Arsenal overcame a major test to beat Chelsea as Mikel Arteta’s side came from behind to win 2-1 at the Emirates thanks to an inspired Kai Havertz
Arsenal overcame a major test to come from behind to beat Chelsea 2-1 at the Emirates to dent the Blues’ Premier League title aspirations.
The clash between north and west London was billed as a potential title clash given Chelsea’s summer spending and early form under Xabi Alonso, but Kai Havertz and Martin Odegaard scored either side of half-time to cancel out Morgan Rogers’ opener. The creative pair linked up brilliantly and are in red-hot form.
However, Arsenal were caught cold early as Morgan Rogers came back to haunt the Gunners inside two minutes. The England international rejected a move to the Emirates to sign for Chelsea in a £117million deal from Aston Villa this summer.
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His first touch of the game was a volley from outside the box that crept past David Raya to give the Blues the lead. But the Spaniard will feel he should have done better with the effort that wasn’t directly in the corner or fiercely struck.
Just like last season, Chelsea posed Arsenal a major question when Alonso followed suit of Liam Rosenior’s plan to leave four forwards up the pitch during a corner to force the Gunners to take players out of the box in a bid to stifle their set-piece dominance.
But the Gunners thought they had won the set-piece war when Riccardo Calafiori reeled away celebrating an apparent equaliser. However, VAR disallowed the goal due to Ezri Konsa being offside in the build-up.
Joao Pedro missed his clearance at the near post, causing a scramble at the far post and forcing Emi Martinez to save Gabriel’s effort. The ball fell to Konsa, who was in an offside position, as he turned the ball against the post, making Calafiori’s final touch into the net redundant.
The end-to-end game continued to flow as Raya was forced into a flying save and Pedro almost latched onto the end of a ball across the face of goal.
But Arteta’s side played their part too and did eventually equalise when Havertz haunted his former club again, striking the ball low and hard into the near post, which Martinez was weak in attempting to keep out.
The first-half was a frantic affair with nine shots in total between the two sides, and both managers would have been happy to get their players back in to reorganise.
And Arteta certainly took the chance to get his side to gain more control of the game as Arsenal emerged from the break dictating the proceedings, and enjoyed a quick start of their own.
More brilliance from Havertz created Odegaard’s go-ahead goal without the German even touching the ball. Christos Tzolis’ pass into the striker was dummied and completely sold Wesley Fofana. His skipper ran onto the end of the pass and smashed his effort past Martinez, already surpassing his entire goal tally of one in 36 games last season.
Havertz’s bright thinking shows exactly why Arteta has left Viktor Gyokeres out of the side at the start of the season. The German’s footballing brain vastly outweighs that of Gyokeres, who simply cannot link up with his team-mates in such a way.
Arteta did bring on the big Swede for his first minutes of the season as he replaced Havertz for the final 15 minutes, but Gyokeres’ efforts to ease the pressure on the counter only led to him giving the ball away to the away side.
Chelsea pressed for an equaliser as Arsenal again dropped back to protect what they had. But Raya pulled off a brilliant save to deny Estevao’s whipped effort from 20 yards as Chelsea were unable to find a late equaliser.