Arsene Wenger must wish every Arsenal game was at Wembley.
This was their ninth victory in a row here and one, albeit achieved in circumstances diluted by the nature of a pre-season game, which will lighten the mood ahead of Friday’s return to Emirates Stadium.
It needs to. After months of weekly denials that speculation over his future had any impact on his team as they failed to secure Champions League football for the first time in his 21 years at the club, Wenger belatedly admitted during pre-season it was a “mistake” to cast such a long shadow over a side lacking in consistency and belief.
It was a refrain he repeated yesterday after Arsenal overcame a Chelsea team oddly underwhelming and underprepared for the annual curtain-raiser, a result which despite the fine margins of a penalty shoot-out somehow reinforces Antonio Conte’s summer frustrations and galvanises Wenger.
The celebrations after Olivier Giroud’s winning spot-kick spoke volumes. Despite a largely sedentary pace with several players missing from both sides, Arsenal reacted to Giroud’s defining moment with genuine joy.
Wenger shook his fists with vigour as those donned in red ran towards supporters at pace befitting of a greater prize, perhaps an indication of the internal battle of wills in which this much maligned group is engaged.
They deserved their victory after an impressive show of character which continues the momentum created by winning nine of their final 10 matches last season climaxing with the FA Cup, before breaking their club record to sign Alexandre Lacazette and, so far at least, strong-arming Alexis Sanchez to honour his existing contract.
The Gunners were worse off without Sanchez and Mesut Ozil in their starting line-up but they still found the quality and character to see off last season’s Premier League champions.
So has that negative air around the club finally dissipated? “It’s down to us to put a positive atmosphere around the team,” Wenger told Standard Sport. “A lot was created by my own situation. Maybe I made a mistake. Overall I believe that it’s down to us. The trend has always to come from the team.”
Wenger’s very presence as manager continues to divide Arsenal supporters and it is imperative they start the season well to help justify the club’s decision to hand him a new two-year contract.
They need more in the transfer market but it would enhance Wenger’s case were his new signings to fire from the outset and although Sead Kolasinac was a much less trumpeted arrival than Lacazette, his showing at Wembley provided early evidence he could quickly earn cult status.
Kolasinac cancelled out Victor Moses’s 46th-minute opener with a debut goal which capped an all-action performance featuring marauding runs, (over) zealous tackling and a relentless desire to thrive.
Lacazette was more peripheral, although he almost opened the scoring with a clever effort midway through the first half, finding space inside the box to curl a shot around Gary Cahill but against Thibaut Courtois’s post.
Wenger will expect Lacazette to be sharper for Friday’s League opener against Leicester but whatever improvements Arsenal need to begin their campaign on the front foot, it appears Chelsea must make greater strides.
Conte made little secret of his frustrations with the club’s summer transfer business during pre-season and he was a picture of irritation in his post-match press conference, bemoaning the refereeing decisions which saw Willian booked for diving when claiming a penalty for a challenge by Hector Bellerin and Pedro sent off for a badly-timed tackle on Mohamed Elneny.
He refused to answer further questions about Chelsea’s squad size — repetitive though they were, the Italian only invited further scrutiny of this area by making his unhappiness so public — but their status as champions buys him time with supporters who streamed out of Wembley before the penalty shoot-out was complete.
An advantage of the new ‘ABBA’ system trialled yesterday — where one team take the first penalty, the other take two and they continue on in pairs — is that it eases fan congestion in leaving the ground.
Thibaut Courtois and Alvaro Morata both missed to give their opponents a 2-1 advantage with two Arsenal penalties to come. By the time Giroud converted, the Chelsea end was less than half full. Conte was adamant that Courtois could rightly be considered one of his five best takers but all is clearly not well in the camp at present.
It is difficult to reconcile Conte’s complaints about a small squad at a club where they have 30 players out on loan and rarely give youth a chance but these are the growing pains of a team transitioning back into the demands of four competitions after a year focusing only on domestic football.
Ultimately, this was Wenger’s day, once again, at Wembley.