Arsenal vs Chelsea: six points each, two opposite defences

The third round of the season finishes at the Emirates on Sunday afternoon with the only fixture in it between two clubs on six points. Arsenal are second, Chelsea fourth, and the two of them are separated by goal difference and by almost every other measure of how a football match should be played.

Arsenal have scored four goals and conceded none. Chelsea have scored seven and conceded five. One of these sides has won a Premier League match with a quarter of the ball; the other has won one with seven shots.

Arsenal have not conceded a goal

The opening weekend was a 3-0 home win over Coventry. Last Monday at Villa Park was more instructive: Arsenal won 1-0 with 60.8% of the possession and seven shots, two of them on target.

Bukayo Saka scored the only goal on fifty-nine minutes, right-footed from very close range after a Riccardo Calafiori assist. Villa had seven shots of their own and did not put one on target.

Two matches, four scored, none conceded, six points. It is an unusually controlled start — Arsenal have not needed a big performance, they have simply not given anything away. Whether that survives contact with a side that scored four at Stamford Bridge last weekend is the entire question of Sunday afternoon.

Chelsea have won two matches without controlling either

Chelsea opened with a 3-2 win at Fulham. Then came the strangest result of the round so far: 4-3 against Brighton with 25.6% of the possession.

Roméo Lavia scored from a corner on four minutes, Pedro Neto made it two on fourteen and João Pedro three on thirty-two. Malick Yalcouyé pulled one back on thirty-five, João Pedro turned into his own net on sixty-three, Cole Palmer restored the two-goal cushion on seventy-four, and Pascal Groß headed a third for Brighton six minutes into stoppage time.

Seventeen shots to Brighton’s fifteen, from a quarter of the ball. Chelsea are the most direct side in the division right now and also the least secure: seven scored and five conceded in two matches is entertainment, not control.

The window that sits behind it

Chelsea sold Enzo Fernández to Manchester City for £125m on deadline day, a fee that equals the British transfer record. City finished the window having spent £440m.

That transaction hangs over this fixture in a way it will not over most. Chelsea are fourth on six points having sold the most expensive player of the summer, and they arrive at the Emirates three days after the window shut with whatever squad they now have until January.

Arsenal, by contrast, have had the quietest start of any side in the top four: two wins, no goals conceded, and a 1-0 at Villa Park that required seven shots and very little drama.

Fourteen shots and four goals

Arsenal’s attacking numbers are the quiet oddity of their start. Seven shots against Coventry, seven against Aston Villa, four goals from the fourteen. That is a conversion rate no side sustains, and it means the clean sheets are doing more work than the scoreline suggests.

Chelsea are the reverse again: seventeen shots at Stamford Bridge from a quarter of the ball, four goals, and three conceded in the same match. Both clubs have six points and neither has yet played a match that looked like a template.

Sunday is the first time either faces an opponent that has also won both of its matches, which is a small thing on the third weekend of a season and the closest either has come to a proper test.

What the match turns on

Arsenal will have the ball. Chelsea have won twice without it, so that suits them, and it is a genuine tactical question rather than a rhetorical one: a side that beat Brighton with 25.6% possession is not going to be troubled by conceding territory.

What Chelsea have not yet faced is a side that does not give the ball away. Fulham and Brighton both invited pressure and both were punished for it. Arsenal have conceded nothing in 180 minutes and generated their winning goal from a passage of control rather than a transition.

The flip side is that Arsenal have taken fourteen shots in two matches, which is a low number for a side with this much of the ball, and they have not yet been behind. A team that has not had to chase a game is a team about which one important thing remains unknown.

Kick-off is at 16:30 on Sunday, and it closes a round that began on Friday night at Portman Road. If you want to see where six points each in early September actually leads, the Premier League simulator on this site runs the remaining thirty-five matchdays from the real table, with the real fixture list — including this one.