Europa League final - Chelsea vs Arsenal tactical preview: How Maurizio Sarri and Unai Emery hold key to victory

Before the grumbles, power struggles and rising mountain of discarded fag butts, there had been real optimism at the beginning of Maurizio Sarri’s Chelsea reign. An impressive 3-2 victory over Arsenal on the second weekend of the season kickstarted a fine run of form that saw the Blues win their opening five matches, not tasting defeat until a trip to Wembley saw them torn apart by Tottenham at the end of November.

Chelsea’s match against Arsenal at Stamford Bridge was in many ways Sarri’s first real test at the club, with his side quickly racing into a two-goal lead. They then allowed Arsenal back into the game during a dreadful spell at the end of the first-half, before wresting back control in the second and taking all three points thanks to a late Marcos Alonso goal.

“I enjoyed the match for 75 minutes,” Sarri ruminated afterwards. “The other 15 minutes it was better to smoke, I think. It was a wonderful match for everybody but those 15 minutes were horrible. At the moment we are just not ready.”

He wasn’t wrong. In the following weeks the goals were to dry up: having scored 27 times in their opening 11 league matches, they netted just 13 times in their subsequent 13 outings. The return fixture against Arsenal again laid bare their need for new options up front — it took them until the 82nd minute just to register a shot on target — with goals from Alexandre Lacazette and Laurent Koscielny sealing a dominant 2-0 win that revitalised Arsenal’s top four challenge.

Those two matches, as well as the way in which the two teams heaved themselves over the line during such a peculiarly underwhelming end to the season, leaves the Europa League final tantalisingly poised. Both have beaten the other. Neither team is playing particularly well. And both look likely to be missing players that shone in this fixture earlier this season.

Given how well the two teams know one another: it is a strikingly difficult match to predict.

Both sides will be missing influential players. Unai Emery will be disappointed that, for very different reasons, Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Hector Bellerin are both unavailable to him. It feels as though the reaction to Mkhitaryan’s enforced omission — Arsenal have left the player out of their matchday squad over fears for his safety in Azerbaijan — has been slightly muted because of his inconsistent form under Emery, but he was arguably the club’s best player at Stamford Bridge earlier this season. There is little doubt he is a huge loss.

Both Mkhitaryan and Bellerin played vital roles in Arsenal’s attempt to pin back Alonso at Stamford Bridge, with the Armenia international orchestrating his side’s press when not in possession. They successfully managed to make life uncomfortable for Alonso — who has never looked particularly at home when deployed in a four-man defence — with the Spaniard only able to gallop forward late on after Emery had appeared to decide to play for a point.

Working out a way to keep Alonso quiet, should Sarri give him the nod over Emerson Palmieri, will be a priority for Emery. Meanwhile, with Bellerin ruled out injured, Ainsley Maitland-Niles will be used as a right wing-back, and the 21-year-old will almost certainly be singled out by Sarri. He was repeatedly targeted by Valencia in both legs of the semi-final, while his rash red card against Leicester illustrated that he can prove vulnerable when isolated in one-on-one defensive positions.

Regardless of the several difficult decisions he has to make: for Emery, Arsenal’s task on Wednesday evening can be boiled down to one simple — if not particularly easy — task. “Eden Hazard is a player for decisive moments,” he remarked last week to Spanish newspaper El Mundo. “Chelsea is capable of winning the match thanks purely to him, and that ability I have only seen in [Lionel] Messi, Cristiano [Ronaldo], Neymar or [Mohamed] Salah.”

Hazard has enjoyed the most productive campaign of his seven-year stay at Stamford Bridge this season, contributing 16 goals and 15 assists in his 37 Premier League appearances, although Arsenal will not only be wary of the direct impact he can make on a match. They also have to worry about what Hazard is doing when the ball is nowhere near: how he glides into half-spaces and dances elusively on the periphery of the game.

He will almost certainly spend the majority of Wednesday night’s game lingering somewhere on the left-hand side of the field, in an attempt to create space for Alonso to roam forward. Arsenal cannot allow him to exploit Maitland-Niles’ defensive shortcomings — yet their three-man defence risks becoming stretched and overrun should their centre-backs mark the Belgian too tightly.

Chelsea’s other key player is Jorginho. With N’Golo Kante likely to miss the final with a knee injury, Jorginho will be even more instrumental than usual; the man tasked with establishing and maintaining Chelsea’s passing rhythm alongside the muscular Ross Barkley and Mateo Kovacic. Aaron Ramsey is such a loss to Arsenal in this regard, as the Italian has repeatedly struggled when man marked and manhandled this season — particularly at the Emirates, where Emery’s decision to drop the Welshman deep to nullify Jorginho effectively won him the game.

While there are enough outstanding players on the pitch for this final to be decided by one or two moments of individual brilliance, the players themselves are anticipating a tactical contest. “In this competition especially he knows how to win and we know we have to beat Unai as well as Arsenal in the final,” David Luiz commented about Emery earlier this week. It promises to be a tight, technical final, which could be decided by players off the pitch as much as those on it.

Arsenal (3-4-1-2): Cech; Sokratis, Koscielny, Monreal; Maitland-Niles, Torreira, Xhaka, Kolasinac; Ozil; Lacazette, Aubameyang.

Chelsea (4-3-3): Kepa; Azpilicueta, Christensen, Luiz, Alonso; Kovacic, Jorginho, Barkley; Willian, Giroud, Hazard.