It is a statistic that Arsene Wenger cannot hide from and one which could not be more condemning of his side’s inability to perform in the crunch games away from home: Arsenal have won just six points taken from 20 matches.
That is Arsenal’s record playing away from home against sides from the eventual top five over the last five seasons. One win, three draws, 16 defeats.
This Sunday, Wenger takes his team back to the scene of one of their most recent calamitous collapses and one which effectively signalled the end of their title challenge last season: Stamford Bridge. Back in March, in what was Wenger’s 1,000th game in charge of the north London club, Jose Mourinho’s Chelsea recorded their biggest win over Arsenal, recording a 6-0 rout in one of the Premier League’s most one-sided affairs.
It was the second time that season in which a team competing for the title put six past Wenger’s men, following Manchester City’s 6-3 victory at the Etihad back in December. In February Liverpool raced into a 4-0 lead at Anfield after just 20 minutes, eventually going on to win 5-1. Such results make Everton’s 3-0 victory at Goodison Park look laboured.
In their four matches away from home against top fives sides last season, Arsenal failed to secure a single point, scoring four and conceding 20. It was the first time they had failed to earn a point on the road against eventual top five opposition since the 2009/10 season.
Back in August, when Arsenal battled back from a 2-0 deficit to score twice in the remaining seven minutes at Goodison Park, it heralded hopes that Wenger had finally created a team capable of playing away from home. It has been just over two years since Arsenal last earned a point away from an eventual top five team on their home turf.
On that occasion, 23rd September, 2012, Laurent Koscielny pounced with nine minutes remaining to snatch a point against City - seven straight defeats against top five sides followed. It was also against City that Arsenal last beat a team from the top five on their own patch - nearly four years ago, and even that could be considered a touch fortunate. Back in October 2010, City’s Dedryck Boyata was dismissed after just five minutes, which paved the way for a rare 3-0 away win.
Yet if that late comeback at Everton earlier this season triggered fans’ hopes that their side finally displayed the guile and character missing from previous seasons to challenge their title rivals away from home, the manner of their defeat at Borussia Dortmund in the Champions League suggested that any such improvements were ephemeral, leaving Sunday’s match at Stamford Bridge as a potential watershed moment for Arsenal’s title aspirations.
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