Arsenal vs. Chelsea: The same, but different as Arteta and Alonso echo Mourinho and Wenger

Arsenal vs. Chelsea: The same, but different as Arteta and Alonso echo Mourinho and Wenger originally appeared on The Sporting News.
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Arsenal and Chelsea‘s battle for London supremacy has been one of the great enduring Premier League storylines over the years and there are some familiar narrative patterns heading into Sunday’s meeting at Emirates Stadium.

Both teams have won their opening two Premier League games. One swashbuckling but brittle, seven scored and five against. The other a picture of obduracy and yet to concede a goal or barely a chance of note.

This sounds a lot like the terms upon which Arsene Wenger and Jose Mourinho engaged their simmering enmity during the mid 2000s, only the roles have reversed.

New Chelsea manager Xabi Alonso has put his early-season faith in a swaggering front three of Cole Palmer, Joao Pedro and record signing Morgan Rogers. All of them produced sublime moments in the 4-3 win over Brighton last weekend, mixing Alonso’s clearly desired attacking patterns with some wonderfully off-the-cuff play. Pedro and Palmer have scored in each of the first two matches. Rogers has a goal and an assist.

They should be a problem for any defence in the game. Even Arsenal. Maybe.

MORE:Shocking Chelsea stat that underlines Xabi Alonso’s Enzo Fernandez conundrum

Are Arsenal boring?

“One goal is normally enough for us as we are so solid at the back,” said Bukayo Saka after he scored the only goal in Arsenal’s 1-0 win at Aston Villa on Monday. That match surely disabused anyone of the notion that, now his team are champions, Mikel Arteta might take off the handbrake and preside over something approximating freewheeling attacking fare.

Villa endured a torrid transfer window of hurried change to their Europa League-winning side, with Rogers just one of their key men to head for pastures new. After taking the lead through Saka’s wonderfully constructed goal, Arsenal shut the game down. Mikel Merino, Martin Zubimendi and Bruno Guimaraes came on as a trio of midfield doormen. Behind them, centre-backs seemed to be replicating by the minute – blocking, intercepting and clearing everything.

Arsenal were linked with a marquee forward over the summer, a player to elevate their capabilities in the final third. Rogers was on their radar, along with, variously, Bradley Barcola, Vinicius Junior and Julian Alvarez. But none arrived and Arteta signed another high-end central defender who can also play at full-back, as Ezri Konsa became part of the Villa exodus.

The obvious question is why on earth would Arteta change? The way he evolved his team into its current muscular, uncompromising form won Arsenal their first Premier League title for 22 years. It took them to within a couple of penalty kicks of a first Champions League crown. It would be crazy to pivot to some sort of Harlem Globetrotters vibe on the back of all that.

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Who had the best defence in Premier League history?

Even at this early stage, it’s tempting to wonder whether Arsenal might place Chelsea’s all-time Premier League record of 15 goals conceded across at 38-game Premier League season under threat. That was, of course, Mourinho’s masterwork. 

But the second team on the list of best defences is Arsenal. Not the George Graham “1-0 to the Arsenal,” “Boring, boring Arsenal” vintage, but Wenger’s team from 1998/99, who were breached only 17 times but drew too many games to deny a treble-bound Manchester United.

This was a time when Wenger still had most of Graham’s great defence marshalled by Tony Adams in front of England goalkeeper David Seaman on the books. He had the best of both worlds. And the reality remains that the greatest teams can do both. Arteta’s Arsenal and their lack of teeth in front of goal felt like it became a regular talking point every four or five games last season (“are they really that good?”), and expect that to follow the present talk of a procession as English summer tumbles into fall.

It’s mischievous enough to cast Alonso as the Wenger in this fledgling rivalry without pointing out Bayer Leverkusen won the title with an unbeaten season in 2023-24 – ‘Invincibles’ as Arsenal were in England 20 years earlier. But the team that attacked with such abandon and made a star of Florian Wirtz also conceded just 24 goals, 15 fewer than the next best as they swept to glory.

Alonso knows he can’t lay down seven-goal thrillers every other week for our entertainment, and he has simply applied common sense by leaning on the sure thing of Palmer, Rogers and Joao Pedro as he gets his ducks in a row behind them. Pragmatism comes in many shades. For now, Arteta and Alonso’s own versions of this make for a delicious clash of styles in a mouthwatering role-reversal London derby.