Mikel Arteta makes three changes following opening night defeat at Brentford: at right-back, Soares replaces Chambers, with with Holding coming in alongside him at right centre-back – White is ill – and on the right wing, Saka returns, a move that sees Martinelli relocated to centre-forward with Balogun dropping to the bench.

Arsenal (4-2-3-1): Leno; Soares, Holding, Mari, Tierney; Lokonga, Xhaka; Saka, Smith Rowe, Pepe; Martinelli. Subs: Ramsdale, Aubameyang, Maitland-Niles, Tavares, Chambers, Nelson, Elneny, Balogun, Kolasinac.

Chelsea (3-4-1-2): Mendy; Christensen, Rudiger, Azpilicueta; James, Jorginho, Kovacic, Alonso; Mount; Havertz, Lukaku. Subs: Kepa, Silva, Kante, Werner, Chalobah, Zouma, Hudson-Odoi, Chilwell, Ziyech.

Football is a simple game, but sometimes it’s instructive to look to other sports for insight – Transfers, for example – which crystallises perfectly the difference between today’s teams.

So far this summer, Arsenal have spent in the region of £140m on five new additions, only one of whom, Ben White, is an automatic first pick. This makes some procedural sense: the kind of players able to improve things immediately aren’t really available to Arsenal, and with so many gaps in the squad, they’ve opted to diversify risk with a variety of punts. And it makes some practical sense too: Arsenal aren’t looking to be good now but in a year or two’s time, so need to nurture and develop talent with that in mind. The problem for Mikel Arteta, though, is that if he can’t teach his team how to score and fast, it won’t be his team it’ll be someone else’s.

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