GLENN HODDLE ON CHELSEA v ARSENAL
Wenger’s side look good with the ball... without it they are terrible
THE ugliest part of football is winning the ball back. Those are the tough miles to run. When you have the ball, I always felt they were the easy miles. But the work you have to do without the ball, to get it back, can be dispiriting, tiresome and hard.
No one really likes it but the best teams do it to great effect. And Antonio Conte’s Chelsea do it really well. Here is a team who play with a back three and who are really well drilled. You can tell they know where to stand and which positions to take up with or without the ball.
Today they take on an Arsenal side who also play a back three. But in contrast, Arsenal look like a team who happened upon the back three as a formation which got them through a few results. Even on Thursday night against Cologne, they switched to a back four and looked more comfortable.
I’m honestly not sure how much Arsene Wenger would have worked on the system. When they play it, it looks like something they fell upon rather than something that had been long in the planning.
And the Arsene I know from Monaco was not a man to spend a lot of time playing 11 versus 11 in training and micro managing exactly where you should stand positionally.
In general, Arsenal do not defend as a team. There does not seem to be a theory. When they have the ball they are great; without ball they are not. It does not look as though there is anything systematic about the way they close down and press.
Contrast that with some of their rivals. You can tell Chelsea are well drilled on the training ground, that Tottenham know what they are doing pressing. Even Liverpool, with t heir defensive problems, clearly have a system in place.
Of course, Arsene would work on the defensive side but never in the repetitive, systematic way that some of these coaches seem to. He is a coach who gives his players a framework, t hen wants them to play intuitively within it.
But what Arsene always had was a sense of balance in his side. I have mentioned before how at Monaco we had Marcel Dib and Claude Puel, t he former Southampton manager, as holding midfielders to give me an attacking platform to link with Mark Hateley up front and Youssouf Fofana attacking down the wing.
I was an experienced player when I got there and I knew immediately that this was a team set up well, for defence and attack. Though we did not spend ages on the training ground obsessing about it, we knew our roles. So when Arsene came to England I always thought he would have that balance in his team. And he did at the beginning, most famously with Emmanuel Petit and Patrick Vieira and then Gilberto Silva. But it is 12 years since Vieira left and nine since Gilberto went.
And you would have to say that it is a good 10 years since an Arsenal side has had a balance to it. They always have that Arsene tendency to attack with flair but they have lost what was once also a trademark of his game — defensive balance.
Chelsea’s back three provide that crucial balance because Conte looks like he has worked long and hard at where they go with the ball and what positions to take up without the ball.
So you fear for Arsene and his team at Stamford Bridge today. Arsenal have not won there since 2011. They have only scored two goals there since that time.
The game comes at the wrong time after the 1-0 defeat at Stoke and the 4-0 defeat at Liverpool. They have beaten Bournemouth and Cologne since then but everyone knows this is the real test.
And you fear for the club. The division among the supporters last season became so bad that it seemed to affect everything. The FA Cup win and the new contract for Arsene put a sticking plaster over the open wounds. But the scars run deep and, like any relationship in its final days, whenever something goes wrong, you end up arguing about the same things.
So it is with Arsenal. It only takes one defeat for people to start picking at the scabs and opening up the old wounds. It is sad for Arsene. He does not deserve that.
But there is hope today. When t hey beat Chelsea 3- 1 in t he FA Cup final, it was their best performance of the season. That day they ran, harried and hunted for the ball. In short, they did the hard miles, not just the easy miles.
It should not take an FA Cup final to motivate Arsenal. The coaches and the players need to address that. For when Arsenal produce a performance like that final, they look like a team. The problem is that it has happened all too rarely in the last 10 years.