Premier League Preview: Confidence Key for Chelsea and Arsenal
The great American football coach, executive and philosopher Vince Lombardi once opined, "Confidence is contagious. So is a lack of confidence," while Woody Allen on the same subject offered, "Confidence is what you have before you understand the problem."
New Yorkers the pair of them—one a straight-talking Brooklynite, the other a neurotic writer/actor/comedian/director born in the Bronx but Manhattan in his sensibilities. Amid their differences, what they shared is a love of a good sound bite, and while it would be to pander to a modern obsession with delivering instant verdicts to dwell too long on the topic of confidence, just a week into the season, it is of pertinence.
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Arsenal’s insipid start at home to West Ham United was so Groundhog Day it’s a surprise Bill Murray wasn’t wheeled out for the post-match presser. Here was a side that choked so badly the stadium announcer at the Emirates Stadium asked if anyone in the crowd knew the Heimlich manoeuvre. Yet the general consensus was largely, if not universally, that it’s early days and there’s no need to panic.
In his post-match appraisal on Sky Sports, Graeme Souness was quick to play down the significance of opening-day results, saying early-season anomalies weren’t worth too detailed a dissection and the time for judgment would be five or six games in. Nothing too controversial there, but just a cursory look at last season’s Premier League table after six matches suggests slow starts aren’t easily rectified.
Chelsea sat at the summit with 16 points from a possible 18, while Manchester City (11 points) and Arsenal (10) were in third and fourth respectively. Manchester United (eight) and Liverpool (seven) labored in seventh and 14th place respectively. At the other end, Burnley and Queens Park Rangers occupied two of the three relegation places and look how it worked out for them.
The notion that early-season sparring is something of a free hit—as much a period to iron out any squad imbalances before the close of the transfer window as it is to collect points—seems a somewhat cavalier attitude given, at the time of writing, a win in May doesn’t earn twice as many points as one does in August.
Manuel Pellegrini gets it, per Fox Sports: "In the Premier League, every point that you start winning at the beginning is just as important as at the end."
One defeat does not a season make, but for those teams going into the weekend on the back of a disappointing opener, it’s easy to see how under 24-hour scrutiny anxiety in a football club is as infectious as confidence is contagious.
Manchester City vs. Chelsea, Sunday, 4 p.m BST: Is There a Doctor in the House?
The big question ahead of the first heavyweight rumble of the season, as dethroned champions Manchester City host their usurpers Chelsea, is whether Eva Carneiro can sneak into the ground undetected. Stewards have been instructed to be on the lookout for any away supporters sporting latex gloves.
It’s a topic that has exhausted too many column inches already, so without wishing to add further to a plaintive situation, it’s nonetheless worth pondering why Jose Mourinho, so calculated with his every breath, seems so determined to make Kilimanjaro out of a molehill.
Whisper it quietly, but a poor pre-season and stagnation in the transfer market, combined with a Community Shield loss to Arsenal and dropped points on the opening day, appears to have rattled Mourinho.
Pellegrini, no fan of Mourinho at the best of times, will likely have rolled his eyes at the unfolding drama in west London, but of greater interest will have been the lacklustre, at times leggy, nature of Chelsea’s defending against Swansea City. With Branislav Ivanovic cast as Wile E. Coyote to Jefferson Montero’s Road Runner, the last thing he’ll fancy a week on is a head-to-head with Raheem Sterling on his home debut.
Stopping Sterling is a headache, doing likewise with David Silva more a migraine. On Monday night at West Bromwich Albion, he gave a performance so intuitive it was as though the ball was an extension of him—a child’s mitten fastened with elastic to the cuff. Impossible to lose.
No player in the league is better at finding pockets of space between midfield and defence, between centre-halves and full-backs. If Nemanja Matic isn’t at his imperious best locking the door behind those who flood forward in front of him, a front three of Sterling, Silva and Sergio Aguero will stretch a back four as consistent as the chime of a grandfather clock.
Pellegrini, as well he might, has been purring over Silva, but he’ll have taken at least equal satisfaction from the performances of Yaya Toure and Vincent Kompany at the Hawthorns. The former has bitten back at those who have heralded this a return to form, but as Jamie Carragher will attest, it’s one thing doing it on a balmy autumnal night in the Midlands and an altogether different thing doing it on a balmy autumnal afternoon in Manchester.
"He was fantastic tonight. The power and pace he shows going forward, he doesn't show it going back," said Carragher on Sky Sports’ Monday Night Football. "I've said it time and time again: he's like a sprinter going forward, and a marathon runner coming back. He doesn't want to come back.
"And that'll be the problem for him at the weekend. In those big games can he be trusted to play in the two?”
Yaya Toure, then: a footballer who shows about as much inclination for travelling backward as Super Mario on a Game Boy.
Recent history between the two clubs could not be tighter. In the past six meetings, both sides hold a pair of wins apiece, with two 1-1 stalemates ensuing last season. Mourinho’s record against top-four clubs is beyond reproach. Last season, Chelsea topped head-to-head meetings between themselves, Manchester City, Arsenal and Manchester United, while in the 2013/14 campaign they took 16 points off their rivals.
Manchester City, who won the league that year, were the next strongest of the top four despite taking just seven points.
That Manchester City have won their past seven home games and scored at least two goals in each of these victories usually makes them the proverbial banker at the City of Manchester Stadium. However, Chelsea travel north boasting just one defeat in their previous 19 top-flight matches. And with Mourinho currently banishing subordinates with the truculent abandon of a Game of Thrones overlord, expect his players to fulfill their respective roles to the absolute letter. A 1-1 draw it is, then.
Crystal Palace vs. Arsenal, Sunday, 1 p.m BST
To go back to Woody Allen, Arsene Wenger’s detractors would argue the Frenchman never loses confidence in his methods because he’s blind to the problem. Defeat to West Ham could at least be partly excused by the fact Slaven Bilic’s players are well ahead of Arsenal’s in terms of match sharpness because of their Europa League sojourns. But in terms of handpicking a game to rejuvenate his troops, a trip to Selhurst Park will have been well down the list.
Like West Ham, Crystal Palace will be happy to cede possession to Arsenal and counter-attack with pace. With Jason Puncheon knocking on the door of the England squad, Wilfried Zaha in danger of cracking half a smile any day now and Yohan Cabaye adding a cerebral presence in midfield, Alan Pardew’s alchemist touch has so far created a side that is not just engaging to watch but potentially seriously good.
A bench that housed Connor Wickham, Yannick Bolasie, Patrick Bamford and Mile Jedinak at Norwich City, suggests last season’s 10th-place finish should be matched, if not improved on, again this term.
That Palace were happy to knock on the door of a European powerhouse in Paris Saint-Germain to not just enquire as to Cabaye’s availability but buy him with minimum fuss demonstrates the club now has a wallet to match Pardew’s chutzpah.
It’s easy to be sniffy about television cash filtering down the league—it’s the old money-versus-new money argument—but that Palace can now afford a player who would make Wenger’s XI on Saturday can surely only be a good thing for the Premier League.
Aston Villa vs. Manchester United, Friday, 7:45 p.m BST
The only worthy thing the English Defence League can take credit for in its sorry history is the return of football on a Friday night. Aston Villa’s home clash with Manchester United has been switched from Saturday tea time to Friday night after West Midlands Police raised concerns about resources because of a planned EDL march through nearby Walsall on the same day.
From a negative springs a positive, though, as who doesn’t love a bit of Friday night action? Tranmere Rovers, now languishing in English football’s fifth tier, are perhaps most synonymous with starting the weekend early, with Prenton Park regularly hosting matches on a Friday—all the way from the '60s through to the early '90s.
Back in 1989, when the Premier League was but a twinkle in Rupert Murdoch’s eye, Michael Thomas scored arguably English football’s most dramatic goal when his injury-time effort at Anfield gave Arsenal the 2-0 victory they needed to snatch the title from hosts Liverpool. And it all happened on a glorious Friday night on Merseyside.
Manchester United’s trip to Aston Villa has an intriguing air about it, with both clubs in varying states of transition. Neither side was particularly fluid picking up victory on the opening day. However, confidence will be gleaned from a pair of clean sheets secured against Tottenham Hotspur and Bournemouth respectively. Louis van Gaal started with four debutants (Bastian Schweinsteiger became a fifth when he came off the bench); Tim Sherwood was even bolder, as five of his summer recruits made Villa’s first XI.
Villa will have to buck an ingrained trend if they are to make it two wins from as many matches, with United having an 83 per cent win rate from the last six meetings between the two clubs. Indeed, the last time Villa beat United on home soil in the league was back in August 1995, and even then, that day’s 3-1 victory is more part of United’s rich tapestry than their own, as it spawned Alan Hansen’s infamous quote that "you can't win anything with kids."
