Arsenal Vs Chelsea: 5 things we learned – Welcome to Wembley

4. Tactical switch provides security

Antonio Conte’s 3-4-3 system is designed to carve through the back-four-based formations that pervade the Premier League. The philosophy is very simple: the two wingers are released from their defensive and width-providing responsibilities, allowing them to drift throughout the pitch, overloading certain areas at certain times, creating mismatches throughout the game. And in the first half, we saw that tactical advantage to great effect.

So Wenger, to his credit, made a change. Specifically, Mohamed Elneny, who had been playing in central midfielder, was asked to sit a little deeper, as a central defender flanked by Shkodran Mustafi and Laurent Koscielny, and Hector Bellerin and Nacho Monreal were stationed as wing-backs, rather than traditional full-backs.

The switch allowed Arsenal to play man-to-man across the pitch. They pressed a little higher up the pitch, they condensed the space in the middle of the pitch, closing down the passing lanes and disrupting the interchangeable attacks of Chelsea in the first half, and began to impress themselves from an attacking standpoint also. It was the move that won Arsenal the game. Had they played like they had in the first half after the break, they would not be playing in Wembley next month. Thankfully, they didn’t.