First Thoughts: Chelsea vs Arsenal

My raw reaction on the final whistle to Arsenal's visit to Stamford Bridge

Going through my big picture thoughts, some positives, and some negatives.

Main Takeaway: Chelsea might be the second-best team in the Premier League but even that isn’t enough to top Arsenal

I was pretty impressed with Chelsea after this match and while I have had trouble figuring out and judging them this season, I think that they made a pretty strong statement looking like the toughest opponent Arsenal have had this season.

They have had the most matches with red cards this season and that is a huge distorting factor and well we got it again here. I don’t think that they can really have too much to complain about the card they got, because it was a nasty one and it robbed us of a real interesting test and more information about Chelsea.

Before the red card, Chelsea were causing Arsenal issues. They had played Arsenal tough and were slightly ahead on the overall numbers.

Arsenal were having a tough time getting any flow going and it was one of the more chaotic matches I have seen Arsenal play this season. Arsenal had the best scoring chance (Saka one vs one against Sanchez) but Chelsea had more of the territory and it was them imposing the style on the match.

It was one of the few 30 plus minute stretches this season where a team has been able to match Arsenal and that is pretty impressive. I have seen many say they were the better team and that’s over egging it but they did play damn well here and that is a big credit to them.

The red card makes this tough but you look at this and it is still one of the lowest rated matches that Chelsea have had this season statistically. That’s just the norm now for teams that face Arsenal.

They seemed to come out and wanted to punch Arsenal in the mouth and see what the reaction would be and it did seem to throw Arsenal off of their game. It worked with Arsenal looking a bit rattled and being drawn into the high intensity and making challenges that were a bit rash.

It also had a cost to Chelsea as Caicedo lost sight of the line of what was being allowed and came in high and late on Merino to be sent off.

Going into halftime I wanted Arsenal to find a way to get back to strangling the game given their numeric advantage but that was made tough with Chelsea scoring from their first attack of the second half putting Arsenal in trouble. There wasn’t too much that I can see that Arsenal did wrong on the actual goal, but I might give a bit of examination to what David Raya was doing on the first free kick in.

Arsenal did pretty well to respond to that applying some pressure and getting the equalizer but they didn’t quite have enough to get a winner.

They did force Sanchez to make some saves and had a big chance at the end but it wasn’t one where you think that Chelsea were holding on for dear life.

Overall, this wasn’t Arsenal at their best and it did look like a team that was playing their third big match in a row. If you had asked me before kickoff, especially after Saliba was ruled out, if I would have been content with a draw I probably would have said yeah. I am a bit disappointed that it wasn’t three points given the man advantage but given the overall context, it’s not the worst draw in the world.

Arsenal have now wrapped up what should be 3 of the toughest 4 away matches of the season, having played at Anfield, at St James Park, and Stamford Bridge. They have come away with four points on those travels, and you’ll pretty gladly take that and not expect many to get more than that this season in these same situations.

Positives: