Gulf between Arsenal and Chelsea is not as wide as you might think

For Maurizio Sarri, the signs are already good. The last three newly appointed Chelsea managers to start the season with back-to-back wins went on to win a title. Antonio Conte, Jose Mourinho and Carlo Ancelotti. Mourinho did it in his first spell there, too.

At Arsenal, Unai Emery is inspiring historical comparisons of a different sort. He is the first Arsenal manager to lose his opening two games since Steve Burtenshaw in 1986. Burtenshaw was only a caretaker, mind you. In terms of permanent appointments, this is the worst start an Arsenal manager has made since Thomas Mitchell followed a 2-0 home defeat by Manchester United with a 3-1 loss at Grimsby in April 1897.

Mitchell is credited as the first professional manager of the club then known as Woolwich Arsenal, playing in the Second Division. He didn’t suffer the indignity of banners in the sky, however, as aeroplanes hadn’t been invented. Probably just as well.

Yet as Emery searches for his first points against West Ham next week, and Sarri takes a 100 per cent record to Newcastle — and awoke on Sunday morning top of the league — there isn’t actually a gulf between them.

Arsenal have had the harder start, obviously, and both managers are making radical changes to the teams they inherited, with varying degrees of success.

In the periods when Chelsea were — to use Sarri’s words — ‘horrible’, they looked every bit as vulnerable as the high line that failed so miserably for Arsenal on several occasions in the first half.

These are works in progress and while Sarri announced himself pleased with 75 minutes of Chelsea’s play, he spoke as if he would cheerfully obliterate the rest from memory.

‘We lost distance,’ he admitted. ‘We were not able to press, we were not able to defend, we were really in trouble. In my way of football, if you lose distance, there is a problem.’

And it is true, in the spell when Arsenal pulled two goals back to level the scores before half-time, the space afforded them was enormous. Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Alex Iwobi scored; Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Mkhitaryan and Iwobi — twice — should have made it more.

Arsenal’s wide players got in behind Chelsea’s back four and their cut-backs from those positions caused havoc. Had Arsenal’s forwards not been under the impression the goal was located somewhere in the second tier, Chelsea would have been in serious trouble.

Emery, meanwhile, is encountering problems of his own. This new intake of Premier League coaches are depicted as radicals yet all seem to favour the same philosophy. Defensive high line. Name a leading team who don’t seek to play one these days, whether it suits or not.

Emery’s centre halves are not especially quick, nor do they compensate with intuitive assessments of the game, meaning Chelsea also got free in dangerous areas. The first goal — scored by Pedro — was created by a wonderful pass from Jorginho, and Marco Alonso’s fine cross, but the second found Arsenal’s four in a row on the halfway line leaving Alvaro Morata free to score.

Last week Sam Allardyce bemoaned Arsenal’s attempts to play from the back against Manchester City and while this swiftly earned him condemnation as a Luddite, he had a point. Watching Petr Cech burdened with a sweeper-keeper role that is plainly not his game is to see the triumph of process over reality.

Cech is a brilliant conventional goalkeeper — late in the second half he denied Eden Hazard and Olivier Giroud twice to stop the game getting away from Arsenal — but he is not a footballer. It may be that Emery has to compromise on this element of his strategy while he waits for his defence to bed down.

Cech looked a step up from the callow Kepa Arrizabalaga, and all that unnerved him was the need to be what he is not. There is so much that needs addressing at Arsenal and it is madness to take on all of the flaws at once.

At least Emery is seeming to get the measure of two problem characters. Granit Xhaka and Mesut Ozil started but did not finish, Xhaka withdrawn at half-time, Ozil with a quarter of the game remaining. It is hard to imagine such boldness occurring under Arsene Wenger, and it was entirely justified.

Xhaka had done his usual turn, attempting to mask his laziness by diving into a cynical foul to imitate commitment, and Ozil ran around more than he did last week, which is the least that can be expected but nowhere near enough. He walked off particularly slowly as if wounded by some terrible injustice, which is his default position these days.

Xhaka and Ozil have benefited from new contracts lately and whoever made that call needs to pull out some sizeable rabbits from hats in forthcoming transfer windows. It is hard to imagine either remaining first-team regulars once Emery’s Arsenal takes shape and they will be expensive reserves.

We can see the type of players Emery likes by the continued presence of teenager Matteo Guendouzi in his starting midfield, and he had another promising game. The sight of Guendouzi repeatedly pounding his fists into the turf in frustration having set Aubameyang up for the sitter of the first half revealed a level of commitment and personal engagement not always seen at Arsenal.

They certainly don’t have many like Chelsea’s match-winner Alonso, who has now been involved in 20 Premier League goals for the club— 14 scored, with six assists — since his debut in September 2016. That is seven more than any other Premier League defender, and Saturday’s third showed why he is so prolific.

It had more than a touch of Frank Lampard about it, the way he started the move off, and then drove towards the six-yard box to finish Eden Hazard’s exquisite cross. It was just about what Chelsea deserved.

Arsenal had the best chances, but Chelsea had the best of the play and until Emery can find more like Guendouzi — or Alonso — his team are always likely to be muscled out of tight encounters against the better sides.

Sarri left Stamford Bridge joking about giving up smoking while in tobacco-averse England — but it is Emery who has the greater need to steady his nerves. He can be forgiven losing to Manchester City, even to Chelsea away — but Saturday’s opponents are West Ham at the Emirates where even the most pessimistic local is expecting three points.

Thomas Mitchell won his third game 5-1; Arsenal require a similarly bold statement for the Emery era to begin in earnest. The process that he talks about so sincerely needs a product. That is what separates Sarri, for now. It may be horrible at times, but he is getting results.