Arsenal need Raya, Sanchez and good fortune to stumble past infuriating Chelsea | OneFootball

Arsenal needed good fortune, one very good goalkeeper and one very bad goalkeeper to beat the most infuriating football team in the Premier League.

If there’s a noise to sum up this season and to remember it should Arsenal win the title, it would surely have to be the roar of approval from the Emirates crowd at Arsenal winning a corner. It’s a guttural call to arms of Arsenal’s most potent weapon and serves as a harrowing omen for opposition teams and what Gary Neville kept insisting was a “very small” Chelsea side in particular midway through the first half, roughly a minute after Arsenal had stolen the lead from their last one.

Robert Sanchez’s desperation to prove his composure by putting Chelsea in frequent peril besides, the Blues had had the better of the opening stages. Liam Rosenior sprang a shock by having Cole Palmer come from the left and both he and Enzo Fernandez consistently found space between the lines as Martin Zubinendi was overrun.

Arsenal needed something to kick them into gear, and as had happened on an extraordinary eight previous occasions this season, that something came in the form of the opening goal from a corner. “You could smell it” as Neville said on commentary, as we watched the already imposing Arsenal players grow a couple of inches as they jogged into the Chelsea box to be met by their relatively diminutive markers.

Gabriel Magalhaes has to be up there among the Premier League’s best-ever players from attacking set pieces. Reece James is quite the unit, but there was never any doubt that the Brazilian was getting to that ball in competition with the Chelsea captain, leaping high above him to assist centre-back partner William Saliba.

It wasn’t at all long ago that it felt as though a team was more in danger of conceding through a swift counter-attack than scoring from their own corner. It took an astonishingly long time for professional football clubs to realise that the repeatable skill of delivering a corner or set piece could be of such use. Arsenal remain the masters, but the secret is very much out.

Quite how Declan Rice wasn’t penalised on the basis of it being him that ‘initiated contact’ with Jorrel Hato before forcing David Raya into a brilliant save after elbowing James’ corner towards his own goal we don’t know, but justice was done from the very next corner and the very next wicked James delivery. Piero Hincapie rose and flicked the ball on into his own net.

What followed was a similar Arsenal stasis as preceded their opening goal. Joao Pedro could easily have scored from another James corner and the quite brilliant Blues skipper then swung in a delightful cross from open play that Pedro flicked just beyond Palmer as Rosenior had evidently told his players at half-time that even a slight increase in attacking intent would put the hosts under real pressure.

In those periods it’s as though Arsenal are waiting for a set piece to snap them out of their inertia and it arrived courtesy of a Timber dive. The free-kick resulted in a corner, which of course landed on Timber’s head as Robert Sanchez barely even mustered a scramble in an attempt to get to Rice’s delivery. The Chelsea goalkeeper would have claimed it comfortably had he not made the ill-advised decision to stoop as the ball came in.

This was essentially a 90+ minute test case for the importance of having a world class goalkeeper. While Sanchez struggled, David Raya was superb once again. He made that remarkable save from Rice’s elbow, denied Enzo Fernandez from distance and illustrated his extraordinary elasticity to stretch and push Alejandro Garnacho’s devilish cross around the post in stoppage time. He also produced a ridiculous double save to deny Pedro even deeper into stoppage time, not knowing the Brazilian was in an offside position.

Chelsea “Arsenal-ed” Arsenal from set pieces and gave at least as good as they got in open play. The difference was the goalkeepers and – for an absurd ninth time this season – a red card; another ludicrous one that Rosenior could do nothing but shake his head in response to on the bench. Pedro Neto’s complaints were as absurd as his decision not to challenge Gabriel Martinelli in a foot race.

The visitors had 65 per cent possession after going down to ten men and Chelsea fans will once again be left with a feeling of ‘what could have been’ had they had their full compliment until the final whistle. They’re a hugely infuriating team to watch, let alone manage.

Because Arsenal were there for the taking pretty much throughout here. After sweeping the worst team in the Premier League aside they were back to generally aimless attacking short of winning free-kicks and set pieces. And that’s of course a perfectly valid if uninspiring way of winning games and titles. Particularly at this point in the season, the how doesn’t matter.

The concern will be a newfound defensive fragility and an all-too heavy reliance on Raya to deny opposition teams and good fortune in the form of dives and goalkeeping blunders to get the job done. Because as he proved against Wolves, Raya isn’t perfect, and at some point between now and the end of the season luck won’t be on their side.