There was a sense of déjà vu for Antonio Conte, Chelsea’s fiery Italian coach when he
saw Arsene Wenger lifting yet another piece of silverware at the Blues’ expense. The former Juve
man, has won only 1 of his last 4 meetings with Wenger whose tweaked 3-4- 3 formation has seen
the Gunners win 2 Cup finals against the Stamford Bridge outfit.
The villain of the FA Cup final in May, Victor Moses gave Chelsea the lead early into the second half
when a botched Arsenal clearance saw the Nigerian finish smartly past former Chelsea man Petr
Cech. However, Arsenal who threatened the Chelsea goal throughout the game equalised through
new boy Sead Kolosinac who replaced the injured Per Mertesacker in the first half. Chelsea had a
numerical disadvantage after Pedro’s reckless lunge from the back on Mohammad Elneny saw him
receive his marching orders.
The match went into penalties with the unique feature being the introduction of the ABBA rule
where the second team would be allowed to take 2 consecutive penalties with a view to ease the
pressure off them in the shootout. This clearly didn’t apply to Chelsea as they converted only 2 of
their spot kicks to give Arsenal a deserved 5-2 win. Chelsea will have to go back to the drawing board
to know where it went wrong and for sure do need extra bodies in the squad while Arsenal can feel
vindicated for offering their long serving manager a new contract.
