Chelsea and Arsenal both will try to avoid falling further adrift in the race for the Premier League title when they meet on Sunday at Stamford Bridge in Fulham, England.
Host Chelsea will be the happier of the two sides with their recent form under first-year manager Enzo Maresca after finishing 12th and sixth in the league table the past two years.
The Blues (5-2-3, 18 points) enter the weekend in fourth, above the fifth-place Gunners (5-2-3, 18 points) on goal differential. Their only league losses have been against first-place Liverpool and second-place Manchester City. They face a quick turnaround following a UEFA Europa Conference league fixture on Thursday, an 8-0 win over Armenia’s FC Noah that required minimal effort.
“I don’t know the last two years, what the feeling was,” Maresca said. “In this moment, the feeling from us is that we can compete, and we can win against any team. If you don’t take it serious and if you don’t do the right things, also, you can lose against any team. But for sure, we have the right feeling that we are going in the right direction. Hopefully on Sunday, we can give our fans a good day.”
But Chelsea could be without virtuoso attacker Cole Palmer, who has seven goals and five assists but hasn’t trained since he was on the receiving end of Lisandro Martinez’s crunching tackle in last weekend’s draw with Manchester United.
Meanwhile, Arsenal captain Martin Odegaard could play for the first time since early September after returning to manager Mikel Arteta’s training sessions this week. He has been sidelined by an ankle injury.
All of the Gunners’ defeats have come since losing the influential Norwegian, including back-to-back losses in their last matches — 1-0 at Newcastle in the league on Nov. 2 and 1-0 at Inter Milan in UEFA Champions League play on Wednesday.
For Arteta, the performances have been strong enough — it’s just the end product that is lacking. In particular, Arsenal led 20-7 in shots in their trip to Milan.
“But you need to take that into a winning football match because, in the end, that is the only thing that anybody is going to judge,” Arteta said. “Not how superior you were to the opponent, that you outrun the opponent, you out-performed the opponent in every single way. It is about how they scored a goal and you didn’t. We have a problem, and the problem has to be resolved by scoring more goals than the opponent — that’s it.”
–Field Level Media