Match report: Arsenal 2-1 Chelsea

The first heavyweight encounter of the Premier League season was previewed in some quarters as the immovable object versus the irresistible force. Arsenal do not give an inch. Chelsea have been fun and free-scoring under Xabi Alonso. Yet that overlooked something pretty fundamental. The percussive force of Arsenal’s game when they have the ball and want to make something happen.

Chelsea landed a significant blow after 77 seconds when Morgan Rogers put them in front with nicely executed volley from the edge of the area. It was not only the first goal that Arsenal have conceded this season but one with rich narrative strands. Rogers was chased by Arsenal over the summer only to join Chelsea for £117m.

The story here was about Arsenal’s reaction. The sheer fury of it. For a blistering spell that culminated in Kai Havertz’s equaliser on 25 minutes, they threatened to blow Chelsea off the pitch. Arsenal’s confidence shone through. They had not lost to their cross-town rivals in eleven previous meetings in all competitions, winning eight, but it was rooted in more than that. They had too much for Chelsea and they knew it.

Arsenal FC have had a good day at two offices

Three games down, 35 to go. But the top two might be set in stone.

That’s a fine victory for Arsenal, who recovered from the shock of Morgan Rogers’ 2nd-minute goal to dominate a dangerous opponent. Kai Havertz equalised and then made the winner for Martin Odegaard with a gorgeous dummy.

Chelsea can take some positives, but they will lament a lack of precision and concentration in the final third. Yet they almost grabbed a point when Estevao’s late sizzler was beautifully saved by David Raya.

90+4 min It’s now or never for Chelsea Football Club FC.

90+1 min “I think your two Arsenal statement victories are the big ones but I’d put two against Real Madrid in as well,” writes Will Vignoles. “The leg in Madrid in the run to the final with that Henry goal and a defence led by Pascal Cygan, and then the Declan Rice game where Arsenal maybe ceased to be the punchline of European football and were taken seriously in the continent again.”

Was the first one a statement win or just joyously unexpected? Agree completely on the second though. In a way, even though they lost, the semi-final second leg in Paris that season was almost a statement performance too.

90 min Four minutes of added time.

90 min: Arsenal substitution Noni Madueke replaces the excellently Bukayo Saka.

88 min James wallops a free-kick from 30 yards that flattens Declan Rice on the edge of the area. He gets straight to his feet, but I wouldn’t fancy his chance of doing any long division for next couple of minutes.

87 min: Chelsea substitution Danny Welbeck, once of this parish, replace Morgan Rogers.

87 min Arsenal love defending a one-goal lead and they have settled into a familiar 4-4-2 shape without the ball.

Joao Pedro turns smartly and is fouled 30 yards from goal by Zubimendi, who should probably be booked but isn’t.

83 min Rogers finds Palmer, tries to back up the play and is deliberately tripped off the ball by Rice. Palmer shoots wide from a tight angle, at which point Rogers kicks off with Rice. He’s got a point – it should have been a free-kick and a yellow card.

Instead, Rogers is the one who gets booked for pushing Rice.

82 min “Arsene Wenger’s 1,000th game, where Arsenal got absolutely larruped by Jose Mourinho’s Chelsea, was definitely a statement of some kind,” writes James Humphries. “‘God is dead’, maybe.”

81 min: Chelsea substitution Estevao comes on for Joao Pedro, who had a frustratingly woolly game.

[Edit: what the hell was I on about? Estevao came on for Pedro Neto.]

81 min “I like the cut of Chris Finnegan’s jib (69 min),” writes Matt Dony. “Let’s found the Campaign for the Limitation and Inhibition of Tzolis Over Real Impact Statistics. Not sure about the acronym, though.

80 min Arsenal’s next four games are away from home: Napoli, Sunderland, Ipswich (in the Carabao Cup) and Brighton.

Chelsea are home to Leeds (Carabao Cup) and Hull before visiting Brentford.

78 min: Arsenal substitutions Viktor Gyokeres and Mikel Merinoi replace Kai Havertz, who gave a masterclass in subtle centre-forward play, and the potential matchwinner Martin Odegaard.

76 min A Chelsea corner is headed away by Gabriel as far as James, 25 yards out. He pings a sweet shot that is headed away with masochistic glee by – you got it – Gabriel on the six-yard line.

74 min Now my ADHD brain wants to know – and share – Arsenal’s greatest statement performances. Old Trafford 1998 feels like the ultimate; Anfield 2001 would also be high on the list.

73 min It’s maybe a little excessive to call this a statement performance from Arsenal – but it has been a compelling assertion of their current supremacy, even more so because they went 1-0 down inside two minutes.

72 min Saka’s delicious corner takes a couple of ricochets at the near post and is grabbed on the line by Martinez. He was already on his back, not sure why, so he was fortunate the ball came straight to him.

70 min The resulting corner is flicked on by Havertz and then headed across goal and wide by a Chelsea defender.

Havertz has been majestic today, the player of the match for my GBP.

69 min: Good save! Havertz produces a deft flick through to legs of a defender to release Saka, who curls a thrilling first-time shot from the edge of the area. Martinez flies to his right to paw it round the post.

69 min Chris Finnegan emailed to suggest the assist for Odegaard’s goal should go to Havertz rather than Tzolis. I privately agreed, to which Chris responded thus:

Call it extreme if you like, but I propose we hit it hard and we hit it fast with a major – and I mean major – leafleting campaign.

Can’t we just keep yelling at that bloody cloud?

67 min: Double substitution for Arsenal Piero Hincapie and Martin Zubimendi replace Riccardo Calafiori and Myles Lewis-Skelly.

63 min Palmer controls the ball deftly on the run and lifts a right-foot shot from 15 yards. It’s too close to Raya but Chelea are playing much better now.

Moments later, Raya dives bravely and decisively at the feet of Acheampong, who was moving onto Joao Pedro’s cute through pass.

62 min “Long way to go,” writes Colum Farrelly, “but there’s an impression that Arsenal know what they’re doing as a team while Chelsea are made up of skilful players recently introduced to each other.”

If it looks like a duck…

61 min Pedro Neto, who has been Chelsea’s best attacker from right wing-back, tees up Gusto on the edge of the area. He whips a first-time shot over the bar.

60 min: Double substitution for Chelsea Pep Chavarria and Malo Gusto replace Jorrel Hato and a visibly frustrated Romeo Lavia. Chelsea’s central midfielders are now Gusto and Reece James.

59 min Oh go on then.

It’s more than a little unfair that, when it comes to innovation, Sam Allardyce is mainly remembered for bringing the 568ml glass of white wine into the mainstream. He was the first to regularly play 4-3-3 in the Premier League; he was also one of the first to build cosmopolitan teams and to find marginal gains through nutrition, fitness, physiotherapy and data analysis.

Even on a micro level, he rarely missed a trick when it came to maximising results. So when Fifa and Ifab issued new guidelines for the interpretation of the offside law in late 2003, introducing alien concepts like ‘phase of play’, ‘active’ and ‘passive’, Allardyce’s brain became extremely active.

58 min Chelsea are having a decent spell of possession, perhaps their best of the match. A promising move ends when Acheampong’s cross is well claimed on the stretch by David Raya.

Arsenal break and Lacroix is booked for a foul on Tzolis. In fact, Tzolis has also been booked for waving an imaginary card.

56 min Palmer releases Rogers on the left. His heavy touch invites Konsa to make the kind of full-pelt lunging challenge that defenders love. He gets it spot on and the home crowd cheer lustily.

54 min There’s another simple reason for Arsenal’s improved attacking play this season: after a couple of quiet seasons, Martin Odegaard is close to his bewildering best.

52 min That was pretty similar to Odegaard’s goal against Manchester City in the Community Shield. He didn’t walk it in this time, though; he just belted it nonchalantly over Martinez.

It’s probably too early to hail Arsenal 2.0 – but their attacking player is sharper this season and right now they look miles better than the rest of the league.

Tzolis angled a crisp pass into Havertz on the edge of the area. He ignored the ball so that it could run onto Odegaard, who surged into the gap and pinged the ball past Martinez. Havertz won’t get an assist but his dummy was a joy – and crucially it distracted Fofana just enough for the ball to reach Odegaard.

49 min It’s been a quieter start to the second half than the first. Saka plays a give-and-go with Havertz and hammers a shot from distance that is blocked by Lacroix.

46 min Peep peep! Martin Odegaard has the first kick of the second half; both XIs are unchanged.

“If things carry on this way,” begins Charles Antaki, “then I’ll be tempted to pine for the old days, when Arsenal were one ahead and it was a matter of unbearable suffering and anxiety as they played screw-down football till the end of time. This new entertaining stuff is all very well, but they are not actually winning, which is maybe significant.”

Half-time reading

It would be putting it mildly to say Everton’s exhaustive search for a new right-back met an underwhelming response when it concluded with the signing of Ainsley Maitland-Niles on Monday. But there was an overwhelmingly positive reaction to the £4.3m recruit’s Everton debut as his stunning 25-yard strike rescued a point with virtually the final kick of the game against Manchester United.

Michael Carrick wiped his face in sheer disbelief after the former Arsenal player, 19 minutes into his first appearance for David Moyes’s side, found Senne Lammens’ top corner to send Hill Dickinson Stadium into raptures at the end of a troubled week. United were on the verge of victory following Benjamin Sesko’s 88th-minute header beyond Jordan Pickford but Everton, indignant and defiant after the shambles of transfer deadline day, twice fought back to preserve their unbeaten start to the season. A slow-burning contest erupted into a wildly entertaining second half.

45+1 min Ben White and Romeo Lavia have a bit of a row near the byline. White is an angry young chap, isn’t he. It started because Lavia thought White had dived.

45 min Four minutes of added time.

45 min Cole Palmer is booked for a cynical foul on Havertz. Arsenal were breaking from a Chelsea free-kick and he decided to take one for the team.

Palmer could have been booked earlier for a foul on Lewis-Skelly. Had that happened, he wouldn’t have fouled Havertz just now, so there’s no great controversy. It’s just a detail and you deserve to know it.

42 min This is the quietest spell of a pulsating first half. Arsenal are still on top but they know Chelsea can hurt them.

39 min “Mick Jagger is clearly a Spurs fan,” writes Simon McMahon. “How else can you explain 19th Nervous Breakdown, (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction and You Can’t Always Get What You Want?”

Also – and not a lot of people know this, mainly because it’s completely made up – I Think I’m Going Mad was written after watching Ossie Ardiles’s 4-1-5 formation in the autumn of 1994.

36 min Joao Pedro has a pop from 40 yards, with Raya well off his line, but he chokes the shot and it fades well wide.

Cracking game, this.

36 min A good piece of analysis on Sky Sports shows that, for both goals, Raya and Martinez had their weight on the wrong foot. That’s why they couldn’t get across to shots they would save more often than not.

35 min “I’ve been slow to work this out,” writes Colum Farrelly, “but have concluded that Cole Palmer and Phil Foden were not chosen for the World Cup because of their woeful haircuts.”

Too soon, Colum: it’s only 20 years since I started going bald.

34 min Tzolis finds Lewis-Skelly, who thrashes a shot from the edge of the area. It takes a deflection, not seen by the referee, and flies over the bar.

32 min Havertz’s chipped cross is headed away bravely at the far post by Lavia, who was under serious pressure from behind.

31 min Rogers receives the ball on the left of the area, uses Konsa as a screen and whips a shot a few yards wide of the far post. For a player of his abundant class, that was a chance.

29 min Joao Pedro was booked for kicking the ball away,” writes* my colleague Jacob Steinberg at the Emirates. “It might be Chelsea’s first silly yellow of the season.”

* Well, he wrote it 10 minutes ago but there’s been so much going on that I’ve only just had chance to look at my inbox.

28 min I’m not sure Chelsea are ready for a game of basketball with a team as good as Arsenal. They need to establish a degree of control or it’ll just get nasty.

27 min “Not really the best look,” begins Paul Marshall, “for those Arsenal fans to march to the stadium dressed all in black with balaclavas, this weekend of all times – especially given the club’s proud history of inclusion and diverse fanbase.”

At first I wondered whether that picture might be AI slop; then I remembered it’s the year 2026.

Havertz received Rice’s quick pass on the right wing, marched infield with intent and drove a precise low shot from 18 yards that sneaked past Martinez at the near post. It was an admirably precise shot – but on reflection Martinez should have saved it. I think he got a slight touch and helped it into the corner of the net.

24 min This is becoming a basketball game. Calafiori marches infield, exchanges passes with Lewis-Skelly and belts a right-foot shot from 15 yards that is well blocked.

23 min A stinging long-range shot from James is pushed up in the air by Raya. Arsenal break and Odegaard’s shot on the run is crucially blocked 12 yards from goal. Chelsea counter the counter, with a cross from the right just evading Joao Pedro.

I can’t keep up with this. Anyone fancy doing to the second quarter?

21 min Chelsea leave three or four up and threaten to break from the Arsenal corner. The counter-attack is slowed down well by Arsenal. Eventually Palmer curls a shot from 25 yards that bounces awkwardly in front of Raya, who holds on as he falls to his right. He needed to because Joao Pedro was sniffing round like prime Ian Rush.

19 min Tzolis bursts down the left and screws an excellent low cross towards Havertz near the penalty spot. He whips a first-time shot that deflects behind off the lunging Fofana. Good defending.

18 min Saka runs onto a loose ball and raps a right-foot shot from a tight angle that is beaten away by Martinez. Arsenal’s response to going behind has been terrific.

16 min “I see Mick Jagger was shown in the build-up, taking selfies with people in the ground, which must consume half his life in public these days,” writes Justin Kavanagh. “He certainly supports the football (and even more so the cricket, which he had a big hand in bringing to TV worldwide). But who does he support? Anyone know for sure?”

He just wants football to be the winner.

15 min Cracking game, this, very open. Odegaard’s deep, teasing cross is headed towards goal by Havertz and saved comfortably by Martinez.

14 min Joao Pedro has been booked for something or other. Don’t ask me what because there’s a lot going on and I was trying to make sense of the disallowed goal. I don’t think there’s any controversy – Konsa was offside when Gabriel had a shot saved by Martinez.

Rice’s free-kick from the right led to another almighty scramble. Joao Pedro should have cleared but didn’t, which allowed the ball to reach Gabriel at the fart post. Martinez made a great save to deny him, Konsa hit a post and then Calafiori followed up to score. But there’s a VAR intervention incoming…

11 min Arsenal have responded well to going behind. They look quite affronted, which probably isn’t a surprise given they hadn’t conceded a goal before today.

8 min Arsenal win their first corner – and Chelsea leave four players up the pitch. It means there’s all sorts of space in the penalty area. Saka’s deep corner is headed back across the area towards him, and he goes down under a challenge from the side. Just as the Emirates crowd start to scream for a penalty, the flag goes up for offside against Saka.

7 min Emi Martinez, who had some good moments in the Arsenal goal when Mikel Arteta first took over, is booed as he takes a bit of time on the ball.

5 min Odegaard’s low free-kick from the right leads to a helluva scramble in the Chelsea six-yard box. Eventually Gabriel kicks Martinez in the head – the ball was there, kind of – and is penalised. No intervention from VAR, and it’s impossible to say with certainty whether Gabriel meant it or not.

4 min Chelsea have scored in the first four minutes of all three Premier League games.

Goodness me, what a start: Chelsea have scored after 77 seconds! A long free-kick from Reece James led to a game of head tennis in the Arsenal area. Eventually the ball dropped to Rogers on the edge of the area, and he adjusted his feet smartly to volley the ball past David Raya. It wasn’t the cleanest strike but it was in the corner and Raya couldn’t get across. He might have seen it late, I’m not sure.

2 min There was a bit of talk that Chelsea might switch to a back four, but it’s the expected 3-4-2-1 formation with Pedro Neto at right wing-back.

1 min Chelsea kick off from right to left as we watch.

North London Forever is being sung with gusto by the home fans, who haven’t known this feeling – that Arsenal are indisputably the best team in England – for 22 years. Chelsea want it to be a short-lived feeling.

Mikel Arteta speaks

It’s a big game. We know the talent they have in attack but we know the areas we want to play in and we need to focus on that.

[On picking Tzolis over Eze] It’s going to be a long game so we need our finishers to be ready. I’m sure the teams will look very different by the end.

[On Xabi Alonso] We’ll talk after the game but during the game you know what’s going to happen – we need to focus on our jobs.

Xabi Alonso’s pre-match thoughts

So far things are going well but there’s a long way to go. [Levi Colwill] had some little [niggles] in the week and we didn’t to take a risk at this stage of the season. Moises Caicedo was close but we need to be cautious.

We need to play with maturity, with intelligence – and know that the details are so important in these games. I’m looking forward to seeing Mikel, for sure, but once the whistles goes it’s game on.

And now a third goal…

There’s been a second goal at Hill Dickinson Stadium. Clickity click click click!

80 min: Everton 0-1 Man Utd Bryan Mbeumo scored a fine goal just after half-time at Hill Dickinson Stadium. You can follow the last 10 minutes with Tim de Lisle.

Chelsea thought they had little chance of signing Morgan Rogers at the start of the summer. Xabi Alonso and the club’s recruitment team had the England international as a priority target but a deal seemed unlikely. Chelsea had endured a disappointing season, missing out on European football after finishing 10th, and their expectation was that Rogers would leave Aston Villa for Arsenal.

It was towards the end of the World Cup that Chelsea were made aware of a window of opportunity. Although Arsenal could claim to be London’s top dogs after winning the Premier League they dithered in talks with Villa, raising the prospect of another club stepping in.

Arteta has become more controlling over his seven years at Arsenal, not just in his micromanagement but in his demands from his team. Tactical plans are sophisticated and negotiable only in the final details. In their third successive season of finishing second he spoke repeatedly of the need to reduce, to zero if possible, the xG of the opposition. If they have no chances, they cannot score, and if they do not score, they cannot win.

In August 2021, Thomas Tuchel’s Chelsea beat Arsenal with contemptuous ease at the Emirates. Since that 2-0 victory, in which Chelsea’s new signing Romelu Lukaku beasted Pablo Mari and Rob Holding, the teams have been going in different directions. And Arsenal have completely dominated the head-to-head: P11 W8 D3 L0 F24 A10.

The first email of the day comes from John Stedman

I think it’s hard to enjoy any sporting contest as a neutral without actively taking sides, so today’s match poses a particularly difficult problem for me.

Usually, my preference would be for any team based in the capital to lose – something that is obviously impossible today. So, in London derbies, I have a very specific order of London teams that I wish to win: Leyton Orient, Charlton Athletic, QPR, Millwall, Brentford, Wimbledon, West Ham, Fulham, Tottenham.

And the teams that I always will to lose: Arsenal and Chelsea. What is a poor boy to do?

How about a Ramsay’s Hotel Hell marathon on E4 Extra? Your blood will boil just as much, but you already know who wins so there’s no jeopardy.

Control v chaos. On the one hand, the forces of order, regimented, playing in precise patterns and, on the other, something darker, more visceral, a method that acknowledges the imperfection of the human soul, the unknowability of football in all its randomness; better, that second way says, to attempt to ride the fury than to believe it might be harnessed.

When it began, a decade ago, that’s how the Pep Guardiola v Jürgen Klopp rivalry appeared. Apollo v Dionysius. Two fundamentally opposed ways of seeing the world. But in time, the two crept towards each other. Klopp moved away from the heavy metal of his Borussia Dortmund years to something more conservative. Guardiola experimented in multiple directions, slowly abandoning the possession-oriented idealism of his past to something less radical but also less predictable.

The temptation, after the first two weeks of the season, is to cast Mikel Arteta and Xabi Alonso in a similar light. Arsenal are yet to concede a goal. They dominated the Community Shield from the first minute, beat a shambolic Manchester City 3-0 and gave the sense that they could easily have won more comprehensively had they been minded to do so. They were no more troubled in beating Coventry by the same scoreline in their opening league game and, while they were rather less dominant, they were still extremely comfortable against Aston Villa on Monday and had been slowly increasing the pressure when Bukayo Saka gave them the lead just before the hour.

Half time: Everton 0-0 Man Utd

It’s goalless in the early Premier League game at Hill Dickinson Stadium. Here’s how the great Tim de Lisle summarised the first half:

No goals, no thrills, but an absorbing encounter. It ought to be 1-1: Cunha should have scored for United and Barry for Everton, only for both attempts to go over the bar when it looked easier to get them on target.

On xG, there’s not a lot to separate the teams. Everton 0.34-0.32 United. The United forward line has been the more imposing of the two, but James Garner, who captained their Under-21s before being brainlessly sold to Everton, has been the main man in midfield. And Jarrod Branthwaite, who was coveted by United a couple of summers ago, has been immense in defence.