The good news for Arsenal is that this was far better than similar games were last season; the bad news is that a defeat that was, in the end, comfortable enough, feels in some way like progress.
Arsenal scrapped and fought and for a time looked as if they might, at some point, trouble Chelsea, but then they were undone by old failings.
Chelsea now are five points clear at the top of the table, and the sense is they still have some improving to do.
Already, this looks like being their title to lose.
Arsenal, meanwhile, have become like some tragic hero of Greek myth, doomed eternally to enact the same ritual over and over again.
What does it mean any more to say that they need a player of dynamism and ball-winning capacity at the back of midfield?
Of course they do, they obviously do, and they have done since Patrick Vieira left nine years ago.
To say so again seems so manifest as to be pointless, like observing that fire is hot, and yet it remains true, and the lesson unlearned.
The strange thing is that Arsene Wenger used to know this. As former England manager Glenn Hoddle pointed out in his newspaper column yesterday, at Monaco he used Marcel Dib and Jean-Philippe Rohr together at the back of midfield, while his first Arsenal teams were based around Vieira and Emmanuel Petit. Yet now he seems determined to win with a flock of small, neat technical forwards.
At least those players showed tenacity, Danny Welbeck and Alexis Sanchez, in particular, chasing and harrying, putting pressure on Chelsea.
There was, it seemed, a calculated policy to unsettle Chelsea through aggression, a ploy that extended even to the touchline, where, in reaction to a bad challenge from Gary Cahill on Sanchez, Wenger reacted by squaring up to Jose Mourinho and shoving him. The Chelsea manager looked startled, and for a moment it seemed he might collapse in a heap, but then his hand went up, flicking Wenger's tie.
It was all rather silly and, although Wenger turned away with a huge grin on his face, the way Arsenal immediately conceded suggested his antics had perhaps unsettled his side.
The goal highlighted precisely Arsenal’s problems. Eden Hazard ran at Santi Cazorla, who was having to cover at the back of midfield in the absence of Mikel Arteta and Aaron Ramsey.
He allowed the Belgian to skip past him far too easily, getting a run at Callum Chambers, who was already carrying a booking and was perhaps tentative as a result.
He went past him far too easily, and Laurent Koscielny, as he is wont to do, panicked, conceding a wholly avoidable penalty.
The second, 12 minutes from time, was more understandable as Arsenal pushed forwards in search of an equaliser but, still, it was the cheap concession of possession that led to Cesc Fabregas chipping the ball over the top of Diego Costa to run on and beat Wojciech Szczesny for his ninth goal of the season.
It was also Fabregas’s seventh assist – as many as the entire Arsenal squad have.
In that fact lies the other problems for this Arsenal side, the sense that, not only are they lacking bite at the back of midfield, but they are also short of cutting edge at the other end, their fleet of technical players offering the vague outline of menace rather than an actual threat.
That Arsenal managed just one shot on target is damning, and perhaps suggests just how in control Chelsea were.
The old issues keep on recurring.
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