How Arsenal Have Become the Yardstick to Measure Chelsea's Strength
There was a time when Chelsea's visits to north London confirmed one thing—that Arsenal were top dog in the capital.
While the Blues had visions of toppling the Gunners' dominance in London, no matter how good their form was, they were rarely capable of getting one over on them. Even at Stamford Bridge—even when leading a match 2-0—they were never good enough. There was always a Nwankwo Kanu or Nigel Winterburn lurking and ready to punish them.
In the last dozen years or so, that's all changed. From being a measure of Arsenal's position of strength, whenever Chelsea face Arsene Wenger's side these days, the fixture has become all about the west London side; now we use it as a yardstick to judge Chelsea's position of health.
And a lot of the time, they beat the Gunners. Not since October 2011 have the Blues lost to their capital rivals in the Premier League.
It's a simple formula: When the going's good, and the Blues are looking ready to win the big prizes, Chelsea are beating Arsenal. But when the Blues are in a slump and looking weak, an Arsenal victory seems to confirm it.
Such has been the dilution of Arsenal's power, it's as though they have to sniff an air of vulnerability about Chelsea in order to get anything from them. If the Stamford Bridge club are fine-tuned and relentless, we can judge their frame of mind by how convincingly they beat the Gunners.
It's because of this that Antonio Conte faces his biggest test as Chelsea boss this weekend—taking his team to the Emirates Stadium is his moment of truth.
Forget the recent defeat to Liverpool or the fact the Blues had to come through a difficult EFL Cup tie against Leicester City in midweek; it's facing Arsenal that will ultimately tell us where Conte's team is right now.
All those double training sessions have been building to this, but has there been progress? Have Chelsea regressed? Are they moving forward? We're going to find out.
So how did it get like this for Chelsea? Well, let's take a closer look.
Invincibles Prove, Well, Vincible
Until the arrival of Roman Abramovich in 2003, Chelsea had beaten Arsenal just three times in the Premier League. Of the other 19 matches, the north Londoners had won 12 of them.
Even when Abramovich pumped over £150 million into the club that summer, the Gunners still completed a league double over the Blues, winning home and away in 2003/04.
In the FA Cup, the Gunners were also dominant, beating Chelsea 2-1. Indeed, that fifth-round victory at Highbury in February 2004 was followed a week later by the exact same scoreline in the league, but this time at Stamford Bridge.
It was in the climax of that season when the breakthrough came, though. Wayne Bridge's late winner in the Champions League saw Chelsea advance into the semi-final at Arsenal's expense, crushing their dream of becoming the first London club to go all the way in the competition.
Being the Invincibles and remaining undefeated in the Premier League that season, Wenger's men weren't so in Europe. Chelsea got the better of them for the first time in any competition since a 5-0 League Cup win in November 1998.
Suddenly a psychological switch had been flicked courtesy of Bridge's boot. The pendulum was swinging back in Chelsea's favour.
The Special One Arrives
We know how Jose Mourinho introduced himself to English football in the summer of 2004.
Mourinho was undoubtedly the Special One by the way he swooned into Stamford Bridge with a swagger that immediately elevated Chelsea's status. Little did we know it, it was doomsday for Arsenal.
Mourinho's Chelsea would come to haunt the Gunners, with Wenger never once winning a competitive fixture against the Blues when the Portuguese was in charge.
It was with the former Real Madrid boss at the helm that Chelsea have looked at their strongest in the Abramovich era. He was the manager who took the club to their first title in 50 years in 2005 and introduced them to the elite.
Michael Caine would have been proud: Mourinho "blew the bloody doors off" as he placed Chelsea firmly at the Premier League's top table. He had to knock Arsenal off their perch in the process, and Wenger's men have never shown the sort of desire to usurp them ever since.
That first campaign under Mourinho was about creating a feeling of intensity around Chelsea. They sucked the life out of opponents to feed their own aura and crushed Arsenal in the process. From Invincibles in 2003/04, they were also-rans to Mourinho's Blues within 12 months.
As well as being Premier League champions, 2004/05 was the first season in a decade that the Blues went undefeated against Arsenal. We were witnessing a new kind of elite and Chelsea were leading it.
Wenger The 'Voyeur'
Not content with winning the battle on the pitch against Arsenal, Mourinho took it into the dugout. Frustrated with what he saw as Wenger's prying eyes at his team, the then-Chelsea boss lashed out.
"I think he is one of these people who is a voyeur," Mourinho told journalists in October 2005. "He likes to watch other people."
If the fixture needed any spice, the Portuguese had served it up. But far from Arsenal rising to the bait on the pitch, Chelsea knocked them further down the pecking order. Twice the Blues defeated the Gunners in the league that season and also beat them in the Community Shield.
As reigning champions, Chelsea were making early-season statements, using Arsenal as a pawn in their game. Title rivals or not, they were beating them convincingly, and it set about the early stages of Arsenal's demise, when they wouldn't win a trophy for a decade.
As Chelsea were rising, Arsenal were falling; it was showing in the trophy cabinet, but more so whenever they faced each other. Wenger's men were no match for Mourinho's and neither was the rest of the Premier League in 2005/06.
Another factor that season didn't help the Gunners' cause. Didier Drogba scored his first goals against them in that Community Shield victory as Chelsea won the game 2-1. The hoodoo was in full swing.
Magic of the Cup
From league dominance over Arsenal, Chelsea transferred their success to the cups, and it was Drogba at the forefront of it in 2006/07. Mourinho's side would go on to lose out to Manchester United in the league, but there was no such disappointment in the Carling Cup final against the Gunners.
Winning more silverware at the expense of Arsenal was further confirmation of where the power lay in London. Chelsea were well and truly top dog, as they proved at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, Wales, with a 2-1 victory that was all about power and poise. Drogba scored both Chelsea goals.
Wenger was attempting to change the culture of Arsenal. He was looking to youth and building his game around more diminutive, cuter players. Against the Chelsea juggernaut, it would never work.
Come the end of the campaign, a 1-1 draw at the Emirates ended Chelsea's titles hopes and resulted in Mourinho performing his "chin-up" gesture to the team's fans. It was aimed at reminding those in attendance that the Blues shouldn't be too disheartened by a season as runners-up in the league.
It was perhaps fitting that it should come against Arsenal. Maybe Mourinho's gesture was layered with sentiment, suggesting among other things that the situation could be worse: Chelsea could be Arsenal.
The Special One Departs...
...and Arsenal start beating Chelsea again. There's a connection.
As much as Chelsea fans were distraught over Mourinho's departure in September 2007, Wenger would have been overjoyed. His nemesis was gone from the Premier League and it weakened Chelsea significantly.
The Blues would go on to reach the Champions League final that season, but it didn't feel like the same team seen under Mourinho.
With Avram Grant at the helm, this was the start of Chelsea's self-inflicted anguish; their power was eroding, and the club didn't seem as self-assured. At the time they should've been capitalising on their position, Chelsea were making decisions that allowed their rivals to make ground on them.
Losing Mourinho was a big part of that, and the fact Arsenal would get a first win against Chelsea in 11 games was a sign of it that year.
Chelsea's brief spell of dominance in England was being weakened.
Hell Luis!
The problems of Grant's reign were extended with the appointment of Luis Felipe Scolari at Stamford Bridge in time for the 2008/09 season. A World Cup winner with Brazil, his CV said all the right things, but he never got going at Chelsea.
So much so, Arsenal visited west London that November and came away with all three points, winning 2-1. It was their first victory at the Bridge since February 2004. In the intervening years, they had picked up just two points on their travels.
It was confirmation of how things were going for Scolari. With a squad containing largely the same group of players as under Mourinho, he couldn't get the same out of them. Chelsea were struggling and he would eventually leave the club three months later.
When Guus Hiddink replaced Scolari as interim manager, Chelsea's fortunes changed. He got the Blues back to doing what they did best and invariably that meant beating Arsenal.
In April 2009, under the Dutchman's influence, his side thrashed the Gunners 4-1 at the Emirates. They were back.
King Carlo
Hiddink had helped restore the equilibrium, and it gave Carlo Ancelotti the foundation to create something special when he was appointed boss in 2009.
Indeed, in his two seasons at Stamford Bridge, the Italian's achievements came close to matching Mourinho's. He's the only manager, in status and trophies won, who can match him at Chelsea.
In his first season, Ancelotti won the league and FA Cup double. He also beat Arsenal in his two meetings with Wenger. The first came at the Emirates in November 2009—12 months after the Gunners' victory at Stamford Bridge that had confirmed where Scolari's reign was headed. This time, the signs were better for Ancelotti as his side won 3-0.
Come February later that season, Chelsea would defeat Arsenal 2-0 at Stamford Bridge. It was the first season since 2005/06 that the Gunners didn't score a Premier League goal against their London rivals—back when the Blues were England's finest team.
The High Line
With Ancelotti leaving Chelsea in 2011, in came Andre Villas-Boas with his bright ideas and enthusiasm for where Chelsea should be headed. He spoke about a five-year plan, a desire to fundamentally change the culture of the club and the way the team played.
It was all well and good, but the Portuguese attempted to do it all with the same players who had served Chelsea under Mourinho. Back then—when Villas-Boas was an opposition scout for Mourinho—the team was built around no shortage of brawn. They were physically strong and made no apologies for it.
From bamboozling opponents with that strength, Villas-Boas was asking Chelsea to play something closer to the tiki-taka style that had taken off under Pep Guardiola at Barcelona. It was the former FC Porto boss' own interpretation of it and a key component was his desire to play a high defensive line to force teams further back.
With John Terry as his main defender, it was a big problem, as Robin van Persie's hat-trick against Chelsea proved.
We all remember the tumble and fall from Terry as he was horribly exposed by Van Persie's pace. The alarm bells were ringing on the back of a 5-3 defeat that well and truly humbled Villas-Boas' side.
Not since the early part of Wenger's reign had an Arsenal team looked so convincing against Chelsea. The Blues really had bottomed out against their rivals, but worse still was that it came in front of their own fans.
The Special One Returns
From the up and down years between Mourinho's first spell in charge of Chelsea and his return, we could see how the club had suffered with their results against Arsenal. They weren't always convincing, but then the Portuguese's second coming in the summer of 2013 changed it all.
Chelsea's dominance over the Gunners has become incredible. They're the top dog in this fixture once more, and they've returned to the top of English football in that time, too (ignoring the debacle of 2015/16).
Chelsea have played over 10-and-a-half hours of competitive football against Arsenal since October 2013 and the Gunners have failed to score a goal. In that time, the Blues have scored 13 times in all competitions.
Indeed, we have to go back to January 2013 for the last time that Arsenal scored a league goal against Chelsea, when Theo Walcott found himself on the scoresheet in a 2-1 loss.
As much as those stats show us how Chelsea's strength in recent years has been defined by what they've done against Arsenal, there is an anomaly here.
The Blues were defeated 1-0 by the Gunners in the 2015 Community Shield (not strictly a competitive game) and it was labelled as a benchmark moment. It was the first time Wenger had beaten Mourinho, and we thought it spelled a change.
Strictly speaking, it did; it just wasn't the one we expected. That defeat showed us the problems Chelsea would face heading into 2015/16 and by December, Mourinho was sacked as manager.
So what now for Conte?
Garry Hayes is Bleacher Report's lead Chelsea correspondent. Follow him on Twitter @garryhayes
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