Three Things We Learned after Arsenal beat Chelsea to reach League Cup final as Sunderland loom at the Emirartes

We will face Manchester City in the Final on Sunday, March 22, which will be a huge challenge as well as a chance for revenge for the Carabao Cup Final defeat to the same opponents in 2018.  

For now though, we can put on full focus back onto our Premier League campaign as we face an impressive Sunderland this weekend in a rare Saturday 3pm kick off, looking to extend our points lead further with Villa away at Bournemouth kicking off at the same time whilst City travel to Anfield 24 hours later.

In the meantime, here are Three Things We Learned after Arsenal beat Chelsea to reach the League Cup final next month

1 - Kai Havertz scores again as we reach our first Cup Final for six years:-

Semi-final hoodoo finally overcome – our conservative approach to the tie was understandable given our poor record in semi-finals since beating Manchester City at the same stage at Wembley in the 2020 F A Cup.

I do not think this was a case of Mikel Arteta playing with the handbrake on, it was more of a combination of nerves given that we should have won the first leg more convincingly with a couple of great opportunities spurned to make it 4-1 at Stamford Bridge and also our recent failure to get over the line at this stage of major competitions. Our previous four Semi Final appearances had seen us lose away and draw at home to Villareal in the Europa League in 2020-21, draw away and lose at home to Liverpool in the Carabao Cup the following season and then last term lose home and away to Newcastle again in the Carabao and to PSG in the Champions League, scoring only two goals in the process.

Chelsea’s own pragmatic approach I am sure took us by surprise and led to a very cagey game of few chances. When our opponents did finally venture forward in numbers, we caught them out with a 97th minute winner (more on this below).

2 - Kai Havertz scores again:

– Despite scoring the winning goal in the Champions League, the German has been  largely being derided by their fans being a constant target of the Chelsea ‘boo boys’ therefore the coup de grace he delivered  deep into injury time was the perfect riposte.

Given the time he has spent recovering from two lengthy injury absences, he had made short work of showing his importance to the side upon his return to the first team. He took the late chance on superbly, rounding Sanchez, passing the ball into the empty net and pointing to the Cannon on his chest as the ground erupted in delirium.

It was Declan Rice whose clever pass found Havertz and once again our England midfielder was majestic as he earned the sponsors man of the match award. 

He seems to have made it a personal mission to get this team over the line in as many competitions as possible and his work ethic, passion for the club and huge will to win is shining through more and more with every passing game.

3 - Defensive record is a formidable rock to build upon:

– this was our 20th clean sheet in the 39 matches we have played so far. We have limited our opponents to below 1xG in 76% of our matches in all competitions so far and despite 14 shots from Chelsea, we restricted them to an xG of just 0.68.

There was a time when we used to sing to Chelsea ‘you’ll never beat The Arsenal’ however that spell was broken in the early Abramovich era and for a while they clearly had the better of things.

However, under Arteta we have re-established our superiority in this fixture. We are now unbeaten in ten matches versus Chelsea, winning seven of them.