Arsenal 1-0 Chelsea: Havertz’s late dagger exposes a poor opposition plan
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Arsenal are through to the Carabao Cup final after a 1-0 win over Chelsea last night, making it 4-2 on aggregate, ensured our passage for a Wembley showdown with either Man City or Newcastle next month.
With Martin Odegaard absent through injury, Mikel Arteta picked Eberechi Eze to complete his midfield trio, with the rest of the side as strong as you’d imagine for a game like this. Chelsea, meanwhile, went with a back three and wing-backs for what we came to learn was a tactical ‘masterplan’ by Liam Rosenior.
Every time they did anything, which was seldom because they spent the first half basically doing nothing, Sky – and Gary Neville in particular – would wax lyrical about this well laid out scheme to ‘take the game late and deep’. He kept talking about how the Arsenal fans would feel the nerves, and the more the game went on, the more he doubled down on this.
At one point, early in the second half, he said he could just feel that Chelsea were going to get a goal and throw the whole thing wide open. But at that point, they’d wasted an entire half of football in a game they had to score in. Did they nullify Arsenal? Probably, but we didn’t need a goal, they did. There was one long range effort from either side in a pretty staid and uneventful first 45 minutes, and that was about it.
But this was good from a Chelsea perspective, apparently, because now they could change things up in the second half and really put Arsenal to the sword. I have to say, perhaps it’s because he’s new in the job, but Rosenior was given the kind of grace that would definitely not have applied to Arteta if Arsenal, a goal down in a cup semi-final against a big London rival, had turned up in the first half with a defensive formation and basically thrown away an entire half of football. He’d have been pilloried for his conservatism or risk-averse nature, and told how his team needed to ‘have a go’.
Which, I think, would have been fair enough really. If you’ve got to score, and your gameplan is, for the most part, about containment of the opposition than actually trying to score, then I think you’re open to some criticism. On the one hand, I get that you might decide not to come to Arsenal and open up, but the risk you take when you go that route is that you make the decisive part of the game too short. Why try and score for 90 minutes when you can do it for 30 minutes instead?
The other thing I’d say this morning is that while Arsenal defended well, and we never really felt under a great deal of pressure, we played with a front three that didn’t really click, and the attacking side of our game wasn’t as dangerous as it might be. That Martinelli, Madueke, Gyokeres combo doesn’t do it for me, and behind them Eze was kinda quiet too. So, not only did Chelsea choose to play within themselves for an hour, they did it against a version of Arsenal that was less potent than it could be.
Eventually, Rosenior did make some changes, but they made little difference. Kepa had almost nothing to do, and the solidity of the Arsenal back four, with the discipline and organisation of the players in front of them, kept Chelsea at arms length. They best they could muster were some speculative pops from distance, and the occasional corner/set-piece which we dealt with easily. Alejandro Garnacho, a man who looks like a Temu Halloween costume of a skeleton, came on and did nothing. At least there was consistency because Cole Palmer and Estevao offered nothing from the bench either.
In a game where a clean sheet meant victory, Arsenal didn't concede an open play shot from inside the box from the 7th minute until the 97th minute.
Sometimes, with a one goal lead, there’s a sense of jeopardy, but not last night. Neville insisted the Arsenal fans would get nervy, but that certainly didn’t seem to be the case via the TV coverage, and from people I’ve spoken to who were there, it wasn’t present in the stands. It looked as if it would play out to a tedious 0-0, not that I would have complained, but in the dying moments we scored a goal that just made that previous 96 minutes of grind tremendously enjoyable.
As Chelsea threw men forward to find an equaliser they never looked like getting because they singularly failed to get the ball into our box time and time again, Marc Cucurella’s lofted ball was headed forward by Piero Hincapie. Leandro Trossard played it down the line to Declan Rice, and with most of the opposition players in our half, he delivered a superb pass with his left foot to Kai Havertz. With Martinelli in support, he went around Robert Sanchez, scored against his former club, and pointed to the badge as the stadium erupted and the Arsenal playing staff, bench and all, ran to celebrate with him.
It was, by any measure, hilarious. Late and deep, eh? Have a bit of that, pal. The tactical disaster-plan in full effect. By the way, I thought we were denied an obvious penalty a few minutes earlier on Martinelli who was clearly tripped in the box, but maybe the ref and Rosenior are 1st level connections on LinkedIn or something.
Anyway, the point is Arsenal won and Chelsea, who needed to score, played like a side who had been convinced they could just faff around for 90 minutes and still go through. Remember when Mikel Arteta got professional pickpockets (or thieves as they’re otherwise known) to come to a team dinner to teach his players a lesson? Chelsea must have used one of those half-arsed corporate illusionists to hypnotise them into thinking 0-0 was all right. I don’t really know what was worse, that gameplan or Gary Neville trying to fool us into thinking it was genius. That’s a lie, it’s very much the latter, which says a lot because the former was so utterly crap. It didn’t half make it funny for us though.
Afterwards, Mikel Arteta expressed his delight at securing a cup-final after some semi-final disappointments in the past, saying:
I think over the two legs we deserved to win. To take the club, the team, the individuals to the highest level and start to compete for major trophies, at the end of the day you have the opportunity to see yourself at Wembley. It gives the right reason for everything that we do, I would say that. So everybody is always so happy and together we’re going to try to win.
And paid tribute to the fans who backed the team from start to finish:
They were enormous today. The energy, because it wasn’t easy. It was really cold, really windy and wet. They were with the team in every aspect of the game and emotionally helped us so much. So thank you so much. Now let’s enjoy Wembley.
Jokes aside though, Arsenal worked very hard last night. It wasn’t just about Chelsea being poor, there was real discipline and organisation to our performance, and that’s worth acknowledging this morning. We can pick apart the opposition tactics, but unless those players in red and white are prepared to dig in and do the hard yards on the pitch, you don’t get the reward. I think Arteta’s right, over the two legs we did more than enough to reach the final, and he and the players deserve their props for doing so.
Right, I’m gonna leave it there. We will have an Arsecast for you a bit later on, recapping the game and all the rest, so stand by for that. For now, have a good one!
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