Premier League Preview: Can Arsenal End Chelsea Hoodoo to Cement Title Tilt?

Arsene Wenger is not the type of man to concede he has an Achilles' heel, but that should not stop him sporting an orthopedic shoe for Chelsea's visit to his Arsenal on Sunday. The finest of margins win Premier League titles.

It is thought Achilles died from a heel wound that was the result of a poisoned arrow shot by Paris, though many suspect in Wenger’s case, it was always more likely to come from Portugal, via west London.

Less likely now admittedly, with Jose Mourinho’s absence following his sacking in December alleviating a certain frisson from a fixture always as much about the men who work outside of the white lines as it is about those who do battle within them. It was certainly a more relaxed Wenger who addressed the press on Thursday.

The Frenchman met mischievous questions about whether relegation for Chelsea would make them "specialists in failure," as posed by Sky Sports’ Andy Burton, with the relaxed, good-natured air of a man relieved at no longer having to share a touchline with a rival he not only dislikes but one who invariably gets the better of him.

"I see where you want to take me but, honestly, I'm not ready to travel," he replied, via the Independent, lobbing the ball back over the net with the stylish ease of Fred Perry playing in an exhibition tennis game.

Wenger’s record against Mourinho in Premier League head-to-heads reads like a journeyman boxer: no wins, six defeats and five draws. No wonder Wenger, a notoriously bad loser, physically recoils at the mere mention of the Portuguese. He can boast a 51.9 per cent win rate (14 wins, six draws and seven losses) against Chelsea sides not managed by his old sparring partner.

Mourinho’s farewell to a fixture in which he would, as a matter of course, alternate between needling Wenger with the finesse of a seamstress working on a couture gown and baiting him with the subtlety of a baby chimp agitating a great ape was a 2-0 victory at Stamford Bridge in September.

In a season of shifting sands like no other, Mourinho was lost to the sea before he even noticed the tide was coming in. A divisive character like few others, it is the flaws as much as the virtues that make people interesting, and the Premier League is a poorer place in his absence.

We should lament his absence—not in spite of his imperfections but because of them.

It’s hard to counter otherwise without veering into sanctimony. As the author and doyen of literary journalism Gay Talese once wrote: "Most journalists are restless voyeurs who see the warts on the world, the imperfections in people and places. Gloom is their game, the spectacle their passion, normality their nemesis."

That in Mourinho’s worst season as a manager he still managed to get one over his bete noire, and do it in circumstances Machiavellian to the point that Richard III scored Chelsea’s opener, seems perversely fitting.

Mourinho may have been pushed off a cliff, but he still managed to first yell out: "I haven’t paid our life insurance bill this month." That’s not to suggest Jose and Arsene were man and wife, but you get the picture.

Even in a season in which Arsenal command a 19-point advantage over Sunday's visitors, a 22-year high, it would still take a seismic shift to reverse a run of results so entrenched in Chelsea’s favour barely an eyebrow would be raised were archaeologists to discover ancient cave drawings of Diego Costa kicking Laurent Koscielny into a fire pit. Depictions of two-headed monsters running away from the Spain international have already been found.

Whether the Football Association can retrospectively ban for incidents dating back 40,000 years is unclear. Costa is still getting over the fact he had to serve a three-match suspension for a bit of slap and tickle with Koscielny and Gabriel Paulista in the corresponding fixture earlier this season. He’d describe what passed as no more boisterous than end-of-the-pier foreplay.

It is more than eight hours and counting since Arsenal last breached Chelsea’s rearguard. Kenya's Dennis Kimetto could run the best part of four marathons in that period. The rest of us could get to the point where a verdict is delivered in Making a Murderer, albeit without a toilet break. If Dean Strang can hold on, so can you.

Arsenal have not beaten their capital counterparts in eight league matches, a longest-ever winless run that last saw north London conquer west back in 2011. On that day, Daniel Sturridge and Fernando Torres comprised Chelsea’s forward line and Robin van Persie scored a hat-trick as Arsenal ran out 5-3 victors at Stamford Bridge. Bob Wilson is still disappointed he couldn’t get his hand to Juan Mata’s late consolation goal for Chelsea.

Of the 23 meetings between the two sides since Arsenal last won the Premier League title in 2004, Wenger has overseen just four victories. Top against 14th place at home would usually only interest those looking for a banker in an accumulator. Sunday feels different; by all accounts, it is different.

Rare is it managers accept any one league game has a scope beyond the three points on offer, but Wenger has been willing to concede ahead of Sunday that to beat Chelsea would provide a timely psychological fillip for his players. They have already proved this season they can beat both Manchester clubs. Chelsea remain the monkey on the back.

Of less importance, he argued, is the absence of Mourinho from Chelsea’s bench, per the Telegraph:

"

Yes, it is another one where we can show we have moved forward.

I look at the quality of the players on the football pitch and never at who sits on the bench. Look at the characteristics of the team, of the players.

We do not analyse the character of the manager who sits on the bench on the other side.

"

If Arsenal win, it’s a marker laid. If they lose, it’s peak Arsenal.

Those fans who see Wenger’s omnipresence as suffocating would be in their element in defeat, especially as we're in the middle of a transfer window that is almost certainly likely to see him stay true to an old Woody Allen mantra: "The talent for being happy is appreciating and liking what you have, instead of what you don’t have."

Given Mesut Ozil will feature after recovering from a bruised toe that saw him miss the goalless draw at Stoke City in Arsenal's last outing and Alexis Sanchez is back in contention for the first time since a hamstring injury at Norwich City in November put an untimely hiatus in his season, there will be scant reason to cry bad timing if a decent result isn’t forthcoming.

A point at Stoke is not to be sniffed at. Both Manchester clubs and Liverpool have lost at the Britannia Stadium this season, but in Ozil's absence, Arsenal had just eight attempts on goal. Their season average is 16.1 shots per game, with the Footballer of the Year elect having been involved in a remarkable 51.3 per cent of Arsenal's 37 league goals. Having him back should be just the tonic on the back of taking just two points from their last two matches.

Chelsea have certainly been stabilised by Tony Parkes Guus Hiddink following his interim appointment in December. A six-game unbeaten run has been fashioned in the league since he took the reins of a horse not so much out of control as refusing to leave the stable, and it is the longest of any top-flight side. Just two victories have arrived in that period, though, against Sunderland and Crystal Palace.

A point earned from a 3-3 thriller against Everton last time out was secured via a John Terry backheel when match officials decided to play an impromptu game of next goal draws in added time.

Chelsea’s Mourinho's conscientious objectors are still some way shy from volunteering to go over the top first but have at least shown a willingness to bob their heads over the parapet.

With the risk of decapitation by a stray Mourinho verbal grenade subsided, a fair number seem to be enjoying their football once again under Hiddink’s more avuncular approach.

Costa certainly is. He still less walks the tightrope between devilish and deranged than threatens to use it as a lasso around the neck of any defender who dares break the restraining order he has put on the rest of the world, but five goals in as many appearances in all competitions under Hiddink should put Arsenal on red alert. As should the return of Eden Hazard if the Belgian has his game head on.

A bruised shin suffered against Everton threatens Costa's involvement, but the Spain international is expected to feature, with Wenger having warned his players to steel themselves against the forward's agricultural approach. The fear of the resurfacing of peak polite Arsenal will spread throughout the Emirates Stadium every time Costa looks as if he’s on the cusp of taking Koscielny and Per Mertesacker’s dinner money.

"We have to focus on our own performance and forget a little bit about Diego Costa," Wenger said, per the Guardian.

Alastair Grant/Associated Press

Then training his sights on the men in black with doleful puppy eyes, he added: "But we have to be prepared for a battle because Costa gives you a fight. After that, it’s down to the referee."

Costa is a walking paradox, a fighter who needs to be loved. Think Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire. For a while Mourinho loved Costa, probably because he could see a lot of himself in a player who’d pull his grandmother’s hair to steal a march on her for the last biscuit in the jar. When he stopped scoring, though, the carrot was quickly replaced with the stick, and it soon became apparent Costa isn’t a fan of being told what to do. Who would have thought it?

Hiddink manages to carry off the insouciance of a substitute teacher who genuinely doesn’t care whether you've read the set text, yet at the same time he radiates a warmth that would be hard to disappoint. It’s easy to see why a character such as Costa would warm to him.

Lest it be forgotten, it was during Hiddink’s first spell in charge of Chelsea on an interim basis in 2009 that he inflicted on Arsenal a 4-1 defeat that remains their heaviest loss at home in the Premier League.

The Internet may just explode were that scoreline to be repeated on Sunday. 

Manchester United vs. Southampton, Saturday at 3 p.m. GMT

 
Norwich City vs. Liverpool, Saturday at 12:45 p.m. GMT

West Ham United vs. Manchester City, Saturday at 5.30 p.m GMT

 
Leicester City v Stoke City, Saturday at 3 p.m GMT

West Brom v Aston Villa, Saturday at 3 p.m GMT

 
Crystal Palace v Tottenham Hotspur, Saturday at 3.pm GMT 

All stats provided by WhoScored.com unless stated otherwise.