Arsene finally rewarded with a win on his 20 years milestone! by KM
Boom! Nobody saw that coming! Great day to all of you lovely Arsenal people! It’s truly time to celebrate, because it’s been a mear five years since we last beat Chelsea – with a Van Persie hat trick at the Bridge! We had a great performance and I’m sure lots of people will heap praise on our attacking players, so I’ll speak about our unsung heroes at the back.
What a game from Mustafi and Koscielny. Arsenal have had their problems with Costa since his arrival in English football, but on the day, our two CB were simply magnificent. There was always someone pressing Costa, even pushing him a little bit and they got him enraged while keeping a stone cold face. Brilliant if you ask me. I’m so pleased with Mustafi. We suffered so much with experiments in the back, but this could be a great CB partnernship.
Bellerin and Cech also produced that one moment of magic that saved our clean sheet. Did you see that pace to outrun Pedro? I really hope Bellerin learns from Cescs mistake and doesn’t go to Barcelona. By the way seeing him get subbed at minute 54 was also hilarious!
Moving upwards Coquelin got injured and Xhaka came on almost like some higher power heard the fan’s voice and the Swiss international slotted in perfectly. The funny chant “shoot” each time he touched the ball was really fun! Gibbs also was a good sub in my opinion, because Monreal was clearly struggling and there is an obvious dip in his form, especially how he moves too close to the CB and his flank got exposed.
Up front Theo is playing with a point to prove and it’s not about renewing his contract which is refreshing. The interchanging between him and Alexis as to who is our false 9 gave a clueless Chelsea defence lots of trouble. I wanted to see Perez come in for Iwobi and we just destroy Chelsea with pace, but instead we opted to close the game.
Still we had quite a few chances to humiliate them and we were sloppy and wasteful with them in all fairness. It should’ve been at least 4 or 5 but it’s been so long we’ve beaten Chelsea that I’d take any win. This game was huge for Arsene for a number of key reasons.
One is that a lot people including me, have questioned whether Arsene can compete with younger managers like Klopp, Pep and Conte. Well this time Arsene showed he’s maybe not done just yet. Another reason is that Chelsea is one of those many bogey teams Arsene has and the result was so important to break that negative stat against them.
The final big point is that against your direct opponents, you must win your home games. Mourinho won the title two years ago, by being ruthless at home against the big boys and happy with a draw away and it worked for him. We need to implement this too and today we were really good.
Finally, the season is long, City have made the perfect start, but there are at leas 5-6 teams that are real contenders for a top 4 spot, so we cannot afford sloppy mistakes any more as the quality in the league has no doubt improved. Last season we made 5 wins in a row and we were top on Christmas. We have 4 in a row now and a favorable fixture list. Can we take it further than 5 this time?
It’s a night to celebrate, so enjoy!
Konstantin