Arsenal: Chelsea trend can continue with Calum Chambers

Arsene Wenger may have been onto something investing so much faith in Calum Chambers, and with Chelsea up next for Arsenal, the trend can continue.

Arsenal’s defensive mishaps have only come around lately. Early in the season, they had the massive success of going into Stamford Bridge and pulling out the clean sheet. Granted, they were clean sheeted too, but defensively, it was beautiful.

It’s been a developing theme for Arsenal. Their recent run of form against Chelsea has been pretty special. And it hasn’t been just one defender locking them down, it’s been various ones.

The first came in the FA Cup final. Rob Holding and Per Mertesacker combined to complete negate the Chelsea attack, namely the antics of Diego Costa, who was similarly shut down earlier in the year thanks to Shkodran Mustafi.

It happened again in the Community Shield, when Rob Holding and Sead Kolasinac, with the help of the sudden centerback Nacho Monreal, negating newboy Alvaro Morata.

Surprise, surprise, Mustafi continued his string of Chelsea domination when the Gunners traveled to Stamford Bridge earlier this year. Morata was left fuming at the German’s shut-down ability and to this day, the Spaniard resides in the pocket of our potent German defender.

Coming up against that same side come tomorrow will ideally be Calum Chambers. It seems as though every time Arsenal deploy a new defender against Chelsea (Shkodran Mustafi, Rob Holding) they completely negate all the Blues’ attempts at establishing dominance up front.

I nominate Chambers to continue that trend.

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In case you haven’t noticed, I have been high on Chambers lately, as he has serious shut-down potential. It has been growing in potency in his two matches and his frustration had to boil over with the utter garbage penalty call against West Brom.

Chambers has been known to lock down opposing players in one-on-one situations. Meaning that, if there is enough Morata left to go around after Mustafi takes a bite out of him, then Chambers may be the guy to gobble up the rest.

What may happen though, given what happened against Crystal Palace, is that Chambers may instead be forced to deal with the drive of Eden Hazard. Wilfried Zaha clearly made a point to target young Chambers and he was largely left frustrated. Hazard may have his eyes on doing the same.

Some may call that a potential weak spot, but I have confidence in the young Englishman to maintain his composure (a specialty of his) while channeling the rage stemming from that faux handball.

Next: 5 Things Learned Against West Brom

Of course, this is all assuming that he is (rightfully) sent back out there instead of, say, Nacho Monreal.

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