Arsenal's Unbeaten Streak Against Chelsea: Bukayo Saka's Role

Arsenal do not lose to Chelsea anymore. Not since August 2021.

Back then, the gap between the clubs felt huge. Arsenal were in flux, Chelsea were European champions, and Mikel Arteta sent out a backline that now looks like a relic from another era. Rob Holding and Pablo Mari at centre-back, Cedric Soares and Kieran Tierney as full-backs. It was less a defensive structure, more a door you might find on a tired garden shed.

Chelsea, with Kai Havertz starting and Kepa Arrizabalaga and Jorginho among the substitutes, walked into Emirates Stadium and walked away with the points. Arsenal were outgunned and outgrown.

Five years on, everything has flipped.

Gabriel Martinelli’s departure this week underlined just how much churn there has been. Of the Arsenal players involved that day, only one remains in Arteta’s squad as reigning Premier League champions prepare to face Chelsea again.

Bukayo Saka. The sole survivor.

From soft touch to brick wall

The transformation has been brutal and deliberate. Arsenal’s defence is now the platform everything else is built on.

Two games into the new Premier League season, Arteta’s side have two clean sheets. Coventry and Aston Villa managed just one shot on target between them. Teams are not just struggling to score against Arsenal; they are struggling to threaten.

This is not the Chelsea that used to bully Arsenal, either. Under Xabi Alonso, today’s visitors bring serious firepower of their own. Cole Palmer, Morgan Rogers and Joao Pedro form one of the most dangerous attacking trios in the division, capable of ripping through teams if given space.

The battle between that front line and Arsenal’s new-look “brick wall” is compelling enough. But the real story, the one that could define this derby and this season, lies higher up the pitch.

Saka, the only one who remembers the pain

Saka is the only player in the current Arsenal squad who has actually lost to Chelsea in an Arsenal shirt.

He started on the left wing that afternoon in 2021, a detail that now feels almost quirky given the ongoing arguments about who should own that flank in Arteta’s attack. Since that defeat, he has faced Chelsea nine times and scored just once.

For a player pushing to be considered world-class, that is a number that will irritate him.

The noise around Arsenal’s attack this summer has been relentless. They chased a top-class forward and did not get one. The verdict from many outside the club has been simple: this is a team without a true superstar in the final third, a side still leaning too heavily on its defensive structure.

Arteta was asked on Friday whether he believed he had a world-class attacker. His answer was careful rather than emphatic.

“I love my players, that's all I can say,” he said. “In that bracket, how you want to put them, I don't know.”

Saka will know exactly where he wants to be put. Thierry Henry certainly does. Speaking to the winger on Monday night, the Arsenal legend laid down a clear challenge: 15 goals and 15 assists in the same Premier League season.

That is the standard now.

A sharper edge, a new instinct

Saka has started this campaign like a man intent on meeting it.

He scored the only goal against Aston Villa, adding to his strike on the opening night win over Coventry. The Achilles problem that hampered him last season and lingered through the World Cup has been shaken off. The explosiveness is back. So is the hunger.

Both of his goals so far have come from him arriving inside the six-yard box, sniffing out crosses and loose balls rather than waiting for the game to come to him out wide. It is the kind of poacher’s instinct that has not always been associated with Saka, but if it sticks, it changes his ceiling.

Arteta saw the difference as soon as Saka reported for pre-season.

“I noticed that straight away,” the manager said. “This happens in your career and you need certain motivation, or a little pinch sometimes, to take it to a different level. And there are really good signs that Bukayo is giving to think that is going to be the case.”

The numbers suggest there is room – and need – for that leap. In the 2024-25 season, Saka scored six league goals. Last year, he managed only one more. For a player of his talent, with his level of involvement in Arsenal’s attack, those totals feel like a floor, not a ceiling.

If he stays fit, they should be left behind.

A Chelsea defence to target

Saka’s record against Chelsea may be modest, but he will not find a watertight unit in front of him today.

Alonso’s side are thrilling going forward, generous going the other way. Fulham scored twice against them on the opening weekend. Brighton hit three the following week. The three-at-the-back system gives Chelsea numbers centrally, but it also leaves space out wide for someone like Saka to drive into, especially if Jorrel Hato starts as the more defensive wing-back.

That duel on Arsenal’s right has the potential to tilt the game.

Saka will not be doing it alone, either. The familiar patterns around him have returned, and with them, his comfort zone. Ben White, the right-back he seems to read without looking, has started every game behind him. Martin Odegaard, drifting into those inside pockets, has been bright and close to his best.

Arsenal did not land the transformational forward many expected in the summer. So the solution has to come from within. It has to come from players who are already here, already trusted, already carrying the weight.

No one fits that description more neatly than Saka.

From starboy to talisman

This is the crux of it. Arsenal do not just need Saka to be good. They need him to be decisive. Often. Especially in games like this.

Sunday’s derby is not just another fixture in a long season. It is a chance for the champions to throw an early punch, to knock back a Chelsea side packed with players they admired and pursued. Palmer and Rogers, in particular, are names that have been on Arsenal’s radar.

For Saka, it is also a chance to get one over his England team-mates, to show that the No7 on his back carries a different kind of responsibility now.

Asked this week what he made of Chelsea’s new look under Alonso, Saka kept it short.

“We’ll see on Sunday,” he said.

We will. And a lot of what we learn about Arsenal’s attack, about whether they truly have that superstar presence in the final third, will come from what Saka does next.

The club’s unbeaten run against Chelsea stretches back years. The defence is elite. The structure is in place.

Now they need their starboy to step fully into the role everyone is waiting for: not just survivor, not just symbol, but the talisman who decides these games.