Read David Hytner's match report from the Emirates
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FULL TIME: Arsenal 2-2 Chelsea
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is that. The first half was entertaining enough, but what a second 45! On another day, with another ref, Arsenal could have had a man sent off; Chelsea may not have been awarded their penalty. But never mind the controversies. That was a rip-roaring game of football, the kind neither side deserved to lose. Magnificent fun. Chelsea stay in third; Arsenal remain in sixth. And we’ve still got two legs of the League Cup semi-final to come!
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90 min +3: Chelsea should regain the lead! Morata is sent clear down the inside right. And for the third time this evening he fluffs a one on one! He smacks his shot into Cech. The rebound falls to Zappacosta, who smashes a hysterical drive onto the crossbar from 25 yards!
GOAL! Arsenal 2-2 Chelsea (Bellerin 90+2)
Yes they can! Ozil slips Bellerin into space down the right. Bellerin reaches the byline and rips into the box. He crosses long with men in the middle. No matter! Because the ball’s sent into the area again. Alonso’s clearing header is weak. It drops to Bellerin, to the right of the D. One sweet half volley, and it’s creamed into the top left!
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90 min: “There’s only one team in London,” trill the visiting fans. On the Arsenal bench, Arsene Wenger hangs his head. He’s not had the breaks this week. There are four added minutes. Can the Gunners give their boss some late festive cheer?
88 min: Before the corner is taken, Walcott comes on for Chambers. The set piece leads to Mustafi hitting a fierce volley from the edge of the box. It’s heading towards the top right, but clanks into Cahill’s arm. No penalty, because that arm was tucked into his body, and the defender had no time to react anyway. That would have been some goal.
87 min: A lot of space for Welbeck down the right. He’s got Sanchez free in the middle, though his team-mate is offside. He’s forced to settle for a corner.
86 min: Arsenal respond by pressing Chelsea back. Maitland-Niles nearly finds Welbeck in the centre with a cross from the left, and there’s a little blast of pinball, but eventually the reigning champions clear their lines.
GOAL! Arsenal 1-2 Chelsea (Alonso 84)
Willian, deep on the left, sprays a stunning pass wide right for Zappacosta, who twists the young Maitland-Niles inside and out. Zappacosta reaches the byline and slams a low cross into the centre, where Alonso clips a fine first-time shot across Cech and into the bottom left, six yards out and level with the right-hand post. A wonderful goal, and one that’s silenced the Emirates. What a turnaround this has been.
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82 min: Bellerin turns on the jets to make space down the right. His cross is a tad too high for Welbeck in the centre. And then Hazard is replaced by Willian, to pantomime boos. Well, it’s still technically the festive season, after all.
80 min: Lacazette, who has run himself into the ground, is replaced by Welbeck.
78 min: Morata tears down the left again, only to be sent turf-wards by Bellerin. The referee waves play on, causing ironic cheers to ring around the stadium. It’s safe to say the home fans have been on a rolling boil since the penalty decision. Meanwhile here’s Mac Millings again: “I have one friend fewer than And We’re Off Again!’s Simon McMahon, so I sent a copy of the magnificent The Title to my Dad instead. I’d like to tell you he loved it, but I have not yet received a note of thanks, nor, indeed, the merest acknowledgement from him of its arrival. Perhaps he’s too engrossed in its marvelousness to express gratitude to his third-most disappointing child.”
76 min: Morata makes good down the left and very nearly finds Hazard in the middle. Cech smothers a fierce low cross with great skill.
75 min: Some admin: Ozil was booked while protesting the penalty award. “Wilshire really shouldn’t have been on the pitch with his dive, so I’ll give it to the Blues though that was a very soft pen,” opines Tim Penney.
73 min: Kante has a dig from the edge of the box. His shot takes a wicked deflection and only just sails wide of the left-hand post. Corner, nothing, etc., and so on.
71 min: Fabregas is replaced by Drinkwater. He gets a very generous ovation as he exits the stage.
70 min: And now Antonio Conte loses the place completely, as Morata misses another one on one, sent clean through by Fabregas. Morata drifts a little to the right, allowing Chambers to become an annoyance, then hoicks a shot, presumably meant for the top right, high and wide. Conte leaps around on the touchline, using words such as “eff” and “cee”. He really is not best pleased with his striker.
69 min: Arsene Wenger is in full Fume Mode. You can’t blame him, the week he’s had. A talking point, right there. Certainly not a great deal of contact between Hazard and Bellerin.
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GOAL! Arsenal 1-1 Chelsea (Hazard 67 pen)
Hazard dribbles into the Arsenal box from the left. He chips the ball past the outstretched leg of Bellerin, and goes down very easily. That’s another Wenger-bothering decision, because there didn’t appear to be much contact. Hazard certainly went down looking for it. He gets up and strokes the ball into the left-hand side of the net, Cech having gone the other way.
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65 min: Arsenal look in the mood to recreate those crazy five minutes against Liverpool. Lacazette and Sanchez buzz down the inside-right channel with much intent. Sanchez claps an effort towards the bottom right, but it’s tipped round the post. The corner comes to nothing.
GOAL! Arsenal 1-0 Chelsea (Wilshere 63)
Arsenal triangulate back and forth along the front of the Chelsea box. Suddenly the ball squirts down the inside-left channel. Wilshere strides with great purpose into the box, and absolutely larrups an unstoppable shot into the top left. Courtois is beaten at his near post, but couldn’t do anything about it, such was the ferocity of the strike. The Emirates erupts!
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62 min: Arsenal are on top now, first to everything. A crisp one-two between Ozil and Lacazette sends the former clear into the box down the left, but he can’t get the ball past Courtois. Never mind, because Maitland-Niles drifts down the left and earns a corner. From which...
60 min: Arsenal go into high-press mode, and pin Chelsea back. It’s a fine period of pressure, featuring a couple of corners and a lot of heavy-metal hassling. It all ends when Ozil sweeps home from six yards, though the whistle had long gone for a block on Alonso amid a penalty-box melee.
57 min: Moses is replaced by Zappacosta. “It’s amazing to me that I have never seen that Beckenbauer free kick before,” begins Mac Millings. “In fact, I refuse to believe it possible that I can have reached 45 years of age with even being aware of its existence. Conclusion? That goal is no more real than ‘Gary Naylor’.” Bah! Busted after all these years.
55 min: And you could say the same about Wilshere. He’s already booked, and he goes over Christensen’s leg on the edge of the Chelsea box, looking for a free kick. The referee’s having none of it. Could he have shown Wilshere another yellow for a dive? There’s probably just enough ambiguity in the trick. But Arsenal could do with taking a bit more care here. On another day, with another ref, all that...
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53 min: More end-to-end fun. Lacazette is one-on-one, for a split second, latching onto an Ozil slider down the inside left. He goes for the big whack, as opposed to the dink over Courtois, and the keeper wins the duel. The resulting corner leads to a Chelsea break upfield. That ends with Hazard and Morata failing to get a bouncing ball under control on the right-hand corner of the Arsenal six-yard box. Cech smothers. In the move upfield, Holding had clattered Fabregas, so he goes in the book. Given his trip on Morata a few minutes earlier, you could argue that he’s a lucky lad.
51 min: And off Arsenal go up the other end, the highly promising Maitland-Niles flashing down the left and curling high towards the far post. If only Sanchez was an inch taller. Goal kick.
50 min: Fabregas slips Hazard away down the right. Hazard enters the box and fizzes a shot towards the bottom left. Cech blocks. The ball springs to Bakayoko out on the right. He scoops inside. Alonso, coming in from the left, rises high and crashes a stunning header towards the bottom right. Cech turns it round the post. The corner comes to nothing.
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49 min: Morata executes a perfect on-a-sixpence spin, and makes to sprint off down the right. He’s got a lot of grass in front of him, and so he’s cynically clipped from behind by Holding. It really should have been a yellow card, but the referee’s feeling generous. The free kick is far enough upfield to be no danger whatsoever.
47 min: Hazard goes dancing down the left but his cross into the box is nowhere near Morata. Chelsea on the front foot in the early stages of the half.
And we’re off again! Chelsea are 45 minutes away from becoming the first team in the Premier League this season to string together five clean sheets. Can Arsenal, who have scored in their last 24 home matches, stop them? The visitors get the ball rolling for the second half. “Evening Scott,” begins Simon McMahon. “Flattery gets you everywhere I was once told. Happy New Year to you, you handsome devil. The story about the strips is of course told in The Title, a brilliant history of pre-Premiership English football. I can thoroughly recommend it, having bought it for myself and all my friends for Christmas. Two copies then. Some of today’s overpaid lot, on both sides of the white line, would do well to read it.” Believe it or not, I’ve not paid him a penny for that.
Half-time viewing: This comes courtesy of Gary Naylor, a notoriously hard man to please. He thinks Marcos Alonso should have done better with that free kick on 38 minutes. “Why doesn’t anybody try this? Beyond the obvious reason of course?”
HALF TIME: Arsenal 0-0 Chelsea
And that’s your lot for the first half. No goals, but a highly entertaining 45 minutes of end-to-end football.
45 min: Chelsea very nearly open the scoring with a picture-book move. Ozil bursts down the middle of the park but is dispossessed by a crunching Kante tackle. The ball’s sprayed to Hazard down the inside-left channel. Hazard reaches the area and drifts across the front of it, left to right. On the right-hand edge of the D, he flicks it back to tee up Fabregas on the edge of the box. Fabregas looks to curl into the top right, but gets over-excited. That would have been something else.
43 min: Fabregas is the second player to go in the book, winning the ball in a slide tackle with Wilshere. But he takes the man out afterwards with a hefty follow-through, and that encourages the ref to flash yellow. Fabregas isn’t happy with that decision at all.
41 min: Moses and Hazard combine down the right, earning a corner in a tight space. Hazard does some more dribbling from a quickly taken short corner, and threatens to open Arsenal up. Which he half does, but he can’t find Morata by the near post.
39 min: Ozil drifts in from the left and looks to pearl a low one into the bottom right. He gives it a real smack, but it’s inches wide of the right-hand post. Courtois had it covered. Arsenal immediately come at Chelsea again, Ozil dribbling towards the byline down the left. He looks for Sanchez in the middle, but the ball clanks around in the pinball style, then is spirited away by Fabregas.
38 min: Alonso looks to whip the set piece into the top right. That’s three rugby points. That ball was never getting up and over the wall, then back down, in time.
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37 min: Bellerin and Lacazette faff about on the edge of their own box. Morata leaps in to take control. He’s upended by Xhaka, on the right-hand edge of the D. Free kick in a very dangerous position.
35 min: More missed opportunities! Lacazette is close to latching onto a loose backpass to Courtois, but can’t connect. Then Fabregas floats in a cross from the left, the ball dropping over Mustafi to Bakayoko, free on the edge of the area! But he can’t bring it under control with his telescopic leg. Really not sure how this game remains goalless. But this is where we all are.
33 min: Ozil meanders down the inside-left channel and rolls a pass inside. It’s an inviting one, across the face of the Chelsea box. It could be hit by either Wilshere or Xhaka. It’s hit by neither, because they leave it to each other. Then a few semaphore shapes are thrown by the pair in frustration.
31 min: Wilshere picks up the first booking of the evening for a late slide on Fabregas in the middle of the park. It didn’t look malicious, just clumsy and very late as he entered a high-speed challenge for a loose ball that he was never going to win. He doesn’t bother arguing.
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29 min: A loose pass from Chambers in the middle of the park allows Hazard to launch a dangerous attack down the inside-left channel. Hazard can’t quite get a shot away, and though Chelsea hang on to possession and knock it around awhile, that’s the danger gone. Moses is eventually caught offside out on the right wing.
27 min: Fabregas picks out another wonderful pass, drifting in from the left and slipping one down the channel for Bakayoko, who strides into the area and sends a riser towards Cech. The keeper tips over, and you know how these corners are going right now, so that’s that.
25 min: Moses is sent scampering down the right by Fabregas. He earns a corner. And it’s another wasted one. But still. This match is wonderfully open.
23 min: Lacazette, on the penalty spot with his back to goal, takes up a pass from Ozil on the left and spins, firing a stunning shot towards the bottom right. Courtois makes another world-class save at full stretch, tipping the ball round for a corner that comes to nothing.
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22 min: Incidentally, just before all that Arsenal-related drama, Chelsea very nearly went ahead themselves, Moses twisting down the right and sending a ball towards the near post, Morata not too far away from connecting. Linear narratives are so 2017.
20 min: Ah, they’ve just shown the penalty shout again. Maitland-Niles went past Moses down the left, but clipped his own ankle while zipping past. A very good decision by the referee.
17 min: Maitland-Niles goes over in the Chelsea box. The crowd scream for a penalty kick. It looked like one, too, at first view, but no Arsenal player claims, so maybe not. Anyway, play is waved on, and after a bit of pinball, Sanchez whips a shot towards the bottom left from ten yards. Courtois gets fingertips to it, and what an intervention, because the ball clanks off the left-hand post, rolls all the way across to the bottom of the right-hand upright, thinks about spinning in off the woodwork, but rolls back instead and stays out. Courtois smothers on the line. How did that not go in?! Wow.
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14 min: This is farcical. Moses, deep on the Chelsea right, sprays a long ball down the middle. Chambers should cut it out, but he’s having a chat with Wilshere in the centre circle! A move straight out of the famous Harry Enfield sketch, Charles Charlie Charles, all that. It’s a wonder he didn’t have a fag on. And so Morata is clear. He makes it to the box, and attempts to sidefoot past the advancing Cech and into the bottom right. He screws it well wide of the post. What a miss! That was a complete nonsense from start to end.
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13 min: Hazard sashays in from the left, gliding across the front of the Arsenal area. But he can’t find room to shoot, and he can’t pick a pass. And the see-saw vibe continues, as Sanchez slips Maitland-Niles away down the left; the young man reaches the byline but his low fizzer is dealt with easily by Courtois.
11 min: This is lovely end-to-end fare. First Sanchez is found in space down the left; his looping ball into the centre is a touch too heavy to find Ozil, six yards out. Hazard then makes off down the left, enters the Arsenal area, and has a shot. Or was it a cross? Either way, it’s a corner that’s easily plucked from the sky by Cech.
9 min: Chelsea ping it around in Arsenal’s final third for what seems like an age. Suddenly Morata busies himself down the left channel and very nearly breaks clear into the area. Arsenal were mesmerised for a minute there.
7 min: Sanchez takes, looking for the top left. The ball deflects off the wall, and a rooted Courtois is relieved to see it fly wide right instead of into the top corner. It wasn’t too far away. The resulting corner is a total waste of time. Both teams have launched one decent attack, then, each following up with a nonsense of a set piece.
6 min: Ozil drops deep, picks up the ball and runs at Chelsea down the middle. He slips the ball to Lacazette on his left. The striker draws a foul from a clumsy Kante by cutting inside. A free kick in a dangerous position, 25 yards out and level with the left-hand post.
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5 min: Chelsea hog the ball, stroking it around the back awhile. Arsenal haven’t really got going yet. Wilshere snaps around a few ankles. Lacazette attempts to get on the end of a long ball down the right. But otherwise, a quiet start by the hosts.
2 min: Alonso jigs down the inside-left channel. He should feed Hazard into acres on the outside, but draws a foul from Wilshere instead. Chelsea take it quickly, Hazard dribbling past a snoozing Chambers and into the Arsenal box. The ball’s hacked out for a corner. Chelsea faff around with a short one, and immediately run the ball out of play.
And we’re off! Arsenal get the ball rolling, amid bedlam. Here’s Charles Antaki. “Old Moore’s Almanac for the start of 2018 gives us: ‘A once-mighty sage, enfeebled by time, will invoke hellfire on a man garbed in sombre black, and be cast out from the field of combat while his armies yield to forces of the hirsute’. Hard to fathom, as ever.” Happy new year, everyone!
The teams are out! And it’s a sight for sore eyes, with both teams wearing their iconic first-choice colours. Of course, it could be Chelsea sporting white sleeves, as the novel idea was first proposed to their manager David Calderhead by Daily Mail cartoonist Tom Webster in the 1930s. But the conservative Calderhead didn’t fancy making the change, and it was Arsenal’s Herbert Chapman who ran with it instead. But we digress. It’s noisy down Ashburton Grove way, as you’d expect. We’ll be off in a minute!
Antonio Conte speaks! “It is a London derby between two big teams. This type of game is always special for the players and fans. There is a good link between Azpilicueta and Morata [who have combined for six goals already this season]. Azpilicueta has a good right foot.”
Arsene Wenger is asked how much of a risk he’s taking by starting with Ozil. “I don’t know, but he’s been declared fit and trained yesterday. So I hope ... I think he’s 100 percent. He gives us fluidity in our game, and final balls in our final third. We are determined. Life is not always fair [a reference to the late penalty awarded against Arsenal at West Brom] and you have to deal with it, and this is a good moment to show how we can respond.”
Mesut Özil has passed his late fitness test and starts for Arsenal. He’s one of three changes to the side sent out at West Bromwich Albion on New Year’s Eve. Rob Holding and Ainsley Maitland-Niles also step up, with Alex Iwobi dropping to the bench, and Laurent Koscielny and Saed Kolasinac both injured.
Chelsea make four changes to the starting line-up named against a Stoke City Representative XI last Saturday. Antonio Rudiger, Danny Drinkwater, Willian and Pedro are relegated to the bench, with Andreas Christensen, Cesc Fabregas, Tiemoue Bakayoko and star turn Eden Hazard taking their places.
The teams
Arsenal: Cech, Chambers, Mustafi, Holding, Bellerin, Wilshere, Xhaka, Maitland-Niles, Ozil, Sanchez, Lacazette.
Subs: Mertesacker, Ospina, Walcott, Iwobi, Welbeck, Coquelin, Elneny.
Chelsea: Courtois, Azpilicueta, Christensen, Cahill, Moses, Fabregas, Kante, Bakayoko, Alonso, Hazard, Morata.
Subs: Caballero, Rudiger, Drinkwater, Pedro, Zappacosta, Willian, Batshuayi.
Referee: Anthony Taylor (Cheshire).
Preamble
This was the fixture, last season, that effectively decided the title race. Not quite in the way we might have imagined when Arsenal ran out easy 3-0 winners in September 2016, of course; Chelsea’s humiliation inspired Antonio Conte to give his defence a good old shoogle, and the rest is history. But it did decide the title race. Kind of.
There’ll be no similar legacy this time round. Chelsea’s title defence has been decent by any normal measure; problem is, Manchester City are setting some very abnormal standards right now. And in most years, Arsenal would still be on the fringes of the title race too. But all that’s realistically left on offer are positions two through four, and a place in next season’s Champions League. Hey, there are worse fates.
Chelsea are in pretty good nick. They’ve just seen off Brighton and Stoke, scoring seven goals in their two festive fixtures without reply, and are third in the table. They can grab second spot tonight with a win, though they’d still trail City by 14 points. How they must rue those unexpected defeats against Burnley, Crystal Palace and West Ham United. Arsenal are in similarly decent shape: just the one defeat in the league since early November, and that after giving David de Gea quite the workout.
So both teams will fancy their chances tonight. Arsenal because they’ve won 13 of their last 15 at home, Chelsea because they’ve won five times at the Emirates, a record no other visitor has bettered. There should be goals: Arsenal have scored in their last 24 Premier League outings here, for a start. There may be reds: there have been six sendings off in the last seven fixtures between these two clubs. And there must and shall be entertainment: this is still officially a festive game, after all. It’s third versus sixth. It’s a London derby. It’s on!
Kick off: 7.45pm GMT.
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