Will the last Arsenal player standing please remember to plump the pillows in the physio’s suite? If this match might have been cast before kick-off as a battle of the lightweight No10s, with Mesut Özil and Christian Eriksen both tasked with bringing their delicate artistry to one of the more frenetic Premier League occasions, it ended up providing more evidence of how the ability of fine creative players to affect a game is so often dependent on the energy, power and general state of physical fitness of those around them, and also how Arsenal will continue to suffer in this regard from their own failings of recruitment.

Eriksen it was who made the first goal, setting up Nacer Chadli’s opener after 56 minutes. Either side of which Arsenal fought gamely and with great spirit, ultimately earning their equaliser. But Arsène Wenger will be concerned – and Mauricio Pochettino heartened – by more prosaic matters. If Spurs looked compact and well organised even in a match from which they will have been pleased to gain a point, for Arsenal there was more evidence of the general lack of gristle and mobility in central areas that leaves their creative, ball-playing midfielder extended to his physical limits, required both to fight and to embroider.

Much will be made after this match of Arsenal’s mounting injury problems in midfield, with the familiar questions about treatment and training. But here the problem seemed simpler. This derby was more a low-level growl than a full-throttle collision, and yet in the course of 90 minutes, Wenger’s assemblage of fine-point ball-players were fully extended, forced to run just to stand still in the physical clinches. In the opening hour they lost two key midfielders to injuries – Mikel Arteta with a calf strain and Aaron Ramsey with a hamstring injury – while Jack Wilshere soldiered on into the second half after yet another horrible twist in a collision inside the penalty area.

Much will continue to be made of Özil’s tendency to flicker at the edges, of Ramsey’s recent dip in form and of the dropping of Alexis Sánchez to the bench here. But there is a fair case there can be no accurate assessment of their form when every player in this Arsenal team is being asked to compensate for the failings in other areas, the kind of imbalance that would throw most players. It has been said at least once that it is impossible for Philip Lahm to have a bad game; but then, he’s never played central midfield alongside a half-speed Arteta.

With both Arteta and Flamini looking high-mileage models this season, Arsenal are, in a very literal sense, a lightweight team. If they dominated possession here, it was never an easy dominance, marked always by the need to compensate with the ball for deficiencies in muscle and mobility. Little wonder – and here Wilshere, constantly stretched, springs to mind – some things get broken along the way.

For their part, Spurs looked dangerous on the break, with Ryan Mason an impressively upright presence in possession. But then these things are all relative. A team of septuagenarian nuns on their way to a 78-0 away defeat would probably still look dangerous on the break against this Arsenal team, for whom Arteta left the field after half an hour with a calf problem, presumably caused by repeatedly turning full circle to chase into the wide-open spaces either side of him.

Back to those dainty No10s, then. Özil was given the freedom to play where the mood took him and he had a decent opening half‑hour, before fading – at the risk of tautology, stating the bleeding obvious and all the rest of it – in the white‑knuckle struggle of that midfield battle. In Eriksen, Spurs have their own high, soft-touch star, a player who has voiced in public his distaste for “chasing around”, but who also offers a beautifully subtle range of passing. Here, he started on the left in Spurs’ 4-4-2, with freedom to roam inside, and it was from there that the Spurs goal came. Eriksen closed down and then robbed Flamini 35 yards from goal, a moment of physical collapsibility Arsenal’s midfield enforcer will not want to see replayed too often. From there, Eriksen’s pass to Chadli was perfectly weighted and the Belgian finished well with his right foot.

Arsenal equalised deservedly, Oxlade-Chamberlain’s close-range finish a product of two fluffed kicks: the first, Lamella’s bodged clearance; the second, Danny Welbeck’s air shot in front of goal that became, in the event, an excellent dummy-assist. Spurs will be pleased with a point, and Pochettino with his team’s sense of purpose on the break. For Arsenal, the task remains the same, a matter of artistry and ease on the ball making up for deficiencies elsewhere, and an underpowered central midfield is now also stretched thin, with Arteta, Wilshere and Ramsey all doubts for a testing run of fixtures.