Five Key Takeaways following Arsenal's 1-1 draw at Chelsea 

Here's Gooner Fanzine print columnist Charlie Ashmore with his must-read take on Arsenal's 1-1 draw at Chelsea 

1 - Chelsea’s gameplan to unsettle

It seemed pretty clear from where I was standing in the away end corner that the home team had been sent out to rough us up, rather than take us on at football. 

A number of early fouls were evidence of that aided and abetted by some eccentric refereeing about which more later.  Marc Cucurella was particularly culpable and it was noteworthy how many fouls he was allowed to get away with early on before being booked.  And don’t get me started on Enzo Fernandes.  Not once when going for an aerial ball did he miss the opportunity to play the man not the opponent. He took South American cynicism to the nth degree and I was amazed he lasted the match. That man seems capable of starting a fight in an empty room. 

That Moises Caicedo was sent off amid the carnage is testament to just how bad a foul it was and his cynical response which appeared to be to immediately pretend to be injured himself in the hope of avoiding the ultimate censure was ultimately unsuccessful not thanks to the man in the middle. 

At the start of the second half their tactic seemed to be to try to get Anthony Taylor to send one of ours off to eve things up but eventually a football match broke out and bizarrely Chelsea looked more dangerous when it did. 

To their eventual credit they kept attacking even when down to 10 and Enzo Maresca’s substitutions showed real attacking intent.

2 - An eccentric refereeing performance 

I have a soft spot for Taylor for precisely the same reason Chelsea fans hate him – see 2 x FA Cup Final wins v Chelsea refereed by Taylor in each of which he sent a Chelsea player off. 

That’s not to say I think he is a great referee, and if he is one of our elite refs it says a lot about the rest.  Sunday was a bizarre performance. 

Some players got booked for their first fouls others got away with murder.  And I am not saying he was biased.  The astonishment in our end when he missed Jurrien Timber pulling someone down in front of us was widespread. How he missed Caicedo’s red card first time round God only knows – it looked a red all day. 

I suspect he fell for Caicedo’s roiling around after the foul which appeared to me to have a delayed onset and in my own cynical way I though was designed to avoid the ultimate sanction. 

Fortunately VAR saw it and Caicedo was history.  In the second half he simply ignored Chelsea’s timewasting.  And when I say ignored, I mean that literally.  Time after time he turned his back on Sanchez’s blatant timewasting and just  waited for the ball to be launched. 

When only four minutes was shown there was an audible gasp and to add insult to injury the last 40 seconds of it was lost to another ignored Sanchez delay – he blew bang on the four minutes. 

3 - A big test for the new boys at the back

The absence of William Saliba was a surprise and a blow. 

It saw the Christhian Mosquera/Piero Hincapie partnership face a stern test and they mostly coped very well I thought even after early yellow cards added to the pressure. 

Timber was his usual excellent self which will have helped.  Riccardo Calafiori and Martin Zubimendi were stupid to earn a cheap yellow card and heap additional pressure on the defence but they coped well with everything Chelsea threw at them - bar the one corner of course, which while it was well taken, I thought we could have collectively defended better against.   

Whether Chelsea’s gameplan would have been as effective if Saliba and Gabriel were playing we will never know of course, but big Gabi does love a scrap so I suspect not. 

4 - Failure to take advantage of 11 v 10

From an attacking sense I didn’t think we were effective. 

Mikel Merino was as deep in the first half as I have ever seen him when notionally paying as our striker. 

It was almost as if, having successfully toyed with the Tottenham defence by having our “striker” keep dropping into midfield leaving the defenders wondering who they were marking we resolved to do that again but more so.  

Eberechie Eze had one of those games where it sort of passed him by despite lots of effort on his part.  Gabi Martinelli had a couple of runs which threatened but didn’t deliver and Bukayo Saka was of course having to negotiate Cucurella’s rough house tactics though was our most dangerous attacker. 

In the second half we showed how we could take advantage with the goal which was so simple albeit built on fantastic play by Saka. 

Noni Madueke didn’t impact the game as he would have liked even when he and Saka switched sides and Viktor Gyokeres also failed to have any impact (though it was good for both to get minutes into their legs). 

I think we will have been disappointed not to make more of the advantage while at the same time being relieved to get out without a red card (and the consequential suspension) and with our unbeaten run preserved.  It was in the end a fair result. 

5 - The bigger picture

This was a big week for us. We had a couple of weeks to stew on the dropped points at Sunderland and then came into three tough games in eight days. 

To have won the first two as comfortably as we did and to escape the whole week without a defeat and in good shape in the league is undoubtedly a positive. 

We now have a run of fixtures which, while containing undoubted potential banana skins, we need to be maximising our paints haul from.

Seven games before we play Liverpool means 21 points up for grabs. Two games against Aston Villa will be tricky given their record against us - but if we can get maximum points (or even close to) from those games we will still be making the running, and that my friends is where we need to be in January. 

Read the briliant Charlie Ashmore's column in every print issue of the Gooner Fanzine. Buy our current issue here