FA Cup roundtable: Chelsea and Arsenal last two standing
By Staff
Chelsea and Arsenal will play in the FA Cup final next month, but their two seasons could hardly have been more different
Chelsea beat Tottenham 4-2 on Saturday to advance to the FA Cup final, after Antonio Conte left Eden Hazard and Diego Costa on the bench. They’ll play Arsenal, who overcame Manchester City thanks to an extra time goal from Alexis Sanchez. In our weekly roundtable, FanSided’s soccer staff share their thoughts on the two finalists.
Chelsea are the 3-4-3 masters to Arsenal’s 3-4-3 students
James Dudko, @JamesDudko
It turns out Chelsea didn’t need a fresh approach after all. It appeared as though the Blues needed new ideas after being out-thought by Manchester United at Old Trafford in the Premier League last week. But Saturday’s 4-2 win over Tottenham in the FA Cup semifinal proved Chelsea already have everything they need to complete a league and cup double this season.
What the Blues’ bid for the double needs is the quality of match-winners like Eden Hazard, Diego Costa and Cesc Fabregas. All three came off the bench to push Chelsea past Spurs, with Hazard scoring the third, before Fabregas used his guile to produce the best move of the game en route to Nemanja Matic’s spectacular strike for the fourth.
A trio this talented is why Chelsea must believe they can gain revenge for their defeat to Arsenal in 2002’s final. Ironically, Chelsea will be facing a less refined version of themselves when they kick off against the Gunners on Saturday, May 27.
Arsenal reached the final after a 2-1 win over Manchester City at Wembley Stadium on Sunday, a result made possible by Gunners boss Arsene Wenger’s recent switch to playing three at the back. Wenger has adopted an almost identical 3-4-3 formation to the one Chelsea chief Antonio Conte has used to guide the Blues to the brink of only a second double in the club’s history.
Yet while Wenger’s Gunners are still finding their feet in the 3-4-3, Conte’s Chelsea are masters at it. Every player knows his position and his role, helping create a fluid symmetry that has made the Blues the most ruthlessly efficient team in England’s top flight.
No team in the land can match the prowess of Conte’s group as a counter-attacking force. Chelsea break at pace and pass swiftly, neatly and with intuition between the lines.
Arsenal are trying to mimic the same fluency on the break, but lack the partnerships to make it click. Their central midfield pairing of Granit Xhaka and Aaron Ramsey lacks the defensive discipline, physicality and street-wise smarts of Chelsea’s rugged tandem, N’Golo Kante and Matic.
Not only do the Gunners lack the same strong base Chelsea boast, they can’t match the Blues’ rapid and artful execution in attack either.
Costa may have lost his mojo in front of goal, but he still makes enough perceptive runs off the ball to dovetail superbly with Hazard’s flair and the direct pace of Pedro.
Contrast this trio’s rapport with the struggles Arsenal are experiencing, struggles rooted in centre-forward Olivier Giroud’s inability to play in behind and rotate with supporting double-act Alexis Sanchez and Mesut Ozil.
Welbeck can stretch teams with his pace and more varied movement, but the former Manchester United man is still woefully short of efficiency as a finisher. Ozil has the same tendency to wander centrally as Hazard, but doesn’t carry as potent or immediate a threat when he does.
Arsenal remain disjointed in their 3-4-3 shape, while Chelsea play it as second nature. Conte is also more firmly tied to the defensive aspect of a tactical structure designed to cede possession and create avenues for quick counters.
Wenger is playing the same way because he has to. He needs to stop the rot from a losing run that’s seen the Gunners go from title contenders to seventh since the calendar turned 2017. Yet you get the impression one of the last true believers in attractive, possession-based soccer isn’t totally committed to winning on a rationed diet.
If it’s a matter of who will abandon their counter-attacking approach with the prize getting closer in the final, count on Wenger blinking first.
As for Conte and Chelsea, they will merely do what they have done all season: stay committed to a cagey, subtle and efficient model for winning.
Arsene Wenger stays alive
Rory Masterson, @rorymasterson
Should he stay, or should he go? For several seasons now, the elephant consuming the room at Arsenal has been whether the club should continue on with its hardnosed, once-innovative manager, Arsene Wenger. Now more than ever, supporters’ calls for his removal are deafening, a white noise blurring perpetual pushes for the top four and, with a win Sunday over Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City, a run to this year’s FA Cup final.
Despite not having won the league title since 2004, Wenger keeps Arsenal competitive. To a point. Season after season, year after year, title hopes spring anew only to wilt with poor form and late-season collapses that have become so commonplace as to — again, and this is truly indicative of the club’s place under late-period Wenger — turn Arsenal into a verb.
On Sunday, the notoriously stubborn Wenger, a man committed to a distinct style that sometimes favors flash over results, showcased something new — a willingness to bend and adapt. Namely, he bought into old and made it new, utilizing a three-man defensive scheme he’d first implemented against Middlesbrough in a win in the middle of the week. That formation has been crucial for Chelsea and Tottenham this season, but Wenger has resisted it like he typically resists big-money transfers, another point of consternation for his club’s ravenous supporters.
It wasn’t a banner showing for the Gunners, with City controlling much of the midfield and breaking through first on a Sergio Aguero goal on a counter, but Arsenal weren’t bullied. Shortly after the opener, Nacho Monreal, whose slip-up at the edge of the box had led to Aguero’s goal just moments before, scored the equalizer, tagging the end of a cross to the far post.
It was a resilient moment, one which so often has alluded Arsenal under Wenger in league play, where the team typically saves its trademark moments for goalfests when feasting on relegation candidates. A quick response goal against a club of City’s caliber, under the iron grip of Guardiola?
That’s the stuff of dreams and title chases, too often Venn diagram circles with limited overlap this late in the year. That it occurred in a cup semifinal is, perhaps, more untimely luck than purposeful “saving the best for last,” but Arsenal never had the most striking sense of timing anyway.
With calls for #WengerOut gaining momentum, it makes sense for Arsenal to do what they’ve unwittingly built a brand doing: win at an inopportune time, undercutting the leverage the club’s board might have when the decision on Wenger’s future comes to pass. For his part, in a remarkable bit of sophistry in public, Wenger announced in March that he’d already made a decision, and that we’d all just have to wait for him to announce it. He may as well have announced that his mail usually arrives on time, or that stuffed animals are poor vessels for sterile peanut butter transport.
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After Wenger put that non-news out, he made the claim that Alexis Sanchez had already made a decision on his future too. This time, however, he felt obliged to throw in the part people care about, speculating that the star would stay. Whether Alexis does stay or not is immaterial with regard to Wenger, though it perhaps doesn’t go both ways.
Of note, the Chilean scored the winner in extra time against Manchester City, who have been linked to the player in transfer rumors (“Who among us…?,” etc.). No better way for Pep Guardiola to get a firsthand look at his past and possible future, certainly, than by watching it end his own cup run.