Mikel Arteta believes his Arsenal side are well prepared to take on London rivals Chelsea in their English Premier League clash on Sunday.
The Gunners beat Liam Rosenior’s side in both legs of their Carabao Cup semi-final this year (winning 4-2 on aggregate), but Arteta believes his charges will face a different test this time around against the versatile Blues.
“They’ve done different things, they can change throughout the game. They have the players and they have a manager who is very comfortable doing that, so we’re prepared, we’re going to be prepared for the [all] possible scenarios that we can face throughout the game, and try to do better than them,” said the Spanish manager.
Mikel Arteta
Similarly, Rosenior also downplayed the result from their Carabao Cup encounter, citing the amount of injuries he had to contend with in those games. “I think there were availability issues. We have to look at it with the right context. There was a really good structure of ours without the ball. With the ball, maybe we could have been more front-footed. We did not get the result that we wanted and we want that to change on Sunday,” said the English coach.
Recent history suggests Arsenal have the upper hand. The Gunners have only lost once to Chelsea in their last fifteen encounters across all competitions. Considering they are also leading the league currently, Rosenior knows the difficulty of the task at hand.
“They are an incredibly well-coached team in every aspect of the game. Whether they press really high, they have compact shape in the low blocks, they are fantastic defensively, obviously set plays. We just need to stay really calm, really focused and consistent in our process. It is my job and the players’s job to try and find [their] weakness,” added Rosenior.
1No. of times Arsenal have lost to Chelsea in the last 15 ties across all competitions
10No. wins for Arsenal against Chelsea under Arteta; the joint-most (with Wolves) for Arteta’s Gunners against a single opponent
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