Arsenal versus Chelsea: Beauty versus the beast?
In response to the media’s portrayal of tomorrow’s game between Arsenal and Chelsea at Stamford Bridge as “Beauty versus the Beast”, Danny Broderick makes a case for Chelsea’s winning style of football.
Beauty versus the beast, with us cast as the beast, of course. But is it that simple? Isn’t beauty in the eye of the beholder? And anyway, by what divine right are Arsenal and their style of football held to be more beautiful than ours? And is there actually that much difference? I think, as usual, a certain level of media hype is at work and many, including many of us, have fallen for it.
The key issue seems to be about open versus closed play. But no club playing for top honours plays totally open football. Do Barcelona? Certainly not. A large part of their game is based on spoiling, tripping, shirt-pulling and feigning injury - the kind of unsettling, rhythm-breaking stuff that is essentially defensive.
Similarly Arsenal, who, over the years, have been responsible for the introduction of this kind of gamesmanship into English football. With a seriously bad disciplinary record and an infantile sour-loser attitude unmatched by anyone else.
Granted, the two above mentioned clubs do play open football at times. By which I mean, quick, accurate inter-passing through the team, with the ball mostly on the ground, directed at getting it into dangerous areas to score goals. Just like us. And in no way do they play it better than us. Think of our games against Barcelona. The 4-2 home win in 2004. The second half of this year’s encounter. Especially the last minute equaliser. Obviously I could go on.
The real issue is our power and strength in defending when we need to. We do not mind closing up at times. I think this miffs certain pundits who dislike our ability to do the hard work. We have millions to spend. We have great players. Why don’t we forget about defence and entertain the neutral public, they say.
Well, the answer to that is, because football is about winning games and for a club like ours it is about winning them all the time in all competitions. And as everyone knows, that requires the necessary nous to play so-called ugly when required.
But what is ugly about team work? What is ugly about tackling and covering and blocking? What is ugly about keeping possession? It is a matter of perception and understanding the whole game and not just the attacking bits. It is a matter of understanding what is required to move a club like Chelsea into a major, regular trophy-winning side from a standing start. Without a long-standing tradition of winning the top honours (though we have a tradition, and a wonderful one at that) we are having to achieve quickly and thoroughly. That means a certain amount of safety-first football. So, okay, we are not as open as others. Our open play is performed within a context of a more coordinated team effort. That doesn’t make it ugly. It is quite beautiful really. And truly effective. Which is the real point.
As usual, any such casting of Chelsea as villains has its roots in our denial of the former dominant status of other clubs. So there it is, envy again. It just won’t go away will it?
- Posted at 03:04 PM · Permalink · Print · 3646 views · Last indexed by Google on the 17th May 2008
- Tags: Arsenal, Arsene Wenger, Barcelona, Chelsea, Jose Mourinho, Matches
An obvious pro-chelsea bias, but no arguments against the basic premise of the article.
‘pretty football’ is bollocks if it’s not effective.
Danny - Mourinho summed it up best.
“We are a team adapted to the reality, which is why Arsenal cannot beat Bolton at Bolton and why Chelsea under me have played three matches and got three victories at Bolton with zero goals conceded.
“For my concept of football, the best football is the football adapted to the circumstances.
“You cannot play against Bolton at Bolton the same you play at home against Watford. My feeling is that some teams and some managers play every game with the same philosophy, with the same game principles and with the same game strategy.
“Sometimes they beat someone 6-0 and sometimes they lose a game they shouldn’t lose.
“One of the strengths in football teams is to adapt to different realities which is what I am trying to do with Chelsea in England and Chelsea in Europe. Chelsea cannot play in Europe the same way it plays in England.
“We’ve played some matches at home with three defenders; we’ve finished some games with five players in attack. So Chelsea is an attacking team but adapted to the reality. Against Bolton if you don’t defend as we did in the last 15 minutes, you have no chance.”
Asked if he would like to emulate the “pretty” football of Arsenal three seasons ago he said: “Pretty when they were champions without defeat, yes. Not pretty when they finish fourth, not pretty when they had to win their last game to qualify for the Champions League.”
Ahmed - Indeed, “pretty football” is bollocks if it’s not effective.
You mentioned the game Chelsea won against Barcelona in 2004.Great point,Carlvaho pulled down Barcelona’s goal keeper to get the last goal.The referee saw it but he was appointed by Chelsea.Collina, right?Where is he now?Correct me if I am wrong,is Collina being banned by Series A because of corruption?I will up load some interesting footage to YOUTUBE showing how Chelsea’s rivals help Chelsea to win the games.
we were pretty when we cut Bolton to shreads on the way to winning the double a few years ago..as we were when we played you off the park the last time you lost at home and we”ll be pretty again tomorrow when we give you a lesson in football
its well hard to do a season unbeaten hey lads? there’s your effective machine like boring crap down the pan. pretty is nothing without effective. yeah if you are 4th, sure. and being champions 2 years effectively without ever being pretty is a let down. after spending all that dosh your own fans are yawning and not buying tickets. you cant buy class neither. gallas was a hero for your club, and the true blues know it. look at the low brow stance your club took. cole has been a backstabbing spy for us and the class with which we have handled it. cole belongs with you lot. not all chelsea fans are new chavs. i know plenty of old boys, they enjoy the glory. but they aint blind to the facts. arsenal, liverpool and united haave won the league with honour. cfc have sacrificed thier once proud ‘history’ to become a world wide hate figure. the world aint just jealous of you. alla champions deal with envy from other fake fans. this behaviour has earned you hatred. and you aint millwall, they at least didnt talk rubbish.
i always supported chelsea over many teams. london after all. shame whats happended over there in westlondon. would rather u win the league than united, if you coulda kept your face in tact.
and out come the eejits - ‘you can’t buy class neither’
or an education by the looks of it.
‘we were pretty when…’; yes, and pretty hopeless when bolton walked all over you a few weeks ago.
and john dolye - no, collina hasn’t been banned, he retired and certainly wasn’t named in the italian match-fixing scandal. and of course, the answers to all of the world’s conspiracies are out there on youtube, just waiting to be discovered.
jesus wept, what a pile of f**kwits.
‘you were hopeless when Bolton walked all over you a few weeks ago’ as you were when that team of superstars, yes spurs, turned you over the other week…your joke of a club spends millions buying two ‘world class’ players yet becomes more imbalanced, more boring(if that was possible) more reliant than ever on deflected goals and set-pieces, can’t sell out..poor shevchenko..used to have Kaka and Pirlo behind him now has to hope he gets in the way of one of fat frank’s shots to deflect it in…tomorrow u’ll sell out cos your playing the biggest team in London and we’ll give you the lesson in football we gave the mancs
It must be hard to follow a team with unlimited funds…..takes all the fun out of the game. Where as we look for the diamonds in the rough and play the beautiful game as it should be played.
Jonathan Dyer,pay attention to YOUTUBE.It’s coming up very soon.It’s going to show how Cheskis won with the help of their rivals.Collina was found having some business with the sponser of AC Milan and was banned before he retired,and he was the referee appointed by Chelsea.
Can you tell me why Chelsea did not play last weekend,motherf**ker?
I completly disagree with “we play beautiful” football.
Jose had a choice to make when first arriving @ chelsea.
1. Make chelsea the most popular club by bringing the likes of Ronaldo or Sheva. and hopefully they’ll bring success. Or
2. Make chelsea the most powerful club by doing what he did, and thus making sure success comes asap.
With either option eventually, chelsea will get success AND play attractive football. (he said at the beginning of the season Chelsea will be more attacking this season).
Jose’s decision brought us many trophies, and is training for more fluid football.
If he took the first option, play amazing football, but didn’t win shit (like arsenal), I would have asked: “What’s the point of spending that much money????”
The level of idiocy among some football supporters never ceases to amaze me.
Most of the comments below from Gooners are an embarrassment and don’t deserve a response. They make the Sun and TalkSport seem highbrow.
As for “we play the beautiful game as it should be played”. Who exactly dictates how the “beautiful game” should be played? Utter rubbish.
dannybrod makes some good points in his article. Personally I get just as much joy out of watching a great defence as I do a great attack.
Myrrh 4, Anon 1, grime, John Dolye - get yourselves a clue, an education even, then come back and perhaps we can all have a reasoned debate.
Idiots isn’t strong enough word for some of you.
Arsenal fans aren’t very clever are they? I wonder where they all were when George Graham was turning out his efficient, successful sides… Shame none of them can actually engage with the argument rather than producing a list of cliches that could have come straight out of The Sun.
I guess it says a lot about the general ignorance of football supporters in this country, getting their opinions from no-nothing knobends like Alan Green and Mark Lawrenson. Sad really.
John Dolye, we didn’t play last weekend because we used our boring but efficient Communist Mafia money to pay the FA to get the game called off. Collina was the bagman. It’s on youtube, filed under ‘moron’.
‘lack of education’, ‘idiocy’ are these the best responses you can conjure?…there is a balance between playing attractively and pragmatism as we displayed during the glorious unbeaten run and our mighty charge through Europe last season..yet as anyone with a bit of footballing nous can see chelsea wouldn’t know the beautiful game if came to their ground and passed them off the pitch
Pretty football is currently running around in circles, passing the ball anywhere and everywhere except toward the goal and claiming not to have settled in the multi-million pound Cameldome.
Except it isn’t doing a fat lot of good on the road either, having scored just 2 and conceded 7 in the last 3 away games.
You can’t have it both ways - or in fact either way at the moment.
Arsene knows, because he’s said. Arsenal don’t play like Chelsea because they don’t want to or because they don’t need to at times, but if you ask Henry and Ljungberg and van Persie to play that way, they simply aren’t capable of it.
And that’s why it’s sh!t or bust - not for any grander, more hi-faluting reason at all.
Anon1, the reason nobody responded was because you displayed staggering ignorance of Chelsea’s performances this season.
Yes, obviously a balance is preferable, which Chelsea have actually managed successfully this season - beating Villa 4-0 at home, then 1-0 at Bolton, for instance - and how else would you describe Chelsea’s performances against Barca?
Arsenal this season look like they’ve got the balance totally wrong, why’s that?
you are a moron. chelsea is a Bentley version of Bolton or Watford. Booooooooooring. With all the money your Russian mobster owner has spent on players (enough to buy two or three Prem clubs outright) the least you could do is entertain the paying public. But no. You leave that to United or Arsenal. Which is why you can’t even sell out Stamford Bridge on a Champion’s League evening. I’d rather see Millwall then you sorry overpriced lot of defenders.
you beat Villa in the carling cup..in the league you scraped a lucky draw and should have been down to ten men..the reason why we haven’t had the balance this season has been largely due to a lack of continuity at the back as a result of injuries and suspensions..tomorrow will see our upteenth combination in defence which cannot help any sustained title challenge..i’m still confident however as in typical style your manager prefers not play his most exciting players…fabregas,gilberto and the Beast will be too quick and powerful for your workmanlike midfield and shall ensure a comfortable victory…you know you have an inferiority complex when it comes to playing the Gooners
Question to you gunners:
Do you want your team to play amazing football and finish 3 for the rest of your life, or win [b]every single game[/b] 1-0 (meaning win the PL, CL, FA, Carling, SuperC, WCC)
chelsea are only who they are because of the money. No abramovich, not half of those players, no mourinho. We went and won the league, you went and brought the league.
‘Brought the league’. Come on, own up, who has got the Arsenal brain cell tonight?
As for the rest of you, it’s like George Graham never happened. Dishonest and pathetic.
‘like George Graham never happened’..thats right I remember those days..when George spent over 200 million on his squad yet still felt the need to rely on set pieces, deflections, to antagonise opponents before games and cheap tricks such as holding the opposition goalkeeper to win games…however I also remember George scowerring the lower leagues to build the finest defence this country has ever seen as well fielding unexciting players such as Merson, Rocastle,wright and Limpar…winning the league in the last minute at Anfield in 1989..how boring was that?
To Anon1,
>‘lack of education’, ‘idiocy’ are these the best responses you can conjure
Actually there are better ones, its just that this is an open forum, we shouldn’t teach children these words, should we?
>our mighty charge through Europe last season
And not to forget the most boring one, who could forget how you made scrappy wins (1-0 in aggregate for f*ck’s sake) throughout the knockout stages en route to the final. And in the final you could only scored 1 goal in a game which was so boring I nearly fell asleep watching it. But of course, its okay for Arsenal to grind out these results, because they are.. Arsenal, thou-shall-never-play-ugly, no sh*t!
>why we haven’t had the balance this season has been largely due to a lack of continuity at the back as a result of injuries and suspensions..
Aww.. boo-hoo. I shall shed a tear. Must have been that bad huh, no other teams suffered major injuries in your eyes, Im sure.
You cant win against stupidity. And as a result, whatever arguments you stupid-morons-in-a-bowl say, my reply will be “So is your face”.
>still felt the need to rely on set pieces,deflections
You must be pretty stupid, don’t you know, set-pieces are part of the game. Try watching more football before you open your gap please. And last time I checked, deflections do count. At least it did get past the goal line, unlike some teams which pass.. and pass.. and pass.. and pass.. oh you get the point.
>to antagonise opponents before games
And this is a problem because? So the gooners are intimidated.. shh its okay we won’t antagonise you anymore..
>cheap tricks such as holding the opposition goalkeeper to win games
So not only you’re stupid, you can’t count, don’t you know, at 3-2 its still a win for Chelsea at the Bridge? We already won the game boy, 4-2 was needed to get through to the next round. But you’re a gooner so I understand.
It seems your final point exposes who really is thick here..a 3-2 chelsea win would have knocked you out of the competition on account of an overall aggregrate loss..so yes..u needed to cheat to win..or would would you have been the only thicko dancing in the streets cos you won the game…yes..set pieces are part of the game..the trouble is they’re the only part of your game which is probably why you don’t sell out and can only fantasise about having a ground like ours…don’t worry about me watching more football cos i’ll be at the game tomorrow where i’ll see something rare…a team playing the beautiful game at stamford bridge
How stupid are you? Try constructing proper sentences for once.
Your point was that we had to hold a keeper to win. I’m telling you that 3-2 IS A WIN. We beat Barcelona. I also mentioned earlier that 4-2 was needed to get to the next round. Clearly you missed this, because if you did read that, you wouldn’t have given such a stupid comment.
>the trouble is they’re the only part of your game
Thats true, they’re only part of our game. There’s more to our game than that, thank you for agreeing.
>which is probably why you don’t sell out and can only fantasise about having a ground like ours
Do Arsenal sell out every game? Obviously not. Why is it any different with any club? No club sells out all their games. Thats a fact. And why would you even think we would ‘fantasise’ a stadium that is as loud as a library and struggling to even pay for itself? We love the Bridge very much Thank You.
> i’ll see something rare
Considering how much you see and know, you’ll see many new and ‘rare’ things.
The problem with Arsenal fans these days is that they think prannying around in midfield and giving Andy Gray a hard-on entitles them to some sort of moral superiority over the rest of the league, hence the pathetic disparaging of Bolton, a team who have considerably more heart and spirit than most, and who this season have been just as good to watch as Arsenal (especially in the game against each other). I mean, the most entertaining part of watching Arsenal most of this season has been watching Wenger throwing his paddies on the touchline, but you won’t find many Gooners who’ll admit it.
It’s a shame, because Arsenal fans used to have a wider appreciation of the game than that. Now they are just ignorant, arrogant and smug.
Right, I’m off to get pissed.
Most of Chelsea’s goals were from set pieces and corner kick.Especially this season,Chelsea could not score in the first half and they got set pieces around the penalty area in the second half.Anything happened during the break.I think i am watching Series A.
The sum of cost of the Arsenal team cannot afford to buy Shev.I expect Chelsea hammer Arsenal at least 4 to nil.You guys feel ashame?Today proof that the best Chelsea team cannot beat the youngest Arsenal team .If i were Roman,I cut the salary to 1/100 and feed you guys with shit.
Was Essien’s goal from a setpiece or a corner?
Farkers.
We deserved the win, and Arsenal were extremely lucky to leave with a point. The post/bar was their 12th man.
Magnificent ending but the start was too casual for my liking. In fairness, kudos to arsenal for bringing the game to us. We simply did not have any drive compared to our last 2 seasons. we virtually did not trouble lehmann in the 1st half and for me we only played for 20min (last 20min) which is appalling. And drogba, he needs some ‘drugs’ to stay on his feet and looks for too much sympathy from the referee and gets carried away easily. Essiens goal was a beauty flowing beastfully. Overall, the 2 points dropped should not hurt us (hopefully) in May.
Shame Arsenal only came for a point. So much for beautiful, positive, attacking football…
THE MOST EXPERIENCED FOOTBALL STAR PLAYERS CANNOT BEAT THE MOST JUNIOR ARSENAL TEAM.WHAT A SHAME.ROMAN,THE WHOLE WORLD IS LAUGHING AT YOU.MAY BE, SPEND MORE ON THE REFEREES.
It’s quality this website, you actually see that Arsenal fans are more pathetic than the Scousers that give it all the lemon on here!
John Doyle mate, you are possibly the clumsiest person i have ever read on this website…bless! Look on youtube to see how we’re cheating?! CFC BLOG where do you find these ppl?
Listen….think about it sure, you’ve got a couple of good youngsters Arsenal, (like Sendors who was bossed by Drogba lol) no but seriously Fabregas, Clichy erm…Eboue. But how can you possibly even think about arguing you deserved anything yesterday or come to think of it anything this season? Wake up lads…”oohhh you bought the league”…..”ooohhh you bought flop players” BUT OOOHHH we’re 2nd in the league and current champions and erm….well can you say that? Can you tell me you’re going to win the league this year? Johnny boy….i’m just asking for you to respond with “you didn’t do it in the correct manner!” And what way is the correct manner donut??
John Dolye is an angry, angry man.
Arsenal is the 2nd in Europe.chelsea got knock out in the last 16 on your world famous potato field.
Aresnal got knocked out of the CL by the same team that knocked us out.
Yesterday my arsenal friends were happy for 15mins - during the first 10mins and 5 mins after the arsenal goal.
Arsene Wenger is the biggest hypocrite in World football. He says Chelsea play boring defensive football and then sends his team out to get a draw and succeeded. It felt like a cup tie. Also, Arsene was furious about the “foul” on Hleb, but conveniently forget about the obvious penalty on drogba by senderos, who reminds me of a rabbit in headlights when up against the ivorian. Hleb is the biggest waste of 10 million pounds since Franny Jeffers.