“I thought we played pretty well… but we lost 4-0. In the build-up, we did well and we had our position game, but as soon as we got to their box it was over.
“How is that possible?”
It was a conundrum PSV manager Peter Bosz contemplated with The Athletic last season following his side’s Champions League group-stage defeat to Arsenal in London.
“Me and my coaches studied them: ‘What is it that they do differently to us?’. The answer is that they are outstanding in the opposition box but also their own. They get a lot of players behind the ball as soon as possible. They do it with 10 or 11 but we only did it with six or seven, and then the distances are bigger. It’s the transition.”
For PSV that night in September 2023, see Chelsea on Sunday.
There were high-brow coaching theories on display in that London derby at the Emirates Stadium, but the main reason Arsenal limited Enzo Maresca’s team to their lowest xG figure of the season was fundamental and basic: running hard after losing the ball.
On eight occasions, Arsenal gave possession away in opposition territory, leaving their defence exposed, but on none of them did Chelsea manage a shot on goal.
“We continue to do a lot of the things defensively so well,” said Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta afterwards, though he also lamented the “huge advantages” his team “gave away” in attacking positions that put them in a vulnerable position. “Then we have to try back 70 metres, and on that phase probably we’ve been one of the best teams in the world today because we were unbelievable the way we’ve done it.”
Arsenal delivered a masterclass in how to recover after losing the ball last Sunday, and it is that collective endeavour which has contributed to them conceding the lowest xG and fewest shots on target in the Premier League this season.
One of the best examples of that commitment to tracking back came when Gabriel Martinelli gave it away near the centre circle in the first half. Pedro Neto was played down the wing, at which point Chelsea had five players up in support of the ball versus six Arsenal defenders.
But by the time the Portuguese winger delivered a cross, Arsenal had six players inside their own penalty area compared to Chelsea’s three and so were able to defuse the attack.
Sunday’s first half presented multiple opportunities for Chelsea to break quickly on Arsenal. At times, such as the example below, they found the first pass to break the immediate counter-press, which is what happened when Moises Caicedo turned Martin Odegaard, then spread the ball wide to Marc Cucurella.
What captures the difference in intensity is the speed at which Thomas Partey, Declan Rice and Leandro Trossard sprint back (slide 6) to help crowd out Chelsea.
Here, the west Londoners go from having a five-v-five in the opposition half to being outnumbered seven-v-five by the time Christopher Nkunku receives the ball at the edge of Arsenal’s box. Chelsea tried to work it around to the other side but Trossard did the hard yards to shuttle across and help Myles Lewis-Skelly double up against Jadon Sancho.
The reaction of the players who were closest to the ball was key to Arsenal smothering Chelsea in the opening half an hour.
When Lewis-Skelly overran the ball and Neto was found in space, it looked like a threatening situation but centre-back Gabriel busted a gut to support full-back Jurrien Timber and prevent it being a one-v-one situation.
This forced Neto back and that was the trigger for Odegaard to press the backward pass. Another three players joined and within 13 seconds of winning it back and launching a counter-attack, Chelsea goalkeeper Roberto Sanchez was forced to kick the ball long.
As a dominant team who employ inverted full-backs at times, when Arsenal lose possession they run the risk of players being caught in unfamiliar positions.
That happened just seven minutes into the Chelsea game when William Saliba’s pass into midfield was cut out, forcing Lewis-Skelly and Partey into acting as makeshift centre-backs. They reorganised quickly to deny space in the central area and, again, the willingness of Trossard and Mikel Merino, both playing in the forward line, to sprint back meant Arsenal had the numerical advantage in just a few seconds.
Arsenal’s defensive intensity, as seen against Chelsea, is one of the reasons why they have such a foothold in any game they enter.
Their solid base means they rarely look likely to lose a match by a sizeable margin. Indeed, they have only been beaten by more than a single goal seven times in all competitions in the past two seasons. Their most recent loss by more than two goals was on May 14, 2023 — almost two years ago.
But the effectiveness of their counter-pressing has slowed down since their breakout season in 2022-23. They were winning the ball back within eight seconds of losing it around 37 per cent of the time, but last season that fell to around 32 per cent and in this one it has slipped further to around 28 per cent.
There has been a drop-off, too, when it comes to direct attacks after winning possession, as the horizontal axis in the graphic below shows.
Their defensive performance against Chelsea stood out because they completely snuffed out the opposition’s counter-attacking threat in the way Arsenal did so regularly last season.
It has not been quite as difficult to pose problems for Arsenal in transition this year. The inconsistency of selection is part of the explanation but Partey at the base of midfield instead of Rice, as he was for the first half of last season, does not provide the same athleticism.
West Ham were able to score their winner through Jarrod Bowen last month after he won the ball at the edge of his own penalty area and was allowed to carry it 20 yards without being pressed. Aaron Wan-Bissaka then took it on all the way to the byline without Riccardo Calafiori engaging him and Bowen headed in his cross.
Crucially, Arsenal did not have the density of bodies then that they had against Chelsea, with just five players to West Ham’s three.
Gabriel and Saliba are key to the aggressive high line which allows Arsenal to press high up when they lose the ball. They have the pace and one-v-one ability to cope with being exposed in space, but a few times this season they have been caught square.
Newcastle’s Alexander Isak took advantage of that in January’s first leg of the Carabao Cup semi-final, for example.
At Old Trafford last month, they also struggled to prevent Manchester United gaining distance from counters, particularly down the Arsenal left. However, the determination to get back and prevent an easy final ball was still there and they were mostly able to crowd the hosts out.
There are no passengers allowed in Arteta’s team.
That policy has not changed, but after a few more chinks in the armour on the break had appeared this season, that win against Chelsea was a timely reminder of how suffocating they can be when every player is dialled in to the danger.
(Top photo: Julian Finney via Getty Images)
