The ability to start strong and control a game to win it by Konstantin
Hello lovely Arsenal people! We managed to cut the distance to Chelsea back to some mere 3 points and it looks like it will be a scramble for the top 4. There were a couple of really intriguing things in this win.
First of all, we had a 2:0 lead at half time. I don’t recall any other game this season in the league where we were leading by two at the break. We started strong, took the lead and didn’t let it slip. In fact we scored a second goal in a moment where Chelsea had us under pressure. Controlling a game and steering it to a safe win is a quality which we must implement and it requires concentration throughout the entire game.
Our performance on Saturday really had the necessary intensity, but also I think we finally played a formation that suits everyone. And you could really see the considerably lesser amount of mistakes we made, due to people knowing the positions. We also managed to control Chelsea. I didn’t feel like they’d come back. They had 1 shot on target which came after minute 80 and apart from hitting the bar, there weren’t really any problems.
Honestly as good as we were, Chelsea really lacked attacking threat. No wonder they are looking at Higuain. There just wasn’t a CF to make it tough for our defence. Teams like Southampton and Brighton amongst others used opportunities to hit us on the counter, and throw long balls to cause us damage and it often worked. This was Lenos second clean sheet in the premier league. Think about that and how poor our defensive record has been and it’s shocking how poor Chelsea were in attack.
This is good for us, because they are the one team that looks shaky from the top 4 clubs in the moment. The way Sarri let rip at his players was astonishing really. He spoke in Italian with a translator to make his message clear, and this is a risky strategy. Players outlast managers at the Bridge and this reminded me of how Mourinho went to war with players at Chelsea and United and didn’t last too long.
By the way if you haven’t seen his guest appearance at Bein sports, it’s just hilarious! The guy is a media story generator with everything he says. Anyway, the downside of the game, was Bellerin’s injury, which looks like it’ll be for the rest of the season. Injuries have hit us hard this season.
Our shaky defence really misses Holding and as much as I like AMN, he is not at Bellerin’s level. We lack the depth Man City have. We need reinforcements which look ever so unlikely apart from Suarez, who might still join us on loan. That said, we have to deal with what we have and an important game comes against United where we must win to dent their excellent post-Mourinho start.
We’ll have chances to go back to the top 4. Chelsea go away to Man Utd, City and Liverpool, they will drop points. It’s up to us to start winning away too and continue our good home form. This win ensured that this season we’ve already picked up more points against the top 6 than we did the entire last season! Hopefully we’ll add a few more!
Konstantin