Match report – Player ratings – Arteta reaction – Video
Sometimes you hear football referred to as the beautiful game. Yesterday was quite the opposite. I thought this was a pretty ugly game all told, one we might have some regrets over given we played so long against 10 men, but when the final whistle blew at 1-1, I was just glad it was over more than anything else.
It was that way because Chelsea made it that way, and because Arsenal were a long way from their best. A key ingredient was, for me, the absence of both William Saliba and Gabriel at the heart of the defence. It’s no slight on Cristhian Mosquera and Piero Hincapie who acquitted themselves fairly well, and had to deal with being on yellow cards for some duration, but I think missing two players of that presence allowed Chelsea’s plan to rattle us physically work better than it would have otherwise.
Three minutes in Marc Cucurella escaped a booking for a foul that should have been yellow based on everything else we saw, but he escaped because it was early. Then, after Martin Zubimendi had been booked for a foul, the referee allowed Moises Caicedo to just push Mikel Merino over in front of him without sanction. It set the tone for what was to follow, not just from the Chelsea midfielder but from the game as a whole.
When it was 11 v 11, I think they were the better side from an attacking perspective. They didn’t produce much in the way of end product, but they made the more of their possession. We needed Declan Rice to produce an excellent challenge in our box to deny Pedro Neto, Estavao missed a glorious chance to score, and a mistake from Hincapie presented them a chance which they couldn’t make the most of and we got it clear.
Caicedo, meanwhile, was charging around with his temperature high. In the 25th minute he shoved Eberechi Eze over at full speed, using two hands, and again got away without a booking. Ten minutes later and he was off. His challenge on Mikel Merino was late, high, cowardly, and dangerous, and he knew it – hence his pathetic attempts to make it look like he’d been hurt too. His writhing around on the ground was as embarrassing as it gets. As per protocol, as VAR was checking, Anthony Taylor issued a yellow which was then overturned and a red issued after the on-field review.
The temerity Caicedo had to stand there and say ‘Who, me?!’ was unbelievable. Merino is lucky he wasn’t seriously hurt there, and paid tribute to his ‘mobile ankles‘ afterwards, but it’s a red all day long. The Chelsea man has previous too (here, and here) so this isn’t an isolated incident. He does it at full speed, it’s deliberate, and it’s about time he was reined in by officials. Yesterday, his luck ran out.
By half-time though, Arsenal had four players on yellows, three of them in the back four, hence the decision to replace Riccardo Calafiori with Myles Lewis-Skelly at the break. I’m sure the conversations in the dressing room with him were about keeping a clean slate, but he also went into the book early in the second period with a careless foul in the opposition half.
By that time we were 1-0 down after more play-acting from Joao Pedro saw Chelsea awarded a free kick that, for me at least, was anything but. He came off second best in an aerial challenge with Hincapie who had been booked for catching Trevor Chalobah with his arm in an aerial challenge late in the first 45 minutes. This was about Chelsea, as Mikel Arteta said afterwards, targetting players who were on yellow, but from there they got a corner and it was Chalobah who flicked in a header to make it 1-0.
Arteta made changes, putting on Martin Odegaard and Noni Madueke for Zubimendi and Gabriel Martinelli, and within a couple of minutes we were level. Saka roasted Cucurella, put in an excellent cross and Merino was there to head home to make it 1-1. It remained a pretty horrible game though. Chelsea sat deep, as you would with 10 men, and we just could not find any kind of rhythm in our game.
In part that was down to how tetchy and scrappy it all was, but I also think we just had one of those days where we were below par collectively and individually. Viktor Gyokeres came on and touched the ball twice in 20 minutes, and while it’s good to have him, Odegaard, Madueke etc back and available, we’re also looking at players who are quite rusty to varying degrees because they’ve spent so much of the season sidelined.
There was a good save from Sanchez to deny Merino a second, and a yellow for Gyokeres as he slid in for the rebound and caught the keeper in the process. But really, that was about it. We looked a bit jaded after what has been a long, difficult week, and in terms of the overall performance, it’s probably one of the worst we’ve put in so far this season. The big regret, of course, is that we couldn’t make the most of playing against 10 men for so long, and that will obviously be a big part of how this game is discussed.
I absolutely get that, and there’s no team I’d love to see us turnover more than Chelsea to be quite honest, but I think the context of the last couple of games has to play a part. I go back to the absences at centre-half and I’m convinced we win this if the main two start, and I’d even go so far as to say if Saliba had played we’d have a different kind of energy when they had Caicedo sent off. We also lost Leandro Trossard who has come up clutch in big games recently, with neither Martinelli or latterly Madueke giving us anything close to his output from the left-hand side.
Afterwards, Mikel Arteta said:
It’s been a big week, starting with the derby, with how emotional and the intention we had to win it, then to play Bayern Munich three days later. We lost players in those games and today, for example, we had to play a partnership we hadn’t played before in a really difficult match. The captain is still not here [100%], the No. 9 is still not here, Kai is still not here, and we lost Leo in midweek as well. But the team had to react to that, and overall it’s been a really positive week, because the difficulty has been immense, but I have this flavour that today we should’ve won the game, and we haven’t. That’s a learning point for me.
This is one of those where, if went back to last Sunday, and someone offered you two wins and a draw from the three games you’d likely have taken that, regardless of how those results were distributed. So, I don’t feel too downcast about yesterday really, despite the fact we didn’t take advantage of the red. This is a team that has given us two brilliant performances in the last week, winning the derby then beating Bayern, and we’re not immune from an off-day. Maybe the fact that on an such a day, with a lot to deal with before and during the game, we come away from a difficult away fixture in the Premier League with a point could be construed as a positive outcome.
I honestly don’t think this was a bad point at all. We didn’t play well, we could easily have been drawn into the kind of aggression Chelsea provoked, retaliated and ended up down a man ourselves, so I think we managed that aspect of things well, even if it came at the expense of the performance for some players. Which brings me to my final word and it’s for Declan Rice who, while not as eye-catching as in midweek, was still vital yesterday. He played a lot of this game between an inexperienced central defensive duo, taking a lot of the stress off them – especially when they were both in the book. I do think it hindered him going forward a bit, but as I mentioned, that’s the slight sacrifice to the greater good for managing a difficult scenario for Mosquera and Hincapie. In the end, this point might well turn out to be worth a lot.
Right, I’ll leave it there this morning. We’ll have an Arsecast Extra for you later on, we’re recording around 11am. We’ve already put out the call for questions on BlueSky @gunnerblog.bsky.social and @arseblog.com with the hashtag #arsecastextra – or if you’re an Arseblog Member on Patreon, leave your question in the #arsecast-extra-questions channel on our Discord server. The pod should be out around noon.
For now, have a good one.
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