Arsenal vs Chelsea a few quick thoughts
Dan Tracey
January 24, 2016
1,752 Views
- Chelsea continue to hold the edge over Arsenal, it seems as some teams can have a mental edge over their opponents
- Diego Costa was creating the headlines again with firstly being bought down by Per Mertersacker on 18 Minutes leading to German Defender being sent off
- Costa certainly made the most of the situation with probably a few unnecessary rolls but he was clever enough to invite Mertesacker to make the challenge
- Mertesacker isn’t blessed with pace so to then have a quick look at the Assistant Referee proved to be suicidal, you can’t say for certain but had he not stopped for a split second then he would have probably made the tackle and still been on the pitch
- Then Arsene Wenger was forced into a substitution to replace Mertesacker with Gabriel Paulista coming on, only the decision to replace him with Oliver Giroud certainly wasn’t one that was welcomed by the Arsenal fans
- Moments later it was Arsenal’s favourite boo boy Diego Costa in the spotlight again as he converted Branislav Ivanovic’s cross to get the games solitary goal.
- That cross was more of the Ivanovic of last season and he celebrated his new contract with a sturdy performance at The Emirates
- Mesut Ozil was nullified while Theo Walcott was pretty ineffectual again
- Alexis Sanchez was thrown on in the Second Half but the numerical advantage proved too much for Arsenal, even with wave after wave of pressure The Gunners just couldn’t manage to breach Thibault Courtois’ net
- Chelsea wasted many opportunities to wrap up the game but luckily for them Arsenal failed to take advantage
- Guus Hiddink keeps his unbeaten record going since becoming Interim Manager and Chelsea move up to the heady heights of 13th place, more importantly he’s won all three Chelsea vs Arsenal encounters that he has been in charge of
- Much will be asked of Arsenal, are they mentally weak? is this typical Arsenal?. The sending off massively changed the course of the game so you can only answer those questions if it was 11 vs 11
- Chelsea can’t win the title this season but they can certainly have a say in who does
- But the big winners from that fixture are Leicester who are now 3 points clear at the top, the February 14th clash between Arsenal and Leicester just got even bigger. If you had Valentines Day plans I would probably cancel them
Like this:
Like Loading...