Hello! And now it's time to return matches of the Football League Cup. Yesterday, there was one exciting semifinal between Bristol City and Manchester City, in which Man City was not easily beaten. Bristol struck many of his game in this draw of the League Cup, reaching the semi-finals. Now this team is on the fifth place in the Championship, but undoubtedly it would be interesting to look at it in the Premier League.
So, today we are waiting for a return semifinal match between Chelsea and Arsenal. The match will be held at the stadium "Emirates" - home arena "Gunners".
Arsenal.
In the Premier League, the "Gunners" are fighting for fourth place with Tottenham and Liverpool. And so far, Arsenal in the role of lagging behind in this race. "Spurs" in front by three points, Merseyside for five points. Ahead of the "Gunners" is not such a simple calendar. In the next round they will have to go to Wales to visit Swansea, then Everton and Tottenham. In this off-season Arsenal parted with Theo Walcott, Francis Coquelin and of course the main loss of Londoners - Alexis Sanchez. The main acquisition - Henrikh Mkhitaryan, most likely will not be able to go out on the field today, but as the match of the last round with Crystal Palace showed, there is someone to play at Arsenal's attack. The undeniable advantage of the Gunners will be the home stadium, where they lost just once to Manchester United in the Premier League's match this season. And do not forget that three weeks ago these teams already met among themselves in the Premier League, and then Arsenal took away the victory from the "aristocrats" in the last minute of the match.
Chelsea.
In Chelsea in the Premier League so far everything is going well. The team is in third place, the calendar in the next three rounds allows the "aristocrats" to score points in almost every match. But there is also a "fly in the ointment" - this is the realization of the moments, the blue ones create enough moments in every match, but almost half of the strokes go past the gate. Again, recall that match of the 22nd round: only Alvaro Morata could make a hat-trick, but in the end his punches came either past the gate or the goalkeeper. Michy Batshuayi also does not justify the hopes placed on him. Also, unlike the same Arsenal, who played all the previous matches in the cup back-up team, Blue played all three previous matches almost the basis, which can also negatively affect the game form in the upcoming match.
Statistics of personal meetings.
In the Football League Cup for the last time these teams met in 2013 and also on the Emirates, and then Chelsea won 0-2. In all tournaments, the teams played 188 games among themselves, and Arsenal won more victories in these confrontations. The last four meetings of the team ended in a draw.
As a result: my personal opinion is that the outcome of this match will be decided in a penalty shootout. Draw seems logical in this confrontation.