Gunners Get Jammed

Arsenal 0 - 1 Chelsea.

Disrupting Arsenal’s title bid is a sweet bonus to the three points, but it’s not enough to gloss over the poor win Chelsea eked out over ten-man Arsenal.

Costa struck in the 23rd, five minutes after Mertesacker’s red card but from that moment on Chelsea were negative in their approach to close out the game. There were too many chances for Arsenal to get back into the game that it looked like an even game.

This exact sort of imbalance happened at Stamford Bridge earlier this season when Arsenal were again down to ten men, and later nine. Chelsea made them look like likely candidates to re-enter the game, and that’s completely against conventional logic when one team has suffered a red card. It’s either interpreted as the eleven men of Chelsea are extremely complacent, or the ten men of Arsenal are supremely talented.

So this seven-game unbeaten run of games under Hiddink continues, and the irony of the Premier League has its last laugh as the interim manager gets one over on the veteran. The picture of Chelsea’s season is both murkier and closer to reaching closure with this win over an unlucky Arsenal.

The transfer window shuts in seven days, and it’s looking more like it’s going to be one of the quietest ones, even though Chelsea should have taken this as an opportunity to shed the excess and focus on creating a new team. Certain players who haven’t even made an appearance under Hiddink would be better off rebuilding their careers elsewhere, and some players who seem to perennially fail are failing to impress when given the chance.

Players like Ramires and Remy desperately need to go as they are neither here nor there in terms of utility to the team. Remy seems to have no concept of what the offsides rule is in football, and Ramires is like the awkward middle child of the Chelsea family that has an identity crisis as to whether he is more defensive or offensive.

This is a small win in the scheme of things, and is more heavily weighed on Arsenal’s future than ours, but the Blues are not out of the woods yet. Getting one over on the Gunners should be indicative of a positive movement of the team but that’s not the case. Chelsea are still a shadow of what they should be.