Arsenal vs Chelsea: The One That Arsenal Scored Against Chelsea

Gary Cahill A man in desperate need of a spa day

I think it’s safe to say that Saturday did not go to plan. Unless the plan was to show complete and utter derision to the very notion of organisation. If that were the case then I think Chelsea did an admirable job in those opening 45 minutes.

Branislav Ivanovic was quoted on the club’s site after the game saying that the players didn’t believe in what they were doing at the start of the match. What does that even mean?! That despite an actual decent run of results under a seasoned and decorated manage, on this particular occasion you didn’t quite buy into what he was selling?

Even if Antonio Conte had a terrible plan in place to face Arsenal - it would have been miles better than literally anything that happened in front of our eyeballs for 40 minutes. It got to the point that Chelsea looked so bewildered that Petr Cech briefly considered letting in a pity goal or two. 

That doesn’t mean that Conte is completely autonomous from the result or performance. He’s noble in trying to impart a new way of defending Chelsea’s players. It’s been effective in the past and can be a formidable system here in the future. Playing out from the back is great, when you have the players to do it. These are not the players. Or at least not yet.

Paid professionals or not, it takes time to learn a new way of doing things -- especially if you’ve spent a lifetime doing it in a completely different way. Sometimes you just need to stick a boot through the ball and get it up the pitch and out of danger. The pressure to impress has broken Gary Cahill.

Cahill has been feeling the pressure since Chelsea started to aggressively pursue central defenders last summer to ‘replace John Terry’. Re-signing David Luiz, knowing that Kurt Zouma is due back from injury and Chelsea continue to look for another CB has done funny things to the northerners mind. Mind games! 

He wants to keep his place and impress the boss so is trying desperately to adhere to what he’s been told. However his attempts to play the ball out have mostly landed at the feet of the opposition resulting in a goal in each of the last 3 games. The pressure on him was clear in his lengthy rant about the Leroy Fer foul at Swansea. He tried to mask his own culpability in that goal and said at least a half dozen times in that interview what a great game he’d been having. He really wanted everyone, but especially Conte, to think he’d been brilliant up to that point.

Cahill is a player who needs someone like John Terry alongside of him. His positional sense has always been in question, but Terry is loud enough and bossy enough to keep Cahill focused. Left to his own devices his efforts to impress will only have the exact opposite effect and continue to hurt Chelsea.

Of course I could be completely wrong and Gary Cahill is in fact taking one for the team -- or at least teammate. When it was announced that David Luiz was to return to the club, pundits up and down the country were rubbing their hands gleefully lying in wait to criticise his X-Box operated ways. Julien Laurens skewered Luiz on deadline day - it came across oddly personal. Either way, tip of the hat to Cahill for being such a lovely person that he has eased Luiz back into the country with relative ease. 

Of course Gary Cahill wasn’t the only one at fault for the loss to Arsenal (or Liverpool  or the draw at Swansea). There are issues all over the pitch that highlight poor organisation or players who have not come to terms with what their role is meant to entail. Even N’Golo Kanté who is a glorious player and was tireless in patrolling Leicester’s midfield last season was done for pace by Michael Oliver. 

Terry can’t be the only player who has the ability to shout and organise. I can’t help but think if Petr Cech had been at the other end of the pitch on Saturday the result would have swung a different way. Or at least 3 cheap goals wouldn’t be let in. He’d do what he could to give that rag tag bunch of misfits in his box a little structure so the likes of Theo Walcott weren’t shooting for fun. Rather than a disinterested want away who couldn’t sort out his sock drawer.

Thankfully a result like this against Arsenal only comes around once every five years. Roll on 2021.

jb xx