Chelsea will be champions after draw at pretenders Arsenal
Three quick thoughts from Arsenal and Chelsea's 0-0 draw in the Premier League at the Emirates on Sunday afternoon.1. Chelsea will be champions
Arsenal's winning run comes to an end, but Arsene Wenger's poor run against Jose Mourinho does not. This 0-0 means it is now 13 games, and the French manager has still not beaten the Portuguese, still hasn't shown his Arsenal are quite making the step up to actually finish ahead of a side like Chelsea. This has only briefly delayed the latter's surge to the title, meaning they will likely win it at home against Crystal Palace next week, rather than at Leicester City on Wednesday.
You couldn't quite say it was unlucky 13th for Wenger, either. Although Arsenal had the better of the play -- and certainly the better of the second half -- the scoreline might have been worse had the big penalty calls gone the other way. Chelsea had three to be aggrieved about, Arsenal one, in that order.
That may not be the league leader's biggest concern given that the second incident saw Oscar having to be taken off with a worrying suspected head injury. The discussion about why he was not taken off earlier, given he so clearly looked dazed, will likely continue long after the game. That came after David Ospina had flattened the Brazilian in a one-on-one. The fact the Chelsea attacker got a shot off may have caused referee Michael Oliver to rule the corner, but he still should have awarded the penalty and sent Ospina off.
The other decisions were more contentious. In the first, Oscar went down after a relatively innocuous challenge from Hector Bellerin. In the third, the returning Cesc Fabregas was adjudged to have dived over Santi Cazorla's outstretched leg, bringing more boos from the crowd after the Chelsea midfielder was booked. Cazorla then fired a shot that cannoned off Gary Cahill's arm for the fourth penalty call, but Oliver ruled his hand was in a natural position given the type of challenge it was.
If debates about refereeing conformed to a trend, so did the pattern of this game. Arsenal came out totally fired up and backed by a fervent crowd, but didn't actually do all that much. Chelsea's defence showed their typical measure to keep them at bay, and lay the foundation for the best chances. Beyond the penalty calls, Ramires should have put his side 1-0 after being put clear through on goal in the first half.
Ironically, Arsenal were looking at their most promising on the break, when Chelsea opened up. On one occasion when the away side finally offered up sufficient space around their box, though, Alexis Sanchez fluffed his pass. It was a poor ball, and a poor performance from the Chilean.
The same could not be said about John Terry, who was exceptional and arguably should be one of the contenders for PFA Player of the Year award, which will likely be awarded to Eden Hazard later on Sunday. His form was shown when Arsenal upped the pressure in the second half, and the Chelsea captain stepped up with some super blocks, not least for one moment when Mesut Ozil seemed clear on goal.
Either way, it is all too clear now: Chelsea will be champions, and Arsenal do not fully look like concrete challengers just yet.
2. Fabregas' return
Arsenal booed him relentlessly and, although it didn't seem to really affect Cesc Fabregas, the Spanish midfielder didn't exactly give his new team too much to cheer about on his return to the Emirates for the first time since 2011. This was a fairly middling performance from the returning star, more in keeping with his last three months than the early-season form that saw some lament the fact Wenger did not re-sign Fabregas in the summer.
His booking and penalty incident almost summed up his game, a mix of good and not so good. Although it was Fabregas' craft and movement that drew Santi Cazorla into riskily sticking out his leg in that first-half incident -- meaning it was probably a penalty -- the Chelsea man then effectively denied his team the opportunity by making his subsequent dive so obvious.
That contrast was there throughout.
The very first penalty call of the game came because of Fabregas' first moment of brilliance, one of two occasions when he lifted this match above the ordinary. On 10 minutes, the midfielder threaded a weighted ball through for Oscar, only for the Brazilian to go down under Hector Bellerin's attempt at a challenge. The decision may have been questionable, but the class of the delivery was not.
Twenty minutes later, then, Fabregas supremely spun away from his old Barcelona teammate Alexis Sanchez with a nimble piece of footwork. He wasn't always so fortunate.
Olivier Giroud drew huge cheers from the crowd when he nipped in to dispossess Fabregas, and the Spaniard then blew what could have been one of Chelsea's most promising breaks of the game. After an Arsenal attack broke down to leave Eden Hazard suddenly free on the right and with only two defenders ahead of him, Fabregas played the ball haplessly wide.
You couldn't say that was down to the effect of the booing, but Fabregas still didn't affect this game in the manner he might have.
3. Stuttering strikers
Strikers may have dominated all the discussion in the build-up to this match, but they had minimal effect on the game itself. Giroud found himself all too easily handled by the brilliantly robust Chelsea defence, while Didier Drogba again found his best days are long behind him, after coming on when Oscar's suspected head injury forced Mourinho to abandon his false-nine experiment.
At the other end, the difference was that John Terry and those around him never abandoned their posts. They were superb, in the way the forwards weren't. Giroud couldn't impact this more important game in anything like he did against Everton and Newcastle United.
The French forward's recent exceptional spell of goal-scoring form has provoked debate about his exact level and whether he can now be considered among the world's elite, but this game showed why he is short of that. He just couldn't trouble the Chelsea centre-halves, and didn't have a chance or effort of note.
Wenger had talked in the build-up about how Giroud is 92 kilograms and you'd know all about it if he stepped on your foot, but that is almost part of the issue. He's just a touch too lumbering, and it was illustrated in every clash with a genuine top-class centre-half like John Terry. The Chelsea captain was first to so many balls put between the two and, if he wasn't, it was generally because Terry knew to let Giroud to have enough that he wouldn't be able to do anything.
If Arsenal had such a clear focal point until then, though, the same could not be said of Chelsea. They had an experiment, and then an expired great. The "false nine" did initially show some promise as Eden Hazard and Oscar dovetailed, offering the kind of movement that in effect forced so many penalty calls, and those first-half chances.
Once the Brazilian was forced to leave the pitch, though, Chelsea were totally blunted. It would have been narrative overloaded had Drogba managed to finish the 73rd-minute chance that Fabregas supplied him with but, instead, the Ivorian found himself overwhelmed. Rather than so swiftly check to the right and power the ball past an Arsenal goalkeeper in the way he might have done in 2010, he turned in, got his feet wrong and offered a tame shot.
The tameness of the forwards as a whole was a big reason this ended 0-0. It summed up so much when substitute Danny Welbeck missed the last big chance of the game.
Source:espnfc
