Arsenal were in a similar position at this time last year, as they chased first place Leicester City in the table and faced them in early-to-mid February. Arsenal even had the same referee for that match as they will for this one, Martin Atkinson. Atkinson, of course, gave Leicester a dodgy penalty, then made up for it with a soft second half red card and Danny Welbeck nabbed a late, dramatic winner. Then, Arsenal went on to ruin all of that momentum by losing a million times.
If Arsenal win this game, they won't suddenly become title favorites; they'll still be six points out, but that's manageable in February, if they can somehow stop playing like utter garbage (see: first half against Watford, first half against Preston, second half against Manchester City, most of the game at Bournemouth...) If Arsenal lose this game, then the gap is 12 points, and in my preview of the Bournemouth match, I said, "nine points is doable over 19 matches, but if that number climbs into double digits, then that's a hell of an ask." It's four games later and Arsenal have gained no ground.
Six points over 14 matches is still doable, nine is questionable, and 12 is a bridge too far.
Arsenal Squad News
Out: Ramsey (calf,) Elneny (Africa Cup,) Debuchy (match fitness,) Cazorla (Achilles)
Doubts: Oxlade-Chamberlain (knee)
Suspended: Xhaka (third of four, serious foul play / second red card)
We're really in the depths of it here with the holding midfield situation, which I'll get to in a second, but I have a request first. Please, for the love of God, Arsenal cannot start Olivier Giroud as a central forward in this game. The Frenchman has been excellent at times this season and has already won a ton of points for the club, but this is not the type of match in which he is historically successful as a target man. At the same time, look at the second half against Watford, in which Arsenal finally remembered how to play in midfield, then never had anybody in the box to win a ball in the final third. This is why Giroud is often best left as an impact sub.
As for the midfield, Watford's best player on Tuesday, Aaron Ramsey, pulled out with an injured calf early on, after deflecting in their first goal and meandering back on defense for their second. Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain came in and hurt his knee during the second half, though he completed a limpy 90 minutes. The Ox is expected to be available for tomorrow, while Aaron Ramsey will not. Mohamed Elneny did not feature for Egypt in their Africa Cup semifinal win over Burkina Faso on Wednesday, as he's nursing an injury of his own. He is a doubt for the final. Granit Xhaka remains suspended. Santi Cazorla remains hurt. Jack Wilshere remains on loan. Not a lot of options here; Francis Coquelin is dealing with a hamstring problem himself.
Hopefully Hector Bellerín is fit and ready to go at right back, because Gabriel, while serviceable, leaves a ton to be desired at the position. In fact, all of the back four has been struggling a bit lately, likely in large part due to the lack of shielding they're getting from the midfield. Bellerín is still struggling as he comes back from an ankle injury and was rested on Tuesday.
Predicted XI: Čech, Bellerín, Mustafi, Koscielny, Monreal, Coquelin, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Iwobi, Walcott, Özil, Alexis.
Chelsea Squad News
Out: None
Doubts: David Luiz (knee)
Because life is cruel, Antonio Conte has basically no injury concerns going into this match. David Luiz has a slight knee problem, but then again, he played 90 minutes and scored Chelsea's goal on Tuesday. So that means Conte has a full list of available players from which to select his XI.
Conte has been playing a 3-4-3, with César Azpilicueta, David Luiz, and Gary Cahill as the three center backs, Victor Moses and Marcos Alonso on the wings, and N'Golo Kanté and Nemanja Matić in the center of the midfield. Diego Costa starts up top, Eden Hazard starts on one side of the forward trio, and the other forward is the only question mark, whether it be Pedro or Willian.
There's not much else to say here. This is a strong XI, made stronger by the fact that they have incredible depth and no fixture congestion. We're looking at a potential second consecutive season in which the Premier League title winner was not playing in Europe at all and that worked to their advantage.
Predicted XI: Courtois, Azpilicueta, David Luiz, Cahill, Kanté, Matić, Moses, Alonso, Pedro, Hazard, Costa.
Current Form
Interestingly, if you look at the league form section at the top of the preview, which lists the last six league results in order, you will see that Arsenal and Chelsea have picked up the same number of points: 13 out of a possible 18. Both are through to the fifth round of the FA Cup as well, meaning Arsenal and Chelsea have matched each other exactly since Christmas (and since Chelsea's 13-game winning streak was snapped.)
Of course, when you're nine points out of first, matching the league leaders is not what you want to be doing or... you know, you'll finish nine points out of first. Since Arsenal will pick up playing in Europe again in the coming weeks, an obligation Chelsea does not have, this remains Arsenal's last decent shot at making up ground in one fell swoop.
Of note for this particular match is that Chelsea have won eight straight Premier League games at Stamford Bridge. To make that seem even more daunting, they've kept a clean sheet in six of them.
Match Facts
We can start with some good news here, as Arsenal won the the reverse fixture 3-0 at the Emirates in September. It feels so long ago. Arsenal jumped out to a huge lead, with Alexis Sánchez pouncing on a Gary Cahill error in the 11th minute before Theo Walcott doubled the lead three minutes later. Mesut Özil added a third before halftime.
In this match last year, Mike Dean and Diego Costa happened, as Chelsea won 2-0. Arsenal finished the match on nine men after Gabriel was sent off in the first for a kick-out at Diego Costa and Santi Cazorla picked up a second yellow 11 minutes from time. Kurt Zouma scored from a set piece on 53 minutes and a Calum Chambers own goal twisted the knife in injury time. Of course, Diego Costa should have been the one to be sent off for head-butting Laurent Koscielny in the first place, which would have changed the tenor of the entire match. The FA rescinded Gabriel's red card and slapped Costa with a three-match ban after the fact, but that doesn't rescue the three points, now does it?
Arsenal have not won at Stamford Bridge since that time John Terry fell down, which was October 29, 2011, a 5-3 Arsenal win. Chelsea have scored at least twice in seven consecutive games against Arsenal at the Bridge. Arsenal have only scored twice in those seven matches; one of them was the aforementioned 2011 win, the other was in January of 2013, in which Theo Walcott scored a second half consolation goal as Chelsea won 2-1. That match is mentioned again below...
The Referee
The referee is West Yorkshire-based Martin Atkinson. This is the fifth time Atkinson will take charge of an Arsenal-Chelsea match; Chelsea have won all four of the previous meetings. Someone tried to take me to task on Twitter with this statistic, trying to imply that I blamed him solely and not the players for those results, but that's a far too simplistic way of reading into a statistic like this, especially since Arsenal have a reputation of not showing up against Chelsea anyway.
So, let's go back through those four games, shall we? The first time Atkinson took charge of an Arsenal-Chelsea match, it was the 2009 FA Cup Semi-Final, in which Theo Walcott's opening goal was cancelled out by Florent Malouda and Didier Drogba scored a late winner. Not much to criticize in Atkinson's performance there; Arsenal basically beat themselves on the day.
The other three matches were all league fixtures. Chelsea won 2-1 at the Emirates in September of 2012 as the Blues scored twice from set pieces. You could really point to Vito Mannone being the goalkeeper as more of a reason Chelsea won that one as he was outplayed by Petr Čech at the other end.
Atkinson worked the reverse fixture at Stamford Bridge that January, also won 2-1 by Chelsea (as mentioned in Match Facts above,) but made some critical decisions in Chelsea's favor in that one: Francis Coquelin was blatantly fouled in the build-up to Chelsea's first goal and the second was a penalty where there had been minimal to no-contact. Both of those are essentially paraphrasings from Sean's recap of that match , rather than any sort of revisionist history.
The third was a 2-0 Chelsea win at the Bridge in 2014, which you may recall from being the time Arsène Wenger shoved José Mourinho. Sean's recap this time called Atkinson "a joke," though noted that both sides got away with tons.
Arsenal have seen Atkinson twice so far this season, once for their 4-1 win over Sunderland (in which he gave the Black Cats a penalty to make it 1-1 before Arsenal pulled away) and again for their 2-1 loss at Manchester City (in which both of City's goals were offside, but to be fair, Arsenal didn't deserve to win it either.)
Chelsea have two wins and a loss with Atkinson so far this season, losing 2-1 to Liverpool at home and beating Manchester United 4-0 and Tottenham Hotspur 2-0.Chelsea’s 3-0 defeat to Arsenal in September was their heaviest against them since April 1997 (also 3-0). They were previously unbeaten in nine Premier League games against Arsenal (W6 D3).
Arsenal have not done the double over Chelsea in the same season since 2003/04 - the season in which they last won the Premier League.
The last Chelsea manager to fail to win either of his first two league games
The 3-0 loss to Arsenal in September was
Antonio Conte’s heaviest league defeat since October 2010 when he was manager of Siena (0-3 vs Empoli).
Diego Costa has scored in two of his four league games against Arsenal and has been booked in the other two.
Chelsea have won eight successive Premier League home games – their best run in the competition since a sequence of 10 wins that ended in January 2015. The aggregate score in these eight games is 24-3 in Chelsea’s favour.

I sat in front.


Between the devil and the deep blue sea..




We won #IRemainTrueBlue #IStandWithTheBluesTillIKickBucket

We win some and loss some.

Guys come book space incase cc. femi4 pamcode Unlimited22 CaptPlanet SmellyAnus JefferyJamez fredoooooo
blackjah when ever I call u, u don't use to pick so I stopped calling you out.

optional1:
We win some and loss some.


Guys come book space incase
cc. femi4
pamcode
Unlimited22
CaptPlanet
SmellyAnus
JefferyJamez
fredoooooo

blackjah when ever I call u, u don't use to pick so I stopped calling you out.

I'm always here baby!


Last night hurt but i'm glad it happened sooner and at Spurs other than any other team. I'm sure the gaffer will go back to the drawing board and he'll surely plan for situations like this.


Oh and we need a couple more signings to freshen the squad.

CaptPlanet:




I'm always here baby!


Last night hurt but i'm glad it happened sooner and at Spurs other than any other team. I'm sure the gaffer will go back to the drawing board and he'll surely plan for situations like this.


Oh and we need a couple more signings to freshen the squad.

yea Yesterday is now history we look forward for a brighter future.

optional1:
We win some and loss some.


Guys come book space incase
cc. femi4
pamcode
Unlimited22
CaptPlanet
SmellyAnus
JefferyJamez
fredoooooo

blackjah when ever I call u, u don't use to pick so I stopped calling you out.

We always on ground ,on to the next .....
The better team won the game yesterday while the best team is on top of the league table. ...

fredoooooo:


We always on ground ,on to the next .....
The better team won the game yesterday while the best team is on top of the league table. ...

Yes oh we are rolling forward the title belong to us no matter what it takes to have it.

optional1:
We win some and loss some.


Guys come book space incase
cc. femi4
pamcode
Unlimited22
CaptPlanet
SmellyAnus
JefferyJamez
fredoooooo

blackjah when ever I call u, u don't use to pick so I stopped calling you out.

I'm here love. We win some and lose some and still top the table.. . ...

Unlimited22:

I'm here love. We win some and lose some and still top the table.. . ...

yeah... Thats the true nature of all games..

optional1:
We win some and loss some.


Guys come book space incase
cc. femi4
pamcode
Unlimited22
CaptPlanet
SmellyAnus
JefferyJamez
fredoooooo

blackjah when ever I call u, u don't use to pick so I stopped calling you out.

ehyah!!! am here now, but I on behalf of all of us is saying we are gonna come back strong against licester

we are coming strong oooo

blackjah:
ehyah!!! am here now, but I on behalf of all of us is saying we are gonna come back strong against licester

licester ke abi assnal

optional1:



licester ke abi assnal

we have assnal, liverfool, liecester, and some others in our next five

kiss their fucking arses, you blues!!!

blackjah:
we have assnal, liverfool, liecester, and some others in our next five

one by one no rush

optional1:




one by one no rush

ehen body dey hot me, I WAN count another thirteen game unbeaten

blackjah:
ehen body dey hot me, I WAN count another thirteen game unbeaten

abeg make ur blood nd body no hot yet oh...

optional1:



abeg make ur blood nd body no hot yet oh...

okay

SmellingAnus come book ur own space.

Adewumiopeyemi wey u dey.

W

optional1:
SmellingAnus come book ur own space.

thanks honey blues always...

i dey here up chelsea

optional1:
Adewumiopeyemi wey u dey.

SmellingAnus:
thanks honey blues always...

we seat in front b4 assnal fans wee start their noise.

adewumiopeyemi:
i dey here up chelsea

lets occupy front roll

optional1:


we seat in front b4 assnal fans wee start their noise.

yes o... Wise idea

SmellingAnus:
yes o... Wise idea

where are d true blues self.

optional1:



where are d true blues self.

dem go show face... Maybe dem dey busy/distracted at moment...

[quote author=optional1 post=52556905]I sat in front.

Between the devil and the deep blue sea.[/quote

na only chelshit fans u der call

optional1:
We win some and loss some.


Guys come book space incase
cc. femi4
pamcode
Unlimited22
CaptPlanet
SmellyAnus
JefferyJamez
fredoooooo

blackjah when ever I call u, u don't use to pick so I stopped calling you out.

u nor fit call Mhi bcoz mha club wan play one yeye chelshit

upppppppppppp0ppppppppppppppppp arsenalllllllllllllllllllllllllllll