Arsenal fight back to beat Chelsea on penalties as talented youngsters catch the eye in Dublin
Arsenal 1-1 Chelsea (6-5 pens): Antonio Rudiger's header was cancelled out in the last minute by Alexandre Lacazette to force a penalty shootout which the Gunners edged
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Your support makes all the difference.Spare a thought for Maurizio Sarri’s pulmonologist. Because if this is how animated the chain-smoking Italian gets watching Chelsea lose a meaningless pre-season friendly on penalties, he’s going to be puffing his way through an awful lot of cigarettes when the season kicks-off proper.
Don’t let the penalty shootout punchline fool you: Chelsea had this game as good as won until the 92nd minute, when Alexandre Lacazette fired home a scruffy equaliser to cancel out Antonio Rudiger's early header, briefly bringing to a halt Sarri’s furious blur of blue movement on the touchline. By that point the Italian had already substituted every single one of his outfield players. Arsenal would go on to win 6-5 on spot kicks.
Not that it matters, of course. And before we delve into any kind of analysis of this match, there are some mitigating factors to take into consideration. For starters both sides were far from full strength, with Arsenal losing Aaron Ramsey to a worrying muscular injury in the warm-up. Both sides also made a raft of second-half substitutions. And it probably shouldn’t be ignored that a handful of morale-boosting exhibition wins does not automatically equate to a good season — Arsene Wenger’s summer of 2016 stands testament to that.
But none of that is likely to stop both sets of intrigued supporters from pouring over the minutiae of this result with all the frenzied intensity of middle-aged nerds breaking down a new Star Wars trailer, eager for evidence that some kind of transformation is already well underway. Really, then, the question is not how much excitement should Chelsea and Arsenal fans feel after this match, but just how nervous should the rest of the Premier League be?
On this evidence, at least: slightly more than last time around. There were signs that both sides are adjusting to the unique demands of their new leaders, while there were several encouraging performances from youngsters hoping to breakthrough into the first-team this season. Mattéo Guendouzi was in eye-catching form for Asenal. But most exciting of all was the performance of 17-year-old Chelsea forward Callum Hudson-Odoi, who shone last time out against Inter Milan only to be warned by Sarri that his first-team opportunities were limited. It may not be long before the former banker revises that estimation.
The teenager was superb. His contribution to Chelsea’s goal was a moment of genuine Premier League quality: darting down the flank, he cut the ball back to Cesc Fabregas, whose half-volley was smartly tipped over the bar by Cech. And yet what followed was a stark reminder that this was, essentially, a play-off for sixth place in a friendly tournament. Fabregas swung the corner in. Arsenal’s defence evaporated. Rudiger languidly headed low into the net. Emery will desperately hope he can iron out such defensive wrinkles ahead of Manchester City’s visit.
Hudson-Odoi was at it again moments later, latching onto a skidding pass from Marcos Alonso and leaving Hector Bellerin in his wake. Only this time, he didn’t cut the ball back but expertly drew the foul from the right-back. A blatant penalty and a fine save: Cech springing to his right to beat away Alavro Morata’s tame strike. It was a portent of things to come.
Meanwhile, Arsenal’s exciting young teenager was having an equally impressive evening. Guendouzi started the evening as he meant to go on — hitting a sublime first-time diagonal into the path of Henrikh Mkhitaryan from kick-off, which drew a loud purr of admiration — and although he was occasionally guilty of attempting too much, his touch and positional intelligence were sublime for a man snapped up from Lorient for just £7m.
Arsenal’s problems in the first-half were instead located in front and behind him. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang was moved back into a centre-forward role after spending much of his time in Singapore out on the wing, but was toothless. There is meanwhile work to do for Sokratis Papastathopoulos and Shkodran Mustafi, particularly from set-pieces. Rudiger was gifted a second free header in the box after the interval, this time heading wide.
Any pretence that this match offered any meaningful insight into this month’s Premier League match between the two sides — Chelsea host Arsenal in just under three weeks’ time — was ultimately ended when Sarri decided for a hard reboot of his team in the second-half. Five players were subbed on the hour mark; 25 minutes later and the composition of the entire team had changed.
Perhaps stung into action by the sight of half a team’s worth of kids ambling onto the field, Arsenal began to up their game. Aubameyang shot straight at Caballero before being subbed. Lacazette spurned his obligatory gilt-edged opportunity, rolling a shot wide. And substitute keeper Marcin Bulka did superbly to deny Alex Iwobi, with the 18-year-old animatedly pumping his arms as if he had won the game.
Only he hadn’t. Lacazette poked home Reiss Nelson’s low cross in the dying seconds to take the game to penalties, with Arsenal prevailing 6-5 in one of the most pointless penalty shootouts since Diana Ross teetered up to the ball and banged one wide at the 1994 World Cup. Such a result ultimately tells us nothing about the season to come, as if you didn’t know that already. But there were enough flashes of encouragement from both teams to at least hint that better times may be around the corner.