Arsenal v Chelsea: Why the London rivals should admire each other

The speed and fluency of their passing, the fleet footedness of their movement, the dazzling geometry of their interchanging: the only possible reaction was to sit back in admiration. It was hard to remember a better domestic display than that across a career of watching the game far longer than I would wish to be let publicly known.

That, however, was back in January. Last Saturday, as the season arrived at its business end, at Stamford Bridge against Manchester United, Chelsea delivered a very different showing. Pragmatic, contained, disciplined they did exactly what was required and no more. Gone was the sparkle. Gone was the stardust. The only similarity with that match at the Liberty was the three points they added to their total.

In a sense those two games summed up the Jose Mourinho way. Against a weakened, injury-ravaged Swansea side, he could unleash his attacking forces without fear of consequence. Let rip and enjoy. Sit back and entertain.

Against a resurgent United, bubbling with match-winning confidence, he needed to restrain everything, hold back and restrict. The result to the two approaches was the same. In both cases he did precisely what was needed, he got the points. That is the mark of a champion. Not of the also ran.

On Sunday, Mourinho will face his oldest adversary, a man who has long been suspicious of his methodology. You don’t need a rehearsal of the spats and rows, the accusations of voyeurism and speciality in failure to recognise that Mourinho and Arsene Wenger do not hold each other’s approaches in the highest of regard. Withering disdain is the sum of it. Wenger thinks Mourinho is a manager so obsessed with victory he is damaging the very purpose of the game.

“We live in a world where we have only winners and losers, but once a sport encourages teams who refuse to take the initiative, the sport is in danger,” he said of the Chelsea boss as long ago as August 2005.

Mourinho, who is never slow to respond to such jibes, rightly points to the difference in the two men’s recent record. He derides Wenger as someone who misses the whole point of management: picking up silverware. One trophy since 2005: the Portuguese insists he would simply never stay at a club for so long if he was failing to deliver on that sort of scale.

The odd thing about their never ending spat is that it is easy to find supporters of both clubs who would cheerfully suggest that their manager be a little more like their rival. I know long term Chelsea followers who – while relishing Mourinho’s ability to land trophies – would love to see a few more performances like the Swansea one.

Why not? It worked to perfection against Garry Monk’s side. Why not see if it might work against Louis Van Gaal’s? Why not trust to the entertaining spirit? Why not occasionally let it rip? You know, be a tad more Wenger. It is a view, incidentally, not wholly different from that held by the man who owns the club.

Nor do you have to stray very far from the dug out at the Emirates to find Arsenal followers who would love to see their manager be a little less gung ho, a little bit more Mourinho, to have a team which can adapt to whatever circumstances require. To organise his defence a bit better, to practise defending corners, to buy a centre back or a defensive midfielder occasionally rather than accumulating the world’s biggest collection of speedy but frail wingmen.

Since, more as a consequence of accumulated injury than forward planning, he promoted Francis Coquelin to his starting line up, Wenger has been a little of Mourinho’s canny appreciation of the need for balance. Coquelin is exactly the Chelsea manager’s type of player: hard, clever and unyielding. You could imagine him fitting perfectly into this Chelsea team.

Yet, equally, the Chelsea side has within it several members the Arsenal manager would love to call on. Indeed he was once able to do exactly that with one of the more influential. Cesc Fabregas was such a Wenger fit it seemed extraordinary that when he came back to play in England from his native Spain it was to do so across London for the Frenchman’s least admired adversary.

But then there was a reason for that: if Fabregas was going to leave a trophy winning machine like Barcelona, he would only do so to head to a destination where he could be certain he was going to continue winning things. At Arsenal that could never be guaranteed. That was one of the reasons why he left in the first place.

And on Sunday, whatever the outcome, whatever the result of this clash of philosophies, it will not affect the ultimate destination of the title. Even if Arsenal were to win the match, for them to go from here and collect the Premier League title, Chelsea would have to implode in a fashion that is never likely to happen. And that is the way Mourinho likes it.