It is surely too soon to frame Arsenal and Chelsea as a potential clash at the top of the table. In each of the last two seasons the first meeting between these two London rivals took on a framing of who might be contenders only for the Blues to spend the following weeks making any such assessment seem very premature.
Whether or not this is a clash between the champions and one of their nearest challengers need not matter though. This is a game as replete with storylines as any in the Premier League this season. From a grand rivalry that has swung as emphatically in Arsenal’s favor lately as it did Chelsea in their prime, to the tight bond between the men in the dugouts via the transfer business that could prove to be a serious talent swing to West London or an almighty overpay, there is a lot to be found in the weeds of this weekend’s games.
1. How do Arteta and Alonso handle their new reality?
In Mikel Arteta and Xabi Alonso, Arsenal and Chelsea field the gold-standard exemplars for rookie head coaches in the 2020s. The two natives of San Sebastian, Spain — who along with Liverpool boss Andoni Iraola began a lifetime in football on the concrete pitches of grassroots club Antiguoko Kirol Elkartea — are among the few to have smashed what was beginning to seem like the triple or quadruple-glazed ceiling in a sport stratified by wage expenditure. Both now face different realities, even if for Arteta the surroundings have not changed.
Two years ago at Bayer Leverkusen Xabi Alonso achieved the unimaginable, not just ending Bayern Munich’s stranglehold on the Bundesliga, but doing so at a club defined by recent failures in Bayer Leverkusen. Oh, and he won his silverware without losing a game domestically. Three hundred miles away, his friend Arteta was inspired. “First of all, the courage,” the Arsenal manager said when asked what he had learned from watching Alonso’s success from afar.
“Obviously, we’ve known each other for so long; we have experienced different countries, different moments, and just to go abroad and deliver what he has done, the same with Andoni as well, I think it’s remarkable. It shows you that I think doing what you feel and how you feel it and being able to translate that to a club, to players, and ultimately achieve the goals that you want is possible, regardless of where you are born and where you’re from.”
At the same time in the Premier League, Arteta was in the process of disturbing a dynasty with an equally prohibitive advantage. Manchester City had the best coach, the best players, the best facilities. Should any of that ever be at risk of changing, ownership in Abu Dhabi has proven itself willing to invest heavily in pursuit of success. That it was the last vestiges of the grand old Liverpool side that first knocked Pep Guardiola off his perch may have somewhat quietened the hype over what Arsenal achieved. Like Leverkusen, however, this was a team with the fourth-biggest wage bill, the best predictor of finishing place, consistently there or thereabouts before finally breaking through.
While Alonso’s impact was more instantaneous, a title in his first full season, the Premier League had demanded that Arteta go the long way round. So too had the circumstances he found himself in, a grand institution defined by its drift. To deliver a title-winning product on the field, the Arsenal manager had to “shake the tree,” as he put it from the off, fixing the culture even if it meant bottoming out. That is a more lengthy endeavour than adding some veterans and convincing a talented roster that they could get across the line, as Alonso did in Germany.
In London, his task looks more like Arteta’s. Under the old ownership Chelsea’s dressing room was something of a bear pit but one of big beasts who would roar in pursuit of winning. In the BlueCo era, it is plain for all to see that the obsession with winning has evaporated, in much the same way that London Colney felt too country club-ish. Hiring Alonso, calling him a manager, buying players who were born in the 1990s: these are signs that Chelsea understand that deeper change is required.
Naturally for Arteta, this is more a question of evolution than revolution. The changes that have happened to Arsenal, however, are profound. As champions, they must hold themselves differently. As the longest-tenured manager in the division, Arteta’s thoughts and suggestions in press conferences become agenda-setters in a way that those of Sir Alex Ferguson, Arsene Wenger and Klopp once were. More meaningfully for him, he must convince his squad that winning the title was not an end point but the start of a story.
His chief executive Richard Garlick expressed much the same view this week, and Arteta welcomed those comments. “The message was clear from day one. If you think differently, I don’t think you have to be here, you have to go somewhere else.”
2. Are Chelsea really going to keep playing like that?
Through two games of the Premier League season, the sides with the least possession in the division have very little in common. Twelve months ago one of them was turning the money hose at every talent they could find, the other battling through a transfer embargo. One has aspirations of winning the biggest prizes in the sport, the other would be doing very well to extend their stay into a second year. Still there is one thing that Chelsea and Hull City share. In their opening fixtures they have found themselves in the sort of pleasantly advantageous positions that are worth defending.
Chelsea spent 72 minutes winning against Fulham, 86 against Brighton. Hull’s data isn’t warped by leading game state to quite the same extent, but for Sergej Jakirovic’s side a point is much more worth defending. And if you listen to Xabi Alonso, the ludicrously low 32.7% possession they have registered through those early games — including a 26% against Brighton that is the lowest of any game coached by the Chelsea boss — is explained by events more than intentions.
“We are able to adapt,” said Alonso. “There will be games where we have a lot of possession but struggle to score. We are early days, we have had two games and two wins. We are aware we can do better.”
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And yet there are a lot of particular eccentricities to how Chelsea approached their lead in both games that have you wondering if these were really circumstances foisted on them by their early goals. The pass network from the win over Brighton speaks to a few such foibles.
Was it really that breathless early start that convinced Jorrel Hato (No.21) to operate as a quasi-left back cum defensive midfielder, tucking in so that Romeo Lavia (No.45) was not entirely isolated in front of the backline? One might have thought that was Malo Gusto’s (No.27) job — it looked it on the team sheet — but he looks more of a right back by the end. Pedro Neto (No.7) played the most Jeremie Frimpong at Bayer Leverkusen game the Premier League has seen, putting up only 23 touches of the ball but creating two chances and taking two high-quality shots, a wing back who is more of a stealth striker than ball progression merchant.
Most notable of all, though, is the aggression with which Chelsea moved the ball forward. Were they largely bypassing central midfield, driving up the flanks and looking for the floating Cole Palmer infield because counter-attacking is the natural approach for a team playing with a scoreboard advantage? Or were they doing so because when your front three is Palmer, Joao Pedro and Morgan Rogers, your first priority should be to get them the ball in the open field? Surely the latter.
If so, that makes for a fascinating matchup against Arsenal, who have spent so many years moving their defensive line up and applying the sort of defensive possession that Alonso himsef favored at Leverksuen and Real Madrid. The Gunners can steadily creep forward with all 10 outfield players because they know that if a turnover comes they have the best covering center back on the planet in William Saliba. That they did not miss their France international against Coventry City or Aston Villa is hardly a surprise and if Ezri Konsa comes into the XI then they will be fielding one of the best approximations for Saliba they could have found.
However the circumstances ahead of Chelsea make it tempting to try a repeat performance from their season openers. Giving 70-odd percent of the ball to Bukayo Saka and Martin Odegaard certainly comes with its risks but Sunday may give us a sense of whether Alonso sees long term rewards in this approach.
3. Who takes Arsenal’s left wing spot?
Unsurprisingly, there are no such macro questions for Arsenal. Why change a winning formula any more than you have to? The only change foisted upon Arteta has come in the transfer window, where Andrea Berta accomplished the first half of his mission to upgrade the left wing. Both Gabriel Martinelli and Leandro Trossard departed for the sort of good fees that would fund a depth option in Christos Tzolis and the star who never came.
Speaking after the Champions League final, Arteta had called on Arsenal to be “very ambitious, very fast and very smart” in upgrading the side. Asked to reflect on whether those three criteria had been fulfilled in a summer where they struck out on Rogers, Vinicius Junior and Julian Alvarez, Arteta said they were “100% ticked. The outcome after can be different to what you expect, but the intention is certainly there, which is, in my opinion, what I value the most.”
The right intention won’t plug the 4902 minutes of left-sided attacking play that went out the door with Trossard and Martinelli. The players might. A yellow card might have set him off course against Aston Villa but Tzolis has started brightly given what might reasonably have been expected from an import from Belgium who so struggled on his last go in the Premier League. The Greek international demands the ball, links well with Riccardo Calafiori but is prepared to drift across the field to create the sort of overloads that break through a low block. Against a side that might throw Neto and Palmer down his flank, having a player as diligent as Tzolis tracking back would not go amiss.
Tzolis certainly would not disgrace himself, but the alternatives might have a point to prove. The Noni Madueke who had just arrived from Chelsea could feel he merits real consideration on the left flank, but he did not kick on at Arsenal, and Arteta’s view of the 24-year-old has seemed clear ever since he opted to shunt Saka out of his preferred spot in January’s defeat to Manchester United.
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Then again, Arteta can change his mind. Eberechi Eze is proof of that. The Arsenal manager was livid when his No.10 failed to track the back post run of Matty Cash in a 2-1 defeat to Aston Villa in December, sidelining Eze from the Premier League XI in all but one game until mid-February. It took an awful lot of hard work for the 28-year-old to regain his manager’s faith, but by the spring it was notable that Arteta would light up not when asked about some of the brilliant goals Eze scored but the work he was putting in off the ball. It was a theme he returned to at Villa Park on Monday, when the natural inclination might have been to hail the work of the second-half substitute in Saka’s winner.
“He created three actions that he put people almost looking at the goalkeeper one-against-one, but as well I have to trust him,” said Arteta. “When they make the rotation, especially on the right-hand side, and Cash’s goal last year, he lost him, we conceded the goal – and this year, I think he learned a lesson because every time something was happening he was at it, and I think he helped the team in a great way.”
That defensive effort is the sine qua non for an Arteta player, but it was never the pro-Eze case. That is that he pulls the trigger, he takes a shot in spots where Martin Odegaard and even Kai Havertz tend towards the extra touch. It is a quality Arsenal need, the facet of play that the superstar who never came should have added. Without a Vinicius or a Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, Arsenal’s best bet is recreating that production in the aggregate. That probably means a guy who takes shots like Eze does.
4. Will Rogers justify the price tag?
At the start of the summer, the widespread expectation within the industry was that Rogers’ next club game would be in an Arsenal shirt. Arteta wanted him, and he wanted Arteta. Indeed, so intent was the 24-year-old on making the move to the champions that, according to CBS Sports sources, he was pushing for Arsenal to enter the fray when Chelsea had agreed their staggering $157 million deal to bring him from Aston Villa. For the Gunners, that was a price they were not going anywhere near.
Even in the aftermath of a window where they did not get the star forward they wanted, it is easy to see why they demurred. Early in the 2025-26 season, it seemed like not a week went by without Rogers cannoning in a goal of the season contender, his ball-striking such that he seemed to have convinced himself that expected goals (xG) applied to lesser mortals.
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Even after a cold finishing streak, he ended the season with 14 goals from 9.83 xG. That is some remarkable overperformance. Here’s the thing though: even if Rogers is right and he is a fringe case — a player who can keep overperforming his xG at a higher rate than Lionel Messi does for his career — then Chelsea still paid a British transfer record for a forward who scored in 326 minutes in all competitions and provided an assist every 414. It is not like Rogers was providing much else in the way of passing either; he did not press with remarkable frequency and was not really beating his man off the dribble all that often.
Two games in — of course a vanishingly small sample size but it’s what we’ve got — and maybe there are signs that Chelsea have got what Alonso termed “a key player for the next six, seven years”. The shot numbers have bounced up from 2.3 per 90 minutes to 3.1 but more impressive is the increase in creative output from 0.12 expected assists to 0.58. A lot of that comes from putting the ball on a plate for both Palmer and Pedro Neto against Brighton, but at least he is doing that and doing it while averaging 10 fewer touches per 90 in this possession-lite start to the Chelsea season.
The lower-touch member of the front three, it looks like Rogers has found a role for himself as outlet for goal kicks and long balls, making more runs behind the backline than Palmer, stretching the opposition so that his fellow number 10 has space to thrive. Gradient Sports’ data says that he has received seven passes in dangerous areas compared to 12 for Palmer, 18 for Pedro. The off-ball guy, the stretch runner in behind, the third man in the front three: it is curious to value these skills at a nine-figure premium. They are, however, skills, the sort that Arsenal might be missing on Sunday.
