Chelsea 0 Arsenal 0
Desire and shape.
When I write my book on coaching I’ll call it The Organisation of Desire.
Arsenal’s appetite was organised very well at Stamford Bridge.
Hold the front page: Arsenal were very good without the ball.
They outplayed champions Chelsea at Stamford Bridge.
This wasn’t an away win… but it was a revelation
Without Ozil (injured), and Sanchez (on the bench), Arsenal were able to contain Chelsea by defending from the front, by hard work from Welbeck & Iwobi, with Ramsey & Xhaka providing a level of positional discipline that was new and, frankly, astonishing.
This Arsenal team, which has been so unprofessional so often, woke up and decided to earn their ridiculously generous salaries.
Wenger’s heroes surprised Chelsea by putting pressure on them all over the pitch.
Fear can do that. If Arsenal has been smashed at Stamford Bridge, as they were at Anfield, their season would have been in tatters and the atmosphere at the West Brom game would have been so toxic the team would have needed gas masks
This time Arsenal didn’t rely on Alexis Sanchez because he was on the bench. They relied on determination and organisation and, remarkably, created a template that could win the Europa League.
Right from the first whistle this was a very competitive Arsenal performance which disrupted Chelsea’s rhythm. The Blues can be a very slick outfit but Arsenal didn’t allow them to play like that on Sunday and that was the basis of a success that l surprised me and millions of others.
I thought Arsenal would get hammered. But they never looked like losing and, in the end, it was the most well-deserved draw Arsenal have had for years.
Two early raids by Bellerin provided a header which Welbeck missed and a Lacazette shot from eight yards could have been better.
Although Fabregas released Pedro into Arsenal’s penalty area, he never had the ball under control, as Thierry noted on Sky.
Then Xhaka’s 30-yarder just beat the post of Courtois.
Ramsey went past Azpil and Luiz in the box but his shot hit the post and the rebound caught Lacazette off-balance.
When David Luiz made an overhead kick in the box, he caught Koscielny, but that’s football. I thought the yellow card was harsh.
Then Xhaka flighted in a fine free-kick and Mustafi headed home but he was well offside and the goal was disallowed.
When Sanchez, on as a sub, tried to impede David Luiz on the right side, the Brazilian ran in front of Sanchez to block him, as you do, and that took him half a yard further from the ball. Luiz then went flying into Kolasinac. A very wild challenge by one of my favourite players, who deserved his straight red card from ref Michael Oliver.
Antonio Conte will be very disappointed man today because he didn’t expect Arsenal to play like that. And he knows he almost lost the game.
However, Chelsea will be a lot better when Eden Hazard is fit and when big Bakayoko settles in and becomes a mon=ster midfielder like Matic, the man he has replaced.
Hazard, coming back from a broken ankle in June, would have started if he’d been fit enough. The Belgian has been injured since before Alvaro Morata joined Chelsea, and they have not played together except in training
His predecessor Diego Costa had very close relationships with Hazard and Fabregas. Morata, a classy centre forward, needs game time and better service than he got from Willian, who had an appalling game.
VERDICT : Granit Xhaka’s best game for Arsenal so far.
The new template, which did not include Ozil or Sanchez, showed us a very workmanlike Arsenal.
George Graham, watching at home in Spain, would have approved.