Arsenal vs Chelsea: N’Golo Kante karma’s payment for Aaron Ramsey

Arsenal have several questions to answer in their starting XI against Chelsea, but on the bright side, karma has leveled the playing field.

No matter how I look at Arsenal without Aaron Ramsey, I don’t like it. Mostly from the recent developments, when Unai Emery clearly found a sweet spot with a 3-5-2. But it was completed predicated on having a No. 10 that meets the exact specifications of the Welshman.

We’ve been without Ramsey for several weeks now, and it shows. It really does. The deeper midfielders have more work to do, as do the strikers, because we just don’t have a reliable No. 10 who can do it the way that Ramsey does.

His absence has been stressing me out. And with Chelsea coming up next, it’s stressing me out more than usual.

That’s because I know what worked for Arsenal against Chelsea in past matches. It was winning the battle in the midfield.

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Emery is going to want to use the 3-5-2 again, but with that noticeable downfall of not having his ideal complete midfield. That’s a tough situation to have to figure out. But thankfully, karma is actually doing us a favor in this one, because Chelsea will be losing out on N’Golo Kante on the opposite side of things.

It was recently announced that the Blues would, in fact, be without one of their most important players, and the one player who was their best hope at upsetting the balance in the midfield in their favor, which they haven’t been able to do in recent matches against us.

This is a big deal, and it’s just as big of a deal as us losing Ramsey. At the end of the day, we’re on equal footing now, which I’m just thrilled about, because put us on equal footing, and we’re the better club. Easily.

It’s the next best thing to having Ramsey back healthy – having Chelsea lose someone just as important. Honestly, I can’t think of anyone I’d rather them be without. We need to win the battle in the midfield, and without Kante, Chelsea have a significantly reduced chance to putting up a good enough fight to stop us.

The match still has to be played, but maybe now we can rest easy knowing that, at the very least, we’re back on level footing. One key guy for another. Now if we can just figure out who else can effectively play a No. 10 role, we’d be golden.