For Mikel Arteta, it was an up-close-and-personal illustration of the task ahead, a defeat in his first home game that was entirely in line with why Arsenal were where they were – in the bottom half of the Premier League table, confidence wafer-thin.
Chelsea were the visitors to the Emirates Stadium in December 2019 and they profited when the Arsenal goalkeeper, Bernd Leno, dropped a clanger in the 83rd minute, allowing Jorginho to equalise. Cue the collapse, Tammy Abraham scoring the inevitable late winner.
Arteta’s to-do list had plenty on it. It always does. Just as now, as he prepares to take his team to Chelsea on Sunday for a game that they seemingly dare not lose; the challenges different but still challenges, nagging away at him without remorse.
It has been a worrying sequence for Arsenal in the league, the losses at Bournemouth and Newcastle coming either side of the home draw against Liverpool when they conceded a late equaliser. Liverpool are seven points clear of them at the top; the lead could be 10 by the time Arsenal kick off at Stamford Bridge, Liverpool hosting Aston Villa on Saturday night. Could Arsenal’s title challenge survive a double-digit deficit?
If Arteta wanted solace or reassurance, he may find it in his stunning record against Chelsea. After the reality check of that first meeting at the beginning of his tenure, he has played them 10 times and it has been almost entirely positive. Almost – because there was another home defeat; 2-0 in the second game of 2021-22.
There have been seven victories and even the draws have felt like wins, both come-from-behind 2-2s at Stamford Bridge, the first with 10 men in January 2020 after David Luiz’s 26th-minute red card, featuring a box-to-box breakaway goal by Gabriel Martinelli for 1-1 and a late Héctor Bellerín equaliser. Arsenal were 2-0 down with 13 minutes to play in last season’s away fixture; the fightback was stirring.
It goes deeper than the results, impressive as they have been, the impression impossible to ignore. When Arteta has been on the ropes or needed a boost, he has run into Chelsea with uncanny regularity. And come away with something to galvanise and fortify.
The 2020 FA Cup final triumph gave Arteta’s project an injection of credit and the 4-2 win at Stamford Bridge in April 2022 breathed life back into the club’s Champions League push, albeit they would fall short at the last. They had travelled across London with four losses in five league games.
Remember 2022-23? When Arsenal won 1-0 away from home in October, it was a statement victory, one to add a further layer of substance to a then unlikely title bid. In May, they hosted Chelsea after three draws and a heavy defeat at Manchester City. They swept to a 3-1 win.
The best example of the Chelsea effect for Arteta came on Boxing Day 2020. Arsenal had taken five points from 10 league matches, scoring four goals during the sequence and it was crisis time when Chelsea visited. His team stormed to a 3-1 win, Emile Smith Rowe starring on his first appearance of the league season. It was a major turning point.
What Arteta most liked on that occasion was how his players embraced the pressure and it will be a prerequisite on Sunday, as Arsenal attempt to respond to another body blow away from home – the 1-0 Champions League loss at Inter on Wednesday.
There remain two readings of that game, with Arteta keen to push the one about his team carrying the fight to one of Europe’s elite after they conceded from an unlucky penalty in first-half stoppage time. There was an assurance about how Arsenal got on the front foot and asked questions. Yes, they did not create much but they did enough to fashion an equaliser. It could have gone either way. When your luck is out, it tends to go against you.
Dec 2019 Arsenal 1-2 Chelsea Premier League
Jan 2020 Chelsea 2-2 Arsenal Premier League
Aug 2020 Arsenal 2-1 Chelsea FA Cup final
Dec 2020 Arsenal 3-1 Chelsea Premier League
May 2021 Chelsea 0-1 Arsenal Premier League
Aug 2021 Arsenal 0-2 Chelsea Premier League
Apr 2022 Chelsea 2-4 Arsenal Premier League
Nov 2022 Chelsea 0-1 Arsenal Premier League
May 2023 Arsenal 3-1 Chelsea Premier League
Oct 2023 Chelsea 2-2 Arsenal Premier League
Apr 2024 Arsenal 5-0 Chelsea Premier League
On the other hand, it was another blank away from home to follow those at Bournemouth and Newcastle; the latter was a genuinely concerning performance. Arsenal have struggled with various things this season – red cards, the balance of the midfield in the absence of the injured Martin Ødegaard.
Arteta hopes his captain can return to the starting XI against Chelsea. Ditto Declan Rice, who wants to play through the pain of a broken toe after missing the trip to Milan.
It has been possible to wonder whether City and Liverpool have sought to highlight Arsenal’s use of the dark arts as a means of undermining them; as if Arsenal are the only club to do so. Another wrinkle: the announcement this week of the looming departure of the sporting director, Edu.
Arteta believes that one problem dwarfs them all – the absence of cutting edge away from home. To him, it is not so much the clear downturn in creativity; the statistics show that Arsenal have taken the second-fewest number of shots on their travels in the league this season. Rather what happens, or does not happen, when they do create chances.
It was revealing to hear Arteta open up on the lack of goals as being a “concern”, mainly because he is not a guy given to admissions of weakness. Then again, it is perhaps the single area in which a manager can express misgivings because it does not point to structural issues.
“If the solution is ‘Ooh, aah, eeh’, it is not enough,” Arteta said, mimicking the noise from a crowd on near misses. “The solution has to be goals.”
Arteta compared how Arsenal had played against Inter with their defeats in last season’s Champions League at Porto and Bayern Munich – also by 1-0 scorelines. “There is no comparison whatsoever … probably in 20 aspects of the game,” he said. “The outcome [at Inter] should have been very different but there are a few aspects to that.”
Chief among them was the most fundamental part of the game. And so now for Chelsea, where the hope from an Arsenal point of view is that things will be different. They normally are.
“There have been a few good games against them,” Arteta said. “One was in a difficult moment when Emile Smith Rowe came in and he changed something. I don’t know what it was. Momentum, energy, belief. But that was a key one. We had some away games as well that have been very, very nice.
“I remember one against [Thomas] Tuchel’s team where we were lucky to win [the 1-0 at Stamford Bridge in May 2021]. I like how I see the boys today, how we are going to the game, really believing we can win and make it happen.”
