A guest post from @anicoll5
Good morning from a sunny and mild Norfolk morning. Very pleasant.
A fixture we had all marked in our diary has finally arrived, and for that I am thankful.
Reading the media this week, and dipping into the frantic noise that makes up the sporting social media, I was struck by the Chelsea v Arsenal game broken down by contributors into a series of contests, the gigantic and the personal. The final Clash Of Footballing Civilisations, Good v Evil, The Oligarch v the Self Sustainers (Roman v Stan), Loyalty v Lucre, the beautiful football of Wenger pitted against the pragmatic brutalism of Mourinho etc. And then of course there is eternally circular the Fabregas/Smabregas theme.
Underneath the avalanche I sense a whisp of fear among some Arsenal fans, still reeling from the lashing of the 22nd March. I spy with my little eye a Chelsea quietly confident that they will sit nine points above us by 4 p.m. today
Resist this nonsense if any exist among you Positivistas, put aside anxiety.
Two very talented football sides will take the field this afternoon, both packed with players from all over the planet who have developed and perfected their skills for just this day. And each player knows he will have seconds, literally just seconds over the 90 minutes to display their talents. Chelsea are the bigger, the muscular, of the sides, but with the ugly rapier of Costa as their weapon of choice (hamstrings permitting). We have the speed and the quality of sharp passing, sufficient to open the lock on the gates of St Peter. Eight goals on our previous three games suggests that we know where the goal is. Two strong defences, two good keepers, little to choose between them.
Where will the contest be decided then ?
It will be decided in the collective mind, among the players who temper the quality of their play with discipline, who take the fleeting opportunities that will come their way, and chances will come as they always do for both sides. And should misfortune come their way, a stray pass intercepted, an ungiven foul, even worse a goal conceded, it is the side that ignores that setback, does not panic or lie on the ground waving their arms and yelling at Fate, or Martin Atkinson, that will prevail this afternoon.
“There are no tricks in plain and simple faith.”
So let that brotherhood of thought and mind be Arsenal this afternoon.
Enjoy the game !
Positively Arsenal 
Spurs, Gala and now Chelsea; we are now seeing the emergence of a settled structure for this team will be. The 4-1-4-1 system shows tremendous potential especially in terms of controlling the midfield. I am still not sure what is Wenger’s 1st XI. I suspect Theo when he is 100% will give us an extra dimension as a wide forward. We have a lot of room to improve especially in the final 3rd.
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Looks like the penalty imbargo is still in place…
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There is an undercurrent of menace at Stamford Bridge unlike any other ground I have been to. It even extends to interaction between Chelsea fans. Near the end of a trip to the gents, I was given a hard time about taking too long to wash my hands (insert your own punchline). My halftime pint was supped near to what I can only can describe as a creature who pawed at a pie like a dog digging for a bone.
The Chelsea fans’ general support for their team was good, although, as mentioned above, this wavered noticeably in the second half. They never missed a chance to put pressure on the referee, and Martin Atkinson certainly rewarded their efforts. The home fans did come up with the funniest (albeit most cruel) chant of the day: ‘Your eyes are offside, your eyes are offside, Mesut Ozil, your eyes are offside.’ My admiration of their creativity dimmed when I learned that this was a bastardisation of a similar chant for Luis Suarez last season (substitute ‘teeth’ for ‘eyes’).
On the way out of the ground, a Chelsea fan started verbally abusing someone selling match-day scarves for apparently committing the grievous sin of selling something that had Ars*nal (sic) written on it. Although words were exchanged, fisticuffs were narrowly avoided. To those who say time machines are the stuff of fiction, I say go to Stamford Bridge, and you will believe you are back in the late 1980s.
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Good points, Gains and Anicoll. I see what you mean and I was by no means disheartened by what I saw. Quite the contrary–I agree we played very well, concentrated.
Notoverthehill, I have been enjoying the games immensely! Even our loss in the League Cup wasn’t too bad. The experience at the ground was great and it was a very well played and interesting match. Galatasaray was a joy and a great occasion. Today, I took little LSG to the Emirates for a special junior gunner screening with pre-match activities/arts and crafts/games and goody bag treats while Ray Parlour told stories and answered questions and signed shirts and hats. Everything was great and it was wonderful to watch surrounded by enthusiastic young kids who absolutely love the Arsenal. Frankly. it is much more fun enjoying Arsenal matches in a live community. Even if you aren’t at the match but in a pub and enjoy the experience, walk on the street and see Arsenal shirts everywhere in North London. This is such a great club and a huge support. It is so much better than watching at home on the TV in a town where there isn’t a public Arsenal presence. In Canada and the US, I can watch virtually every match, which is very difficult to do here, but I have enjoyed watching and attending matches more in this context. I do however wish this season were going better–but the fixtures open up and hopefully we’ll take advantage and create a strong habit of winning and overcome all these injuries. We have some fantastic players. All the new additions have been superb–Debuchy before his injury, Chambers as an intense but really promising defender, and of course the ultra action Alexis Sanchez–he’s been amazing to watch.
I look forward to getting to a few more games. But even when I can’t, I am thoroughly enjoying North London as an Arsenal supporter.
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Out for a Corner, I really despise Chelsea, its manager, players, fans, owners, location–everything. Sounds like an intense away experience.
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LSG, it is similar to what I imagine it would be like to go to a mafia wedding.
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in a big game you dont give away a penalty like that. kos needs to trust szcz better rather that doing everything to stop hazard. but the main mistake was to allow hazard to skip through three players before entering the box. that is unaceptable. their second was worse. costa is not ronaldo or walcott. with just him against two of our players, it shouldnt be difficult to stop him. but kos’s eyes was on the ball rather than costa. if it was only per at the back, i’m sure szcz would have come out earlier, with kos there, you’ll trust him to beat costa to the ball.
we played well but the first goal killed us.
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cahill and terry made life difficult for welbs. they didnt stop the ball from getting to him but they stop him from getting to the ball. our creative players were not quick enough to release him early. they made it a little bit easy for those two to get back to shape before giving the ball to welbs. that is the area we need to improve. we used to be a counter attacking team. even walcott with all his pace may struggle if we dont release the ball on time.
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i can see that undue credit is being given to hazard. he played from the left wing yesterday and i cant remember a time he got the better of chambers despite him being without cover for most of the game. the goal he created was gifted him by our players. and that move he made was replicated severally by impressive jack only that chelsea players stopped him before getting to their box or fail to give away any foul in their box. if anything yesterday, it was the second goal that was created out of nothing by cesc. but i see its more convinient to praise costa and hazard. welbeck will relish such a chance and an assist like that. i’m not saying it has to be cesc to do it for us but our creative players must take advantage of the pace we now have in our team. there is no more excuse of giroud have no pace anymore.
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Stamford Bridge was never a great ground to go to OfaC and while I have not been in 20 years I doubt it has changed much in atmosphere. When I started going it used to still have the dog track round the pitch and the fans were well back from the players, with bits of stand and part covered terracing here and there, so it was always a bit of an odd layout.
I found the best approach to dealing with Chelsea fans is to persuade them that you might just be an even bigger, more violent nutcase than them, and they would be well advised not to test you.
I think the low point came in about 1980 when a pal was involved in an argument on the Northstand after which, courtesy of the over-enthusiastic officers of the Metropolitan Police, he was dragged down the terracing with his head banged on every fence railing as he went. God he looked battered, so battered in fact they had to let him go.
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What do you mean the goal was “gifted him by our players” Layks ?
Hazard saw a gap, beat two players with his foot work and close control, and was brought down by Kos having pushed the ball past the defender.
Cast iron penalty after which he stroked the ball past Szcz.
Did someone slip over on their arse and present him with the ball ? Was there some dead easy clearance or tackle that an Arsenal player missed ? I don’t understand who provided the “gift” ?
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If by tactics, does someone means pulling down our players to the ground very time we tried to make a break, then bravo to tactics.
I see the BBC were chuckling about this last night and again this morning, as if someone’s found a new way to break Arsenal. The ref was very consistent in not giving out cards to Chelsea for it, and how on earth did Oscar survive for 85 minutes without getting a yellow? As soon as Chelsea got their goal the time wasting and bus parking began.
Some of the Arsenal players played exceptionally well.
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O4aC
I saw some idiots on the telly at the match wearing half and half scarfs.
Who does such things?
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Layksite, Did Norwich “gift” Jack his goal last season?
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FFS people, you dont need me to tell you what happened yesterday in order to talk about it.
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Its Monday George, we have the footballing delights of England v San Marino and the Faroe Islands v the Irish to see us through the next ten days – the sprit is willing but the flesh is weak
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anicoll, we made it easy for him to skip pass three of oir players. it was like monouvering your way around three stationary poles. if you cant get the ball you can get the player. thats exactly what chelsea did to wilshere all through the game. you can get through a player or two but three is a gift at the highest level.
jack’s goal at nowrich was a combination of passes george. not just wilshere cutting through their players without any attempt to stop him. and even if that should happen to norwich, that propably explains where they are at the moment.
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btw jack was my motm yesterday. chelsea players inclusive. but he should have done better with the pass from gibbs. closely followed by chambers. i doubt debuchy would have been able to subdue hazard all game with little cover from our wingers. gibbs was superb as always as well. one good from the game is that he was not injured. i dont remember flamini getting a card yesterday. that is strange.
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Ah – so yout talking about an incident where our players were two or three stationary poles, until the last stationary pole stuck his leg out
Okey dokey
Must have been different incident then to the one I saw with Hazard using his speed of foot, agility and skill to control the football to beat two converging Arsenal defenders before slipping the ball past Kosc. Very slick I thought I could see the moment he picked it up he had mischief in mind.
I did not see a single stationary pole
Even Szcz was sent the wrong way, but that would have a ‘diving Pole’ not a stationary one
(its the way I tell them)
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anicoll5 at 10:14 am – I have got to agree with your description of the 1st goal. Give Hazard credit. Once he accelerated past Santi he had the defense at his mercy. The 2nd goal was more preventable but the past was sublime and Costa timed his run perfectly running off the back of Kos. They executed very well unlike us which is where I concur with layksite.
Most significant to me is how the media and the various anti-Arsene, anti-Arsenal whingers, studiously avoid the woeful refereeing by Atkinson. Lenient refereeing will always favor Chelsea who are willing to go physical because they can’t match us footballistically. Mourinho all but admitted it by the backhanded compliment post game that they beat a “good” football team.
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Ah the second goal Shotta – now that was sloppy – both centre backs pushing up and undone by a straight ball over the top – should not happen but with the game in its final few minutes you could see where Kosc and Per’s minds were – even then though a good finish
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It’s Gibraltar actually.
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What could Kos have done differently to prevent the first goal from being conceded?
Perhaps he could have stayed upright and tried to force Oscar out a bit wider – I don’t know, the run into the box was so fast. I’ve seen Kos get red carded for less contact than that before.
The second goal was when we were chasing the game, Should both the CB’s have been side by side? again I don’t know.
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I have said it many times that refs in England are at best inept, and at worst corrupt, the performance of Atkinson yesterday shows why chelsea have lost only once in 28 games with him in charge, not content to not give the red for the assault on Alexis, he not only ignored Chelsea’s tactic of not allowing AFC play quickly, right from the first minute when Mourinho got the ball from the ball boy to stop AFC taking a throw, through to calling back an AFC quick freekick so he could -, not book oscar, but warn him again that he would, I assume only book him if he killed someone, with the pinnacle of his collaboration being his interception/block of Arsenal pass. And I almost forgot to mention the non awarding of a penalty to AFC, it really seems to be the unwritten rule in most English refs handbook.
The PGMOL are bias at best, corrupt at worst, I really do believe they are corrupt. And sadly nothing is done by the FA to stop it, of course the FAPL is all about image, and it would never do to raise the possibility that things are not 100% above board with refs
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Phil Nevill’s comment from BBC sum it up:
MOTD2 pundit Phil Neville expands on his TV analysis of how Chelsea exploited an old Arsenal weakness as they kept up their impressive start to the season with victory at Stamford Bridge.
There was not much between the two teams in Chelsea’s 2-0 win over Arsenal on Sunday, but what we saw is that Blues boss Jose Mourinho still knows how to win the big games.
As well as the way Mourinho set Chelsea up and how hard his players worked, I am talking about the little niggly challenges his side kept making, mainly off the ball.
They were just little things like shirt-pulls, shoves or clips of the heels which did not always result in fouls, let alone bookings, but still stopped or slowed down Arsenal’s attacking momentum.
Frustration leads to loss of focus
You might think Chelsea were not playing by the rules but, actually, they were – which is why a lot of things that were happening at Stamford Bridge were not being given as fouls.
It is more like gamesmanship, and I would describe it as being cute and clever rather than cheating.
Alexis Sanchez often seemed to be the man who would get a nudge and I think Chelsea targeted him a little bit, because they obviously saw him as a threat.
“Arsene Wenger’s teams do not like physical contact and they do not seem to be able to handle it”
They got men around him and, if one was jockeying for the ball, then another was tackling him or pushing him off the ball.
But Chelsea did it with the entire Gunners team, not just an individual. It was definitely a Mourinho tactic to disrupt their rhythm and upset them.
I have seen it happen before – the great Manchester United team that I was part of in the late 1990s and early 2000s used it as a tactic against Arsenal.
We would harass them, make tackles, let them know they were in a game and never let them have an easy time or find any flow in the game. It still seems to work now.
It has always been a weakness of Arsene Wenger’s teams. They do not like physical contact and they do not seem to be able to handle it.
Exploiting that weakness and frustrating Arsenal was what Chelsea set out to do, and they knew by doing so they would get opportunities themselves.
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The Arsenal player I feel sorry for in relation to the lenient refereeing by Atkinson is Joel Campbell. Another referee out there, Mike Dean or the Webbster say, and Joel could have been looking forward to tackling the lone striker role against Hull, Sunlun and Burnley.
On such narrow margins are great careers founded
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anicoll, are u saying there is no way our players could have done better on the first goal? i’m sure if that same situation present itself again there will definately be a different outcome.
it is not true that arsene players dont like physical contact. maybe some of the present crop dont fancy it. jack, ramsey, flamini are players who like physical contact despite their small frame.
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Unfortunately, I couldnt watch the game. I came back and read two versions of the game. One on BBC and one here. First I read the media’s version of the game. According to them, we were poor yet again and Chelsea were masterful. Wenger was frustrated and shoved Mourinho. Then I heard from Wenger and read the comments here. I would trust everyone here any day over that. Quite disappointed that we lost. Really wanted us to win, no, spank chelsea for Arsenal and Wenger’s sake. Wenger’s unfortunate record continues. I do hope Wenger figures out a way to get one over Mourinho, even if they play with 12, 13 men.
Anyway, good time for a break. After the international break, we need to start rolling. Fuck draws and losses. We need to keep winning and nothing else. People are already targeting top four. Come on! We have hope for the title. We just need to be ourselves again.
Dont know how we are going to manage without Arsenal for quite sometime.
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Where would you like to start them doing better on the first goal Layks ?
Gibbs taking a short free kick with Sanchez not ready and Chelsea players not the requisite distance from the ball when it was kicked ?
Sanchez, in immediate difficulty with the ball at his feet, and with two Chelsea players on him, for not booting the ball into touch ?
Santi for not hacking him down on the edge of the box ?
In theory every single goal that ever has been scored has been stoppable, hence every single goal ever scored is the fault of the team that has conceded.
It is just that some are more obviously errors than others, and some are down to attacking players doing special things imo
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Maybe that’s why Mourinho could never beat Guardiola. He can get away with using small club tactics at Chelsea, but he would have been called out for acting like Sam Allardyce while managing at Real Madrid.
Welcome to the Premier League, Alexis, where two footed tackles are tolerated and rotational fouling is seen as clever instead of illegal.
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Just saw the Adrian Clarke breakdown. Chelsea seems to have parked a bigger bus this time.
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Loving Wenger’s “Stand and deliver” shove on Mourinho. Majestic. Mourinho for all his arrogance and smugness is such a coward. When Wenger shoves him, he is scared and pretends that he is busy concentrating on someone else.
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Family!
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afternoon Paul
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What’s up bro!
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Paul, I messaged you on Facebook, read the previous article.
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Will do, George.
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Oh my…
The world has lost an honorable man.
You will be missed, ZP!
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I also saw the breakdown on Arsenal.com –
A big turning point was chambers getting booked – for being fouled by Hazard. After that he had to be careful.
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anicoll, yes, the Bridge is a bit of a mish-mash. They have stuck the various sides of the ground together, but they haven’t done a great job of it. My first trip there was in 1992 for a game against Man Utd. Eric Cantona had just joined from Leeds. I sat in the West stand and was quite happy with my choice as the match was played in a heavy downpour. The away fans were behind one goal on a basic terrace with no cover. They got soaked, but they went home (to Surrey) happy because United drew 1-1. Cantona equalised, his first goal for MUFC. When I returned many years later, the ground was unrecognisable, with bars and hotels having been squeezed into any available space.
Speaking of Manchester United, they arguably owe much of their commercial dominance from having their ground located adjacent to the largest industrial estate in Europe. Other than a railway line on one side, there was no significant obstacle to the gradual expansion of Old Trafford to its current capacity of 75,000. Fortunately for Arsenal, Chelsea do not have the freedom to do the same. This, arguably, is one of the biggest obstacles Chelsea face in their battle to comply with Financial Fair Play. Long may it continue!
The only thing that the Bridge has over the Emirates is, ironically, the history of its occupants. By that, I mean the easy familiarity and tradition of sitting in the same seats for generations (not that they had so many supporters back when they were rubbish). Highbury had something similar, but it was lost to a large degree in the move to the Emirates. I’m sure that, in time, those ‘roots’ will be re-established. Year on year, the atmosphere is improving.
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DC, yes, strangely, there does seem to be a market for the half-and-half scarf. What do people do with them? Maybe it’s a souvenir for the very occasional match-goer.
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O4aC
Try as I might last week, I couldn’t find a souvenir Arsenal vs Spurs scarf to wear for the NLD.
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A gap in the market there DC – you could clean up next season
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Half and half scarves? They of course bring to mind the story about the late, great John Arlott, for many still the voice of cricket, commenting on the NZ all-rounder, Bob Cunis, a real bits and pieces cricketer if ever there was one. “Not really one thing or another”, said Arlott – “much like his name.”
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Just watched the game…not a bad effort from the boys to be honest. Our main problem was our passing in the final third. That is strange seeing we pride ourselves on perfectly weighted, timed and placed passes. The team is not a team just yet. I would have loved to see The Ox on the wing though…speed, speed, speed.
Chelsea parked the bus and played on the counter, just like how many of the seeker teams play us. It is not so much that they played balanced, it’s that they were opportunistic. Again, we had chances but did not create nearly as much problems as we should have, given some of the positions we found ourselves in.
As usual, I think the criticism is overboard. In a season, you win, lose and draw some. I saw nothing to get anxious about.
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Seeker=weaker.
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moureen’s plan is to always hit teams on the counter. last season he didnt lose to any top six club but lost to teams that defended against his team. he seems to have solve the problem this season with the arrival of cesc. but cesc wont be available all through the season. once he gets injured, the team will be found out.
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good luck to chambers on duty for england. but how on earth can jon stone get a call up ahead of chambers. no wonder england fail at the highest level. playing players with no champions league experience ahead of players who play consistently in europe. there is absolutely no reason why bains should play ahead of gibbs for instance. a player like varane plays for france ahead of other french league players because of his experience in europe and exposure. i’m not sure if bains or stone have met ronaldo or messi let alone play against them.
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DC, I was going to knit you one for Christmas, but then I thought, why stop there? I’ll make one scarf that features all the London clubs. Genius. Once the novelty wears off, I’ll unleash the next model: the Premier League scarf. Everyone will want one.
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The atmosphere at the ground is immeasurably better than for the game I went to two and a half gears ago.
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