobody has managed to come up with a plan for Tottenham’s own power game. In three weeks Arsenal will be the visitors at White Hart Lane, the usual springtime fourth-place decider raised to the status of late-stage title shootout. North London derbies have been relatively light on needle in recent years. How Arsène Wenger approaches these compelling, feisty, Poch-issue Spurs, a team so well-drilled that by the same token they can perhaps – who knows – be studied and learned, will be fascinating.