Manchester United's Reaction and How Arsenal Can Beat Chelsea

See, Wenger made a mistake; he played the exact way they expected, and for that reason we were beaten. If you all recall May 2005, our last trophy the FA Cup, he shocked Man Utd and football alike. He didn't play the Arsenal way: He sat back, defended deep, and tried to beat Man Utd solely on the break, similar to how they played against us on the weekend.

To be fair, in that match Man Utd destroyed us, but what is key is that we didn't lose; surely it can't be a coincidence. If you take a look at the match, we dominated that possession to little effect; there is no point having 60 percent of the possession if you're going to waste it constantly.

One thing that Arsenal constantly do is play into the hands of the opposition—mostly the top teams—Chelsea came to the emirates, sat back, and beat us on the break as well, just as Everton did; barring a lucky last minute goal from Tomas Rosicky we would have deservedly lost that match.

This now brings me to my overall point: how we can beat Chelsea. In my opinion we need to spring another surprise like the FA Cup final. We should sit back and let them attack, and now I'm going to explain tactically how Arsene should do it. 

No. 1

Tell the back four to sit back, tell Sagna and Clichy not to bomb down the wings like they usually do. If you remember correctly, last December-February, when were in bad form, Wenger told them to sit back, and it worked for us—we conceded less. And even more importantly, tell William Gallas and Thomas Vermaelen to play slightly deeper; we all know Vermaelen has got a great left foot, but against Chelsea it's more important to defend than to attack for a defender.

No. 2

In the midfield, Wenger needs to tell Alex Song to sit back and essentially make it a back five. Any attack that comes down the middle, Song's got to be there to break up the play, get physical, put in tough tackles, do whatever it takes to make sure Drogba, Lampard, Joe Cole, et al. don't get past.

No. 3

If Diaby plays, which we all pray he does, he needs to play box-to-box; he needs to help Song defend Chelsea's attacks and help the forwards attack. I truly underrated the importance Abou Diaby played in our midfield. It wasn't until the West Ham game in the FA Cup where I finally realised it. When he came on the game changed for the better.

No. 4

Cesc Fabregas needs to play a sort of similar role to Abou Diaby, be a sort of Gerrard/Fabregas hybrid. He needs to take the game by the scruff of the neck, drive the team forward.

No. 5

Finally for the front three: This may seem like a crazy move, but in my opinion, he should play Walcott-Bendnter-Arshavin. As I've said, we need to play against Chelsea on the break, and despite all the faults that Theo has, he is able to play on the counter-attack really well. Two Liverpool games come to mind.

With Bendtner playing down the middle it will be a different prospect for Terry and Carvalho as they had Eduardo at the Emirates; he's bigger and stronger, he needs to play on the shoulder of them and try to get in behind, because if you play in front of them like Eduardo you won't get past them all day.

If Ivanovic plays right-back then it means that Walcott and Arshavin should start to swap sides during the match, because one thing that Ivanovic lacks is pace, while we all know that Ashley Cole has bags full of pace, but we don't know if Cole can handle Arshavin's trickery.

No. 6

Most importantly Almunia and Denilson must not even get close to starting this game; Almunia is the most mistake-prone goalkeeper right now in the premiership. When I see him retrieve a ball I'm afraid he'll make a mistake, and I was proven right twice in the Man Utd match when he put the ball in his own net and when he received a back pass and passed to a Man Utd player. Fabianski hasn't been any better really but I trust him more than I do Almunia and that's saying something.

And for the last two years I've been saying it: Denilson is just not good enough to play for Arsenal right now, if ever. If you watch him in a game you will see just how little he does. If you look at the stoke FA Cup game, he just let Sidibe run past him with no problem, despite Sidibe not even being that fast.

In the Man Utd match, despite being something like 20 yards ahead of Rooney before he even began running, he let Rooney right past him with absolutely no problem, and when he gave the ball away for the third goal he didn't even attempt to run back. Truly shocking.

To end, Arsenal need to go into the Chelsea game and surprise them; let them have the possession and worry about what to do with it. We just need to sit back and hit them on the break, similar to what Man Utd did to us. We need to win this game to get back into the title because (assuming Chelsea beat hull on Tuesday) 11 points is just a massive nearly unassailable gap to claw back.