One win in 15: Chelsea have become the new Arsenal and Arsenal the new Chelsea | OneFootball

Chelsea are almost four full seasons into their new era, but the increasing experience we expected to see isn’t yet here.

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With Chelsea set to face Arsenal later today, Oliver Kay has written a superb piece for the Athletic looking at how the two clubs have switched places in the last 20 years.

Arsenal used to be a team full of kids, eternally hopeful that they were about to achieve something great but ultimately bullied by Chelsea’s bigger, older and wiser team.

Now the Blues are in that position – they’ve beaten Arsenal once in 15 meetings since January 2020.

The difference, which makes all this so much worse, is that Arsenal were forced into that strategy by a period of low spending. While Chelsea have lavished unprecedented sums on players year after year.

Chelsea’s core still unable to provide the experience needed to youngsters

Benoit Badiashile with Moises Caicedo. (Photo by Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)

“The more senior players [at Chelsea] should, in theory, be setting standards and taking their younger team-mates along with them, but appear unable to do either,” Kay writes.

He points out that in two years since Mauricio Pochettino, the average age of Chelsea’s starting XI has increased by just seven months.

“This was Arsenal’s existence in the late 2000s and early 2010s, building for a brighter future that never came, neglecting weaknesses in their team to add another beguiling young creative talent to their midfield or forward line,” he adds, a painfully accurate conclusion from the perspective of many fans.

In other news…

Estevao has been a huge hit, and the stats show he’s rated as one of the best signings of the season.

Check out the latest edition of Simon Phillips’ SPTC podcast here: