Outgunned yet again

HIGHER examination time in the Premiership and, once again, it was a fail for Arsenal and honours for Chelsea.

Possession may be nine-tenths of the law but in football it’s worth a big fat zero without the finishing touch. For that you need a finisher but Arsenal didn’t have one at Stamford Bridge yesterday.

Chelsea did, the crucial goal coming in the first half from Didier Drogba. That was the game-changer, the one which allowed Carlo Ancelotti to do a classic Italian job on Arsene Wenger in the second half, as Chelsea erected a formidable blue wall which Arsenal, for all their familiar finesse, simply found impenetrable. And the more they tried, the more likely it was that, playing clinically on the break, Chelsea would extend their lead. Rope-a-dope gave way to counter-punching, and these heavyweight champions do that combination better than anyone else in the Premiership.

In the end, that hurricane from Alex – with a subtle assist from Drogba providing a route through the wall – was enough to make it safe for the champions. But the unpalatable truth for Arsenal is that, for all their dominance of the ball over the 90 minutes, they could easily have lost this one by four, had Anelka not somehow missed an open goal after rounding Fabianski and had a marginal offside decision not gone against Ashley Cole when he drilled one to the corner of the net.

Of course, Arsenal can also indulge in the ifs and buts game, not least when they reflect on the potential significance of that Laurent Koscielny miss early in the first half. But when Arsene Wenger spoke afterwards about the game being all one-way traffic, he conveniently omitted the crucial fact that the traffic rarely arrived at its intended destination. Arsenal might have repeatedly taken the game to Chelsea but they could hardly be said to have put the home defence under the kind of intense, nerve-jangling pressure which sees the woodwork rattled or the keeper over-worked or shots cleared off the line. Chelsea’s back four – ably assisted by their three-man midfield screen – may have been kept on their toes throughout but, tellingly, Petr Cech was never in the running for a man of the match award.

In truth, Fabianski was the one required to make the bigger saves, especially when Chelsea counter-attacked in the game’s final phase. One small consolation for Arsene Wenger is that, for once, his goalkeeper won’t feature in negative headlines today, even if he was beaten at his near post by Drogba’s inventive opportunism. Nor could Fabianski be held remotely responsible for the concession of the second, an absolutely unstoppable free-kick from Alex.

But the brilliance of the strike shouldn’t be allowed to overshadow Arsenal’s part in their own downfall, the foul which resulted in the free-kick arising directly from the Gunners needlessly trying to construct a tight passing pattern in their own half, and this at a stage in the game – one down and time running out – when any other side would have been desperate to get both bodies and ball into the opposition box as quickly as possible.

It must be acknowledged, of course, that Arsenal were missing a number of key players yesterday, including Cesc Fabregas, Theo Walcott, Robin Van Persie and Thomas Vermaelen. And their chances of winning were hardly helped on the pitch by an exasperating performance from Andrei Arshavin. With Russia coming up at the Aviva Stadium on Friday, Giovanni Trapattoni won’t be slow to alert his defence to the dangers of allowing Arshavin to shoot from distance, as he did when drawing Petr Cech’s best save of the day at Stamford Bridge yesterday. But I suspect that the Italian will also have been quietly encouraged by the number of times the Russian sloppily gave the ball away or got caught in possession as, not for the first time, he struggled to impose his undoubted talents on a crunch game.

For all that, we can take it as read that, as the weeks and months go by, something closer to a full-strength Arsenal will win plenty of games and win them thrillingly. They will therefore be, as they say, there or thereabouts at season’s end. But it’s hard to see that anything so fundamental has changed at the Emirates that it will offer Arsene Wenger’s team a more rewarding role than that of bridesmaids after five long seasons without getting the ring. And being prettier than the bride still won’t be enough consolation.

And Chelsea? Well, this was the ideal response to the defeat by Manchester City but it still wasn’t enough to permit that the latter be dismissed as a blip. Chelsea were not only beaten in that game but outfought and outthought too, almost as if they had been turned over by the version of themselves which played with such fire and hunger under Mourinho.

Yes, the champions are back on top but, even at this early stage of the campaign, they’re already looking less invincible than they did when winning the title last season. Which raises the question: will someone from up Manchester way be better able to take advantage this time around?