Arsenal consolidated their position at the top of the table and buttressed Arsène Wenger’s growing belief that they can win the title for the first time since 2004 by completing the home and away double over the old enemy.

But if the result was fairly predictable, Tottenham will spend Christmas kicking themselves. Spurs, who have not won on their north London rivals’ turf since the Premier League’s inaugural season in 1993 and have not beaten them anywhere in the past 20 derbies, squandered the chance to end that barren run at the Emirates yesterday when Robbie Keane struck the crossbar when it seemed easier to score, then had a penalty saved by Manuel Almunia. The Irishman should have been their hero. Instead the men of the hour were Nicklas Bendtner who, on as substitute, headed in the winner with his first touch and Almunia, for ending Keane’s previously pristine record from the spot.

Tottenham were left nursing the second defeat under Juande Ramos's management but can take heart from the continued improvement in performance that made it a tough afternoon’s work for the best team in the country. Ramos, speaking through an interpreter who made Manuel in Fawlty Towers sound fluent, claimed his team might have had a point or more, and had a decent case. He said: “The game was evenly balanced at 1-1 and we had the opportunity to make it 2-1 with the penalty, so obviously we’re disappointed.

“They scored their winner from a corner when we had 10 men around the ball, and that’s not acceptable from a professional team.”

After a poor first half, littered with misplaced passes and consequently lacking in goalmouth action, the match caught fire in the second period, when Emmanuel Adebayor provided the spark with a goal that made him the first into double figures in the Premier League. The man from Togo made it 10 in 16 appearances this season – and a goal in each of his past five north London derbies – by applying a smart finish, left to right, to a chance set up by Cesc Fabregas’s delicious backheel.

Spurs could count themselves unfortunate to be behind after grafting assiduously to deny their opponents the opportunity to hit them on the break, as is their custom. That said, it was Arsenal who had the only chances of note in the first 45 minutes, Mathieu Flamini hooking a shot into the side netting and Paul Robinson denying Adebayor with a save more spectacular than it needed to be.

Tottenham, playing at a high tempo, hustled and bustled to good effect to protect a makeshift defence still shorn of Ledley King, Michael Dawson, Anthony Gardner and Gareth Bale. Notable absentees from their midfield were Didier Zokora and Jermaine Jenas, enabling 19-year-old Jamie O’Hara to fuel his burgeoning reputation with the sort of high-energy stint that earned him a recall from Millwall, where he started the season on loan.

Keane ought to have equalised midway through the second half when, five yards out, he thumped Aaron Lennon’s short cross against the bar. “A sitter” was Wenger’s apt description of a glaring miss. The Spurs captain atoned within a minute with a clever backheel that allowed Dimitar Berbatov to score only his fourth league goal of the season from a problematic angle on the right.

At 1-1 it was anybody’s game, and it might well have been Tottenham’s had they profited from the 71st-minute penalty awarded for a dubious foul by Kolo Toure on Berbatov. Keane, normally deadly from 12 yards, struck the ball firmly to Almunia’s right but too close to the goalkeeper, who was able to keep it out. Keane had successfully found the back of the net on his previous 10 penalty attempts.

Reprieved, Arsenal sent on Bendtner for Emmanuel Eboue after 74 minutes and, according to the official stopwatch, had their reward 119 seconds later, when the tall Danish striker, who turns 20 in three weeks’ time, headed in a Fabregas corner from six yards.

Spurs sent on Jermain Defoe in place of Keane, and huffed and puffed in urgent pursuit of renewed equality, but their chance had gone. Given a lead to defend, William Gallas and company rarely let it slip, and they never looked like doing so here. Wenger admitted his team had not been at their cohesive best. “We had a difficult first half, when we were not sharp and Tottenham were good,” he said. “We needed to raise our game after that. We were at our best only in patches. Manuel’s great save was the turning point.”

Of the Spanish goalkeeper, who continues to be preferred to an increasingly disgruntled Jens Lehmann, the Arsenal manager said: “The more experienced he gets, the better he plays. He didn’t come here with a big name in the game and has worked hard to get that.” Assessing the season in general, Wenger added: “We were not sharp today, and it is true that you could argue about whether we deserved the points, but we have 43 in total, and I think we deserved all the rest.

The encouraging thing is that we know we can win games without being at our best. With 20 games to go, we are in a very strong position.”

Wenger’s demolition derbies

Arsène Wenger, Arsenal's manager, has lost just once in 27 games against Tottenham, in 1999.

Arsenal are unbeaten the past 45 times they have gone ahead in a Premier League match, winning 40 of them.

Emmanuel Adebayor has scored five times in five games against Arsenal’s north London rivals. Robbie Keane had scored his previous 10 penalties for Spurs.

In November, Arsenal keeper Jens Lehmann said, ‘Almunia has not yet shown that he can win matches for us’. After that the Spaniard revealed that he and the German veteran do not speak. ‘We maintain a distance. There is no dialogue,’ Almunia said. ‘It’s better for me that way. I’m a lot calmer not talking to him.’