Chelsea 1 – Arsenal 1 match report: mixed feelings

Arsenal drew Chelsea 1-1 at Stamford Bridge, keeping the rest of the Premier League at arm’s length in the table. If you’d have offered me a draw when the lineups came out without William Saliba for Arsenal, I’d have taken it in a heartbeat. With Chelsea having played down a man from the 38th minute, it’s more than a little annoying that Arsenal didn’t take all three points. On the other hand, Arsenal went down 1-0 and found an equalizer rather quickly. You’d have liked to see them push for the win, but I don’t think we can be too disappointed with the draw.

The onus was on Chelsea to win this match. They’re chasing Arsenal in the table. It was on their home field. They played like they knew that, too. They were not content to sit on the draw, even down a man. That was probably the best Chelsea have played all season in the Premier League, and Arsenal weathered the storm on a day where they were far from their best and down both first-choice CBs.

The early yellows to Martin Zubimendi, Cristhian Mosquera, Riccardo Calafiori, and Piero Hincapie didn’t help things, either. Arsenal were forced to play much more conservatively to avoid exposing players in duels and risking second yellows. That concern only escalated when Moises Caicedo was shown a straight red card with the assistance of VAR for a nasty tackle on Mikel Merino. Arsenal had to know that Anthony Taylor was looking for a reason to even the ledger, and the Gunners’ had to adjust their play accordingly. They did quite well to not give him the chance. As teams always do when they’ve had a man sent off, Chelsea embellished every piece of contact and begged the referee to send off an Arsenal player. It’s really unbecoming for a club, honestly.

Chelsea have a major discipline problem, and it starts with their manager. Enzo Maresca has already been cautioned 5 times this season. His team has racked up 7 red cards in their last 15 Premier League matches. They’d be closer to Arsenal in the table if they were a more disciplined side.

Somehow today’s red card was Moises Caicedo’s first in 130 Premier League matches. For me, there is a clear winner in the Declan Rice vs. Moises Caicedo debate. It’s Declan Rice. Moises Caicedo is ill-tempered and always one reckless challenge away from a straight red. And he had the misplaced chutzpah to try to fake an injury to distract from his vicious tackle and the temerity to act shocked when it was upgraded to a red card. You could “forgive” Caicedo for being surprised when he was shown a red card, if only because he’s one of those blind spot players for referees. He hasn’t been held to account for his wild, dangerous tackles in the past, so you can perhaps understand his surprise when he finally saw the proper consequences of his actions.

Miss me with the acting, buddy. You knew exactly what you did. Own it. Don’t make it worse by trying to weasel out of it. Do you want that behavior from the backbone of your team? I sure don’t.

It permeates their team. Maresca can’t behave himself on the sidelines. Caicedo is a dangerous player who, at best, has no respect for the safety of his opponents. Enzo runs around the field flailing his arms and trying to stir the pot. Marc Cucurella has never met a foul he won’t commit. Reece James is constantly in the referee’s ear, complaining about this, that, or the other thing. Chelsea are exactly the club that certain elements of the media have tried to paint Arsenal as, and it’s genuinely hurting their chances to win the league.

To paraphrase Mikel Arteta’s comments after the match, there wasn’t much football played today. There was a whole bunch of hard running and kicking the ball, but neither team could put together much in terms of sustained pressure nor coherent attacking moves.

You cannot emphasize enough the effect that missing the two CBs and the early yellows had on Arsenal’s ability to play the way they want to play. Mikel Arteta commits bodies forward based on his confidence in his defenders’ ability to win duels. When they don’t win and the other team breaks, they give the foul and take the yellow card. Cristhian Mosquera and Piero Hincapie played fine, but they aren’t as good as William Saliba and Gabriel. Arsenal were behind the eight-ball from the opening whistle and put themselves even further behind it by taking early yellow cards to break up attacks. Both Zubimendi’s and Mosquera’s were foolish. They both could likely have let the play go and their teammates mop up the danger.

As a result, Arsenal had to play more cautiously. The result was that things were disjointed, and they were made even more disjointed by Chelsea’s high-energy play. As I said, Chelsea had a good game. Arsenal did not. And we got outta Stamford Bridge with a draw.

Chelsea’s goal came from a corner. The Blues are the second-best team from set pieces in the Premier League. You’d like to have your two first-choice CBs to help defend against such a strength. I’d also point out that the corner was won off the back of a free kick that was awarded when Joao Pedro, in an effort to get Piero Hincapie a second booking, greatly embellished a piece of nothing contact. The referee fell for the con.

Arsenal responded really well from the body blow that was going behind 10-man Chelsea. It took 11-minutes for Mikel “Strikey Mikey” Merino to even the score. Most of the credit for the goal belongs to Bukayo Saka. He beat Marc Cucurella multiple times on the move and picked out the Spaniard with a lovely cross.

Apart from Saka’s brilliance on the goal, he was more than a bit wasteful on the evening. The same can be said of most of the Arsenal players. Merino had two really bad giveaways in the first half. Martin Ødegaard, a second half sub, seemed overeager to make an impact and tried to force a few passes. You could also chalk that up to Ødegaard knocking off the rust after a long time on the shelf. Ebere Eze and Gabriel Martinelli were anonymous. Noni Madueke failed to make an impact.

Arsenal looked tired. It’s understandable given this was their third match in a week where they played a North London Derby and hosted Bayern Munich in the Champions League. They’ll need to find a way to do better because they’re going to have three-matches a week for a while, but they’re also not going to be playing Chelsea away in all of them. They should be fine. As I said, Chelsea needed to win today’s match and they didn’t.

For what it’s worth, Arsenal are five points clear at the top of the table and have played away to Manchester United, Liverpool, Newcastle, and Chelsea. In other words, the Gunners have a bunch of their toughest matches out of the way. The Gunners are starting to get guys back, too. William Saliba’s status is a worry — he’s due for more tests tomorrow. And we don’t know exactly how long Gabriel will be out. Other than those (very important) two, the health indicator at Arsenal is trending in the right direction.

This three-match stretch was one you circled at the beginning of the season as a tester. Arsenal took 7 of 9 points. Today’s result might feel underwhelming given the amount of time played against 10-men, but I promise you, it’s fine. It’s an opportunity missed, to be sure, but honestly, I don’t think it’s one Arsenal are going to regret. They’ve done well and didn’t lose any ground to the club that came into the weekend in second place. We’d all do well to remember that the Manchester City side that will end the weekend in second place is far from the dominating juggernaut that hunted Arsenal down two and three seasons ago. This is a really good Arsenal team. Drawing away to a strong Chelsea side changes absolutely nothing about that assessment.