By Desmond Nleya
There is still a say for Arsenal in what could yet be the best Premier League title race in years and that it was built upon the ruins of what was supposed to be the new Chelsea, will only sharpen the appetite of Mikel Arteta’s players.
These are the late stages of the season when every goal in the title race matters and every win is freighted with anxiety, yet this night turned into the kind of parade for the home side normally reserved for teams with the big prize already assured. Arsenal luxuriated in goals, and they showed up every imperfection in this strange Chelsea conflagration of club record signings and club record embarrassment.
It cost Chelsea’s new owners, helmed by those two American investors Behdad Eghbali and Todd Boehly £747.8 million in transfer fees in less than two years, to be this bad. For Arsenal it might not be enough to force Manchester City into the error that blows the title race open again, although in terms of the bigger picture the progress will give them momentum for next season. They are now 30 points ahead of the London rivals who wrestled away their pre-eminence two decades ago.
There were two goals for the former Chelsea attacker Kai Havertz, a key £65 million sale in the Chelsea profit and sustainability trade-off last summer although not quite as effective on the balance sheet as the two Stamford Bridge hotels the club recently sold. Certainly, there were times in this game when the thought occurred that Chelsea would have got better value keeping the hotels while passing on some of their big-ticket signings of the last two seasons.
In the end, the title race remains open with no room for error for the top three teams.
