As for the pen, Saka has ben robbed of a couple of penalties recently because he has refused to go down. I have no problem with him going down a bit easier this time.

Eddie has been playing 10 mins a month. Some playing time, bit of luck and his confidence soars.

I’ve bitten my lip on the subject in recent weeks but I remain convinced that he is no mug.

As one of my sons has just pointed out - 3 academy lads scoring in the same game. Happy days.

And I've probably been one of his harshest critics, but can't fault anything about his performance tonight. Energy, determination, hold-up play, goals, if he can keep this up he'll be a real weapon in our fight for top 4. No question he should start next game as well.

I’ll say this. His overall game is dysfunctional but at least he gambles. He will make a run, chase down a pass back, attack the 6 yard box. Lacazette just doesn’t do that anymore. 1 goal in 29 previous games tells a story and he was awful v saints but he can finish.

Think today suited him.

Koscielny got one in one of those infamous 5-1 drubbings by Bayern….but I don’t think that was the example you were after!

Chelsea also had at least 3 occasions when they could have had a man sent off.
Mount with the studs over the ball tackle
Sarr with the clear second yellow on Cédric where advantage was played
Azpilicueta for denying a clear goal scoring opportunity with no genuine attempt to play the ball

Am I missing something

That’s a totally blatant penalty but.. apparently it’s not

The only person defending it is Jamie Redknpp. Not just on the telly but also our own fans

Definite pen. Surprised it was given though.

Massive win
Wasn't expecting that at all.
Thought we were losing that tonight.
Thing is beat Chelsea and utd and we would really be putting the pressure on spurs against Brentford.
But really non goer as had to beat Chelsea.
And we have against all the odds.
Beat utd and we practically seal europa spot at least as we'd go 6 points clear of utd and stay 5 clear of west ham at least.
Maybe that will relax us to push on for fourth.

What the *%^@ was that little prick azplicueta complaining about.
That's a clear penalty ffs

Thomas Tuchel:

"We scored five goals and lost 4-2. That's easy. Three own goals, two regular goals for us and one for Arsenal. That makes it 4-2."

This is a classic sour grapes response. Won’t give us any credit, we only won because they gifted it to us.

Tuchel also blamed the pitch, the same pitch for both teams and the pitch that Chelsea have full control off in preparing for their home games.

Seen someone say that our starting 11 today would be an 11 that could play in the Prem League 2 U23 competition and be within those rules. You are allowed 3 over age players xhaka, elneny and holding and every other player had to be 23 or under at the start of the season.

Onwards to Utd, and another 3 points to us!

Seems like a very strange interpretation of own goal.

Best to ignore those ‘experts’. Especially Merson who kept banging on about how Saka’s left foot had slipped when taking the penalty.

Our three losses against Palace, Brighton and Southampton made Chelsea last night, a match where I thought a defeat wouldn’t be the end of the world, a must win game. I think the Manchester United fixture is now exactly the same.

Looking at the table we’re level on points with Tottenham with the same number of games remaining. But their goal difference is eight better than ours. Unless we have a couple of very heavy wins it’s probable we’ll have to win a point more than them to come fourth.

From a debate many years ago That’s why goal difference matters throughout the season. Every single goal scored and conceded from the first to the last fixtures has an impact on where each club is likely to finish.

Currently Tottenham are favourites for fourth as that eight goal advantage may end up being worth a point. Arsenal are second favourites and Manchester United, while not out of contention, are third favourites.

We are back in the race for top four but with our remaining games I still think its unlikely we will do it as our margin of error is miniscule. At least we got our mojo back last night. Saturday could be another wild game.

I think Chelsea did us a favour last night with their selection. Lukaku instead of Havertz. Resting Rudiger who is easily their best CB, and I think Kovacic is their best central mid who was also missing. But having said that we were missing both first choice full backs and Partey.

With such a young team we're going to have ups and downs. Over the previous 3 games I don't think we played as badly as the results suggest. 1st half v Palace was awful, set up v Brighton was all wrong but we did a lot of good things in those games as well we just finishes very poorly and our opponents finished very well born out of the stat that we've conceded I think 10 goals from the last 17 shots on target faced

Actually I'd also add to this Mason Mount had 2 studs over the ball landing higher than the ankle tackles that were both easily yellow cards

I would have taken 2 points from these two games so we are already ahead of the game. Mind you, I would have expected at least 5 points from our previous 3.

At this stage of the season you might as well just throw darts at a board. Except for the top two, form is all over the place!

Having said that, what a performance last night! Our backup players aren't nearly as bad a people have been making up. Hopefully mean reversion won't occur against United, and confidence, and the players who have been brought into the team bedding in a bit, also play some role.

Also give credit to Arteta for bringing in El Neny and Holding.

Played out well didn’t it.

Also last night will have improved our available squad due to playing time and confidence.

This is the first season since the 1930's that Arsenal have had two U21 players reach 10 league goals in a season. Emile Smith Rowe and Saka both reached 10 league goals last night.

To be genuine title challengers we would need 80+ goals I think, we currently have 49, given there are 6 games remaining I would think that would be a further 20+ goals from the current team. The obvious place to be getting those is from a pair of new strikers. Getting 10+ league goals from your 3 first choice attacking midfielders is pretty good

In light of Gabriel's unfair yellow card last night I thought I'd just check our yellow card tallies to see if anyone is close to a ban. If you reach 10 yellows you get a 2 game ban. Gabriel has 5 yellows, Saka has 5 yellows, Lokonga has 5 yellows and Xhaka has 7 yellows. With 6 games left it would be very difficult for the first 3 to tally up 10 yellows but Xhaka needs to be careful not to pick up 3 more yellows.

I'm not sure what happens if you reach your 10th yellow in the final game of the season, to be fair you should be banned for the first two games of the next season in the same way if you're sent off in the final game of the season you'd be banned for the first game(s) next season

The thing is Bored how good a guide to the easiness or hardness of fixtures are league positions this late in the season? We just lost three winnable games against mid-table outfits and beat the third best team in the league? I suspect many would have fancied our chances of getting at least five points, maybe seven or optimistically even nine, from Palace away, Brighton home and Southampton away. On paper the best we could hope for at Chelsea was one point, but zero looked even more probable.

I accept league position is an important factor in determining whether the players at one club are generally better or worse that at another. But so much more comes into it than that in deciding results. I don’t think having Manchester United at home plus Tottenham and West Ham away is a good reason to not fancy our chances. Similarly Everton at home could well be trickier than we think if they’re fighting for survival on the last day.

For me, just as important is goal difference. With Tottenham having an eight goal advantage we either have to have some heavy wins to make it up, but more likely we have to finish a point ahead of them.

It’s not really sour grapes that, he’s expressing his anger at his side.

To be honest any manager would have been livid with his side for conceding goals like Nketiah scored. I can only imagine the reaction on here if our centre backs had done that. Gifts

Every time the Chelsea number 3, Alonso, was on the ball many of the Arsenal fans at Stamford Bridge last night started chanting ‘murderer’ at him. What’s that about?

Seems Lewis Hamilton - long time Arsenal fan - is an investor in one the consortia competing to buy CFC. He's in for £10m apparently.

Early in his career he was drink driving and involved in a car accident that killed a woman.

I don’t think it’s a great thing to say or sing about to be honest

In 2011 in Madrid, Alonso crashed his car while driving at speed in the rain and 3 times over the alcohol limit. His passenger - 20 year old woman - died. He was facing 4 years in jug but got off it all by paying a substantial sum to the victim's family.

Thanks Top Gun and DHD.

Anybody finding themselves grinning a lot today.

That saka penalty was brilliantly therapeutic. Great moment.

Beating that lot is only bettered by beating spurs or United.

So Arteta has beat Chelsea 4 times and lost twice in the 7 times he’s played them. I do think he sets his team up pretty well for these big games.

It was beautiful.
Winning with a few minutes left and then getting a penalty with a chance to kill the game dead.
Plus that *%^@ azpilecueta going insane and losing his *%^@ at saka was pure gold.

It’s been a while since we came across a *%^@ bigger than that. Almost at Van Horseface level.

Can’t believe we let him score. Tavares did his best yesterday but is a liability defending around his own box

It's so easy to say if we beat chelsea and utd we could really put pressure on spurs with their tricky game v brentford.
However easier said than done and i didnt think we would get anything from the game so absolutely delighted.
It can now become reality if we beat utd.
From the prospect of going 6 behind before their game against brighton we could now go 3 ahead.
Cant take utd lightly. They still have good players and Ronaldo.
Early kick off and against utd , the ground should be buzzing!

That game in hand has been hanging over us for ages but it had the touch of realism as it was against chelsea and not against someone like norwich at home.
So really fantastic to get a win from it.

Agreed but before that we had opportunities to clear and White looked like he was taken out as well.
Think we could have done better clearing for their first as well.
*%^@*** typical that werner of all people scores against us!
Loved the way we attacked though.
There was a sort of freedom and abandon about the way we attacked yesterday. No shackles.

Serena Williams and Lewis Hamilton join consortium to buy Chelsea

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/04/21/foot ... index.html

Don't know why they'd want to buy them. Didn't Chelsea lose their last game ?

When we bought Cédric on at 75 minutes for Emile Smith Rowe, Saka switched from the right to the left. I think this was a response from Arteta to Chelsea pushing Reece James on in a right wing back/right wing role up against Tavares. I said during the game yesterday I wondered if we'd make that switch when I saw James pushing on more and hoped that Tavares was going to have a big 15-20 minutes against one of the best wing backs in the league.

Tactically Arteta got a huge amount right last night. bringing in Elneny. Bringing in Holding and starting with more like a back 5, evolving that to a back 4 and then shutting up shop again later on and back to the back 5.

And, after having bemoaned this earlier in the week as one of my 'must improves' it was nice to see a genuine threat on the counter attack from us as Chelsea pushed on late in the second half. We looked the far more likely to score again.