In football, there are perhaps two types of crisis. There is the Arsenal type that festers for years until after a decade of stagnation and low-level grumbling you suddenly find all your best players are out of contract and you are battling Everton for sixth place. And there is the Chelsea type that bubbles up from nowhere, threatens to derail everything, and then blows itself out just as suddenly as it arrived.
Whatever was going on at Stamford Bridge in August essentially ceased to affect performances on the pitch as soon as Antonio Conte put on a suit again; the semiotics of a Chelsea manager’s dress sense remain a fertile area of research. The squad still looks a little slender to compete in both Premier League and Champions League, which may lead to problems later in the season, but for now Chelsea look set fair, particularly given Eden Hazard’s return from an ankle injury.
Much was made last season of the efficacy of their back three, but at least as important as what it meant in defensive terms was the platform it provided for their forward line. It is easy, in these days of endless glitzy transfers, to be seduced by the personalities in a forward line: Mbappé, Cavani and Neymar; Suárez, Messi and Dembélé; Ronaldo, Benzema and Bale; Salah, Firmino and Mané. What marks out the best sides, though, is the way their stellar names are integrated into the team. No matter how stellar the names, if there is no cohesion between the front three and the other seven, the whole will collapse like a badly constructed cottage loaf.
It’s that level of organisation, perhaps, that represents the major difference between Chelsea and Arsenal, who meet on Sunday at Stamford Bridge for the first time this season. Whether, in an abstract sense, Pedro Rodríguez, Álvaro Morata and Hazard represent a better trio than Alexis Sánchez, Alexandre Lacazette and Mesut Özil (not that the three have yet played together, but sub in Danny Welbeck where appropriate) is debatable, but what is clear is that Chelsea are more effective as a unit.
That remains true even with the continued absence of Diego Costa. After his awkward debut in the Community Shield, Morata has settled quickly with three goals and two assists, all of them headed, in just 278 minutes of play in the Premier League. There are countless examples of players who have arrived from less physical leagues with a reputation for aerial power and found that the gifts that had previously made them dominant render them nothing more than average in England – Mauro Boselli, Denis Stracqualursi, Fernando Morientes; even Didier Drogba took a year or so to adapt – but Morata is seemingly unfazed.
There have been times, it’s true, when he has looked a little uncomfortable operating with his back to goal, and it may be that his aerial strength is more in converting crosses than in holding the ball up but so far he has won 1.9 aerial duels out of 4.2 attempted per 90 minutes played. It is a small sample size, admittedly, but that compares favourably with his predecessor in the centre-forward role, Costa, who over last season won 1.3 out of 4.5 aerial duels attempted.
Morata, in fact, generally matches up pretty well against Costa. The only metric in which the former Atlético striker notably outshines the new man is that of being fouled: defenders, for some reason, were around four and a half times more likely to kick Costa than they are Morata.
Those performances have come despite Hazard’s lay-off. Given the Belgian was by some way Chelsea’s most dangerous creator last season – 16 goals and five assists – there is every reason to suppose Morata will become even more dangerous now Hazard is back. Morata perhaps lacks the mongrel of Costa, the capacity to niggle a goal out of nothing, but it may be that his interplay is even more effective.
The benefit of the 3-4-2-1 system is the freedom it allows the two inside-forwards, the fact they can play wide or central or somewhere in between, a liberation on which both Hazard and Pedro have thrived. The former Barcelona forward arrived at Chelsea in 2015 in the midst of Mourinho’s meltdown and at first was rather overshadowed by Willian, whose consistency and robustness seemed more appropriate to the situation at hand. The Brazilian only fell out of the side when he returned home as a result of a family bereavement last October, but so effective has Pedro been since that he seems the natural first choice. Last season brought nine Premier League goals and nine assists, his energetic elegance ideal for exploiting the gaps the 3-4-2-1 is so good at exposing.
It is that flexibility that makes those players so hard to pick up as they drift into the crannies between the holding midfielders and the full-backs, something that challenges even a well-drilled side with an imposing presence in that area. Arsenal, it goes without saying, are not such a side.
Yet it is not just the perennial post-Patrick Vieira, post-Gilberto Silva hole that should be of concern. Is there any sense of how Lacazette fits in to the forward line? The idea of him operating centrally while Sánchez buzzes off him and Özil slides through-balls to a pair of rapid team-mates is admittedly beguiling. Sánchez did much to quell doubts about his commitment having failed to force a move to Manchester City with his performance against Cologne on Thursday, when his legs moved in a familiar blur and he put Arsenal ahead with a clinical shimmer from the left and precisely arced shot.
Two questions, though, immediately rear up. First, does that make Arsenal any better at defending from the front, an area in which Chelsea excel? And second, given Sánchez and Özil are out of contract at the end of the season, is there any real point investing the time and effort required to develop the mutual understanding that great forward lines require?
Arsenal, as they have done for a decade, seem locked in perpetual transition, always waiting – waiting for the stadium debt to be paid off, waiting for the young talents to mature, waiting for Arsène Wenger to sign a new contract, waiting to find out what happens to Sánchez and Özil. Procrastination has become a way of life at the Emirates, tomorrow’s jam forever tantalisingly out of reach.
As ever with Arsenal these days, a sense of woolliness undermines them. The theory looks good but in practice it all seems terribly vague. Chelsea, by contrast, once the grumbles about transfers blew by, have looked just as sharp and focused as they did last season. Forward lines, transfers, teams themselves, even crises are often largely a matter of leadership.
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