Premier League fixture 6: Arsenal 3-0 Chelsea
After the first half, it was clear that Chelsea had nothing to in the derby and came at Emirates Stadium ramping.. It took only only 15 minutes to put the Blues to sleep with back-to-back goals by Alexis Sanchez and Walcott thanks to inaccurate defense moves from Cahill and David Luiz. Indeed, the first goal came from an awful pass from Gary Cahill who completely dawdled and gave the goal to Alexis taking the best of GK Courtois.
Arsenal’s astonishing first half against a totally lost Chelsea defense was enough to seal the deal and did the damage. Th second half was pure control from the Gunners who came close to score a 4th goal while protecting well the net. It is the first loss for Chelsea against its rivals since October 2011.
Coach Arsenal, Wenger comments:
“Before the game, we had to deal with some inconvenient facts and they were that we couldn’t beat Chelsea for years. To get that out of the system was at stake as well today.
I feel, especially in the first half, we wanted to play with high pace, put them under pressure, play at a very high collective connection and speed of passing – it worked quite well. It’s one of those moments in your life as a manager where you think ‘today is a great day’. In the first half, I think it was nearly perfect. In the second half it was a bit in-and-out but in the first half, we have shown great quality. We played with style, with pace, with movement – and that’s the kind of football we want to play.
on reasons behind the performance…
I felt that in the last three weeks, our team was on the way up. Today was a good test for us to see if that’s real, if we could continue to move upwards. Would Chelsea stop our progression? Overall the quality of our performance today confirmed that we are on the way up. From the goalkeeper to the centre forward, today you cannot fault any performance. Now let’s continue to improve. There’s still room for improvement. Let’s show as well that we can defend together the style of football we want to play.
on wanting to repay some of the past results against Chelsea…
What was very important for me was that the psychological hurdle didn’t stand in our way. You have not to make too much of it but as well not ignore it. You cannot say to your players that they have always done well against Chelsea, because it’s not true. To find that balance is not always easy, but I told them the best way was to focus on the quality of the football we wanted to play and do that with belief. Today it went quite well.
Coach Chelsea, Conte comments:
“We started this game in a bad way, and from the first minute. Arsenal went ahead on 11 minutes and scored all their goals before half-time.
This is very strange because Arsenal against Chelsea is a massive game and when we play this type of game against a very good team like Arsenal, you must stay concentrated from the first minute and this today did not happen.
I was a footballer and it happens that in one game you don’t have a good performance for many reasons, but I hope to improve this situation. We’ve had defeat in two big games. For this reason we must be humble and understand the moment and that we need to work a lot to improve and change our story.
We must work a lot to improve and change the situation because now we are only a great team on paper, not on the pitch. The pitch is the truth, it is the most important thing for us, not the words and not the paper. We must change this because last season was a bad season. There are many difficulties but if we understand this, we are in a great position to recover and change the situation.”
