"How Arsenal's 'Magnet Move' Outfoxed Chelsea: Arteta Bests Rosenior Again!"

IT’S a title race full of twists, turns and drama.

And with the pressure on following , Mikel Arteta and knew the visit of was must-win.

William Saliba sparks Arsenal celebrations as Gunners down ChelseaCredit: Getty David Raya had another huge match for league leaders ArsenalCredit: Getty

After back-to-back league draws, a thumping win over North London rivals got the Gunners back on track and a second win in successive weeks over the Blues has got them motoring once more.

Defensive duo William Saliba and Jurrien Timber netted either side of a third Arsenal defensive goal – albeit one in his own net by Piero Hincapie – as the .

But what was it behind the Gunners’ win that took them five clear at the summit – having played a game more than and Co?

SunSport’s Will Pugh has taken a look at the action in the latest episode of .

Corner-stones of success

All three goals in this game, of course, came from corners.

So it’s very much the Set Piece FC Tag for Arsenal. They’ve now got the most Premier League winning goals from corners EVER, with nine, and the most from corners this season out of all the teams, with 16.

Arsenal continued their set-piece dominance The Gunners have the most ever winning goals from corners in a season

Let’s look at Arsenal’s first goal.

William Saliba was up against Andre Santos, while Gabriel beat Reece James and Joao Pedro to the ball to head back across goal for the Frenchman to score.

It’s the same thing for Jurrien Timber’s goal as well. They didn’t learn their lesson from the first half.

But Chelsea caused Arsenal some set piece problems of their own to score their goal.

15 players in total were in the six-yard box. 13 of them, again, basically between the near post and that front edge on the corner-taker side of the six-yard box. Total chaos.

And this time, Hincapie goes for the ball, like Rice had done before, and it deflects off of him and in. The answer to this is blockers.

Chelsea loaded the six-yard box to score their goal in a similar way to their opponents

Rather than just running with them and being lured in, Arsenal have got to be a little bit more NFL style [where players are charged with stopping opponents getting near the ball rather than just winning it].

I expect Nicolas Jover and Mikel Arteta will be working on this on the training ground this week.

The Zuzu advance

Before the game, Zubimendi had covered the most ground of any player in the Premier League, which may be surprising for some non-Arsenal fans who think of him as just a holding midfield player.

But he put that engine to good use on Sunday. Dean [Scoggins] spoke before about how jump men are employed by some Premier League teams.

This is where players are given licence to totally jump out of the position they usually play and just follow a player all the way around the pitch.

Zubimendi follows the Chelsea man around all areas of the pitch Zubimendi’s press in full flow as he sticks to Enzo Fernandez like a magnet Sanchez has passing avenue into midfield blocked off by the high press

It looks weird when centre-backs do it. But that’s exactly what Zubimendi was doing in this game.

Dean mentioned in Team Talk about how Chelsea like to play out from the back by inviting pressure on and then sucking players into central areas and playing risky passes to spring out and feed their number 10s.

Those players, as a result, should get a bit more space, which has been vacated by opponents that have been dragged out.

To combat that, Arsenal’s front three in the press played very, very narrow rather than committing to an ultra-high press when Chelsea were doing their classic thing.

When Sanchez puts his foot on the ball, the two centre-backs split wide.

But rather than being lured into pressing them, the Arsenal players let them have the ball deep.

At the same time, however, Zubimendi was that jump man, sticking to Enzo Fernandez or whoever else from Chelsea, dropped deep from midfield to try and pick up that ball, sticking to him like glue.

And that meant that Chelsea were forced to either go long or play out uncomfortably.

Indeed, Sanchez saw himself under huge pressure early in the game as a result of this tactics, and almost conceded a number of time.

Hip Hip Hoo-Raya

Raya made a number of match-winning saves. Firstly, to stop the deflection off Declan Rice’s elbow!

He wasn’t to know whether or not it was a foul. He’s got to have his wits about him.

Raya isn’t shy of doing some wrestling himself, as he’s stuck in an absolute melee of players.

And from a very, very unnatural position, he shows unbelievable athleticism to dive back towards his goal and then tip the ball over and stop his own player scoring a humiliating own goal.

This save showed proper heart and commitment and grit and desire, as much as any real sort of goalkeeping technique.

Raya pulled off some big saves as Arsenal ran out 2-1 winners

Then he tipped Garnacho’s cross around the post, with just four minutes to go at the end of the game, to hold onto the three points for Arsenal.

That was an example of absolutely perfect technical goalkeeping. He positioned himself brilliantly and set his feet so he could go either way depending on where the ball went.

Night and day

David Raya was not only an influence in keeping the ball out of the net, his distribution as always was absolutely on point.

64 per cent of his 25 attempted passes were completed successfully.

He also launched a couple of quick counter-attacks with his trademark long and accurate throws.

Raya pass map for Arsenal vs Chelsea

That forced Chelsea into cynical fouls that tend to produce a booking, with Cole Palmer getting one in this instance.

If you compare Raya’s robust defence of his goal when defending corners to Robert Sanchez’s approach, it’s totally night and day.

If they win the title, Arsenal fans are going to have their goalkeeper to thank as much as any of their other players.