Chelsea v Arsenal part 1: the build up and the preview.

By Bulldog Drummond

Chelsea, as we will all remember, were thumped by Arsenal 3-0 at the Ems, and although that was good news for us it was pretty bad news for the rest of football as they then went on a whirlwind of winning.

Date	Venue	Opposition	Score (h-t)	Result
24/09/2016	A	Arsenal	0:3 (0:3)	L
01/10/2016	A	Hull City	2:0 (0:0)	W
15/10/2016	H	Leicester City	3:0 (2:0)	W
23/10/2016	H	Manchester United	4:0 (2:0)	W
30/10/2016	A	Southampton	2:0 (1:0)	W
05/11/2016	H	Everton	5:0 (3:0)	W
20/11/2016	A	Middlesbrough	1:0 (1:0)	W
26/11/2016	H	Tottenham Hotspur	2:1 (1:1)	W
03/12/2016	A	Manchester City	3:1 (0:1)	W
11/12/2016	H	West Bromwich Albion	1:0 (0:0)	W
14/12/2016	A	Sunderland	1:0 (1:0)	W
17/12/2016	A	Crystal Palace	1:0 (1:0)	W
26/12/2016	H	AFC Bournemouth	3:0 (1:0)	W
31/12/2016	H	Stoke City	4:2 (1:0)	W
04/01/2017	A	Tottenham Hotspur	0:2 (0:1)	L
14/01/2017	A	Leicester City	3:0 (1:0)	W
22/01/2017	H	Hull City	2:0 (1:0)	W
31/01/2017	A	Liverpool	1:1 (1:0)	D
22/01/2017	H	Hull City	2:0 (1:0)	W

It doesn’t make promising viewing for other teams, but all runs end sometime, and one way of looking at things is that the Chelsea have only won three of the last five.  Trouble is that at home they look fairly invincible at the moment.

If we just take the home games the table looks like this

		P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
1	Chelsea	11	10	0	1	30	6	+24	30
2	Tottenham	11	9	2	0	25	5	+20	29
3	Burnley	13	9	1	3	21	11	+10	28
4	Arsenal	12	8	2	2	24	13	+11	26

And the away table…

		P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
1	Chelsea	12	8	2	2	18	10	+8	26
2	Man City	12	8	0	4	26	16	+10	24
3	Liverpool	12	6	4	2	23	17	+6	22
4	Arsenal	11	6	3	2	27	12	+15	21

So whichever way we look at it, it should be a Chelsea home win. But then so should the game for us against Watford.

Over the past five games the results have been even – two wins each, two defeats each…

Date	Game	Result	Score	Competition
26 Apr 2015	Arsenal v Chelsea	D	0-0	Premier League
02 Aug 2015	Arsenal v Chelsea	W	1-0	FA Community Shield
19 Sep 2015	Chelsea v Arsenal	L	2-0	Premier League
24 Jan 2016	Arsenal v Chelsea	L	0-1	Premier League
24 Sep 2016	Arsenal v Chelsea	W	3-0	Premier League

Chelsea’s success can be put down in particular to their extraordinary run of injuries this season – in fact they hardly seem to have had any.  Indeed at the moment they are showing zero injuries.  We are at least in the bottom section of the injury table, although Elneny is not listed – he is still with Egypt who have made it through to the Final of the Africa Cup.  I don’t have an update on his injury sustained in a previous round.

Here’s the foot of the injury league table…

Pos	Club	Injured players	Latest	Injury
15	Arsenal	2	A Ramsey	Calf Strain
16	Manchester City	2	S Aguero	Knock
17	West Bromwich Albion	2	B Galloway	Knock
18	Leicester City	2	I Slimani	Groin Injury
19	Bournemouth	1	C Daniels	Knee Injury
20	Chelsea	0

According to the statistics in WhoScored, Chelsea only have one weakness which is aerial duels.  The other interesting point to pick up from WhoScored on this game is that according to their stats both sides play non-aggressive football, but their opponents play aggressively against them.  That isn’t quite how I’ve seen the games in recent years, and the incidents involving Gabriel being wound up by Diego Costa and sent off for a red that was of course overturned, and Santi Cazorla getting sent off at Stamford Bridge suggest a slightly different interpretation.

It was indeed interesting that while the media wanted Mr Wenger to get a six month stadium ban for the incident recently with an official there have been few calls for referee bans for the Costa incident, nor indeed for the Andre Marriner sending off of Gibbs for stopping a goal with his hand.  Not only did he get the wrong player, and then refused to listen to the players all telling him who the right player was, but also the ball was clearly not headed for the goal, and therefore was not a sending off offence.

On that occasion former world cup ref  Clive Thomas said that the four quasi-officials in charge of that game should be banned for the rest of the season adding on BBC Radio 5, “It’s the most disgusting, shocking decision I’ve seen. In my opinion these four wouldn’t officiate another Premier League game this season.”

But of course this sort of behaviour is what we have to put up with these days.  Players get punished, even when the ref is clearly, utterly wrong, but refs do not.

Moving on, both clubs do have something in common – they go for goals and have top scorers.  Here is the current chart for Arsenal and Chelsea players who have scored six or more goals in the Premier League this season

Player	Mins per goal	Goals scored	Assists	Shots on target	Total shots
Alexis Sánchez	131	15	8	33	59
Diego Costa	124	15	5	31	49
Eden Hazard	204	9	3	22	38
Theo Walcott	174	8	2	23	42
Olivier Giroud	90	7	3	11	20

So yes, it is possible to find reasons to be cheerful, but I am not sure that is going to stop my nerves!

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