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Chelsea might have lost their match against Manchester City in this season's curtain raiser in the Community Shield, but they turned up in style against Huddersfield and dispatched David Wagner's side 3-0 at Stamford Bridge to begin their Premier League campaign on a winning note.
Maurizio Sarri will be looking to build upon that when they host Arsenal this Saturday who began their campaign on a losing note at home to reigning champions Manchester City. Unai Emery had his baptism with English football and after falling at the first hurdle, he will be keen to step up against city rivals, Chelsea.
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With both London clubs having simultaneously appointed a new manager for the first time in more than 20 years, both Sarri and Emery will be looking to get one over each other. It is a big season for both managers, especially for Emery, who will be looking to infuse new energy into the gunners.
With the Arsenal perspective in mind, we look at Sarri's most likely tactics to thwart Arsenal's campaign on Saturday evening:
Initial build-up
There is no odd peculiarity in the way Sarri sets his teams up in the first glance. He starts with the traditional 4-3-3 that he adopted so successfully in Naples which later shapes into a 3-4-3 during the attacking phase. The full-backs move higher up the pitch to join the midfield on the flanks and Jorginho is then tasked with dropping back to form a vertical triangle in defence.
The 4-2-3-1 is a widely accepted formation because it allows for two pivots instead of one to link the midfield to the defence. Whenever one of them is pressed, the two pivots can easily pass amongst themselves to avoid the pressure.
They usually pass to a free midfield member as the free space is created by the opponent who comes zoning into the pivots. That is why opposition teams prefer to sit back and mark the midfield instead of narrowing into the pivots and this is what makes the 4-2-3-1 formation, a highly prevalent one.
Sarri has a single pivot in Jorginho and Arsenal could do well if they marked him continuously, with a chance to win the ball dangerously close to the Chelsea goal. This is where Sarri is clever, he eliminates this single pivot problem with the rotation of Jorginho, Kante and Barkley at the apex of the defensive triangle.
Kante drops in more in comparison to Barkley, but who will drop and which two will sit higher up the midfield, leaves the opponents guessing. As Chelsea recycle the ball within the triangle, it eventually lures in the opposition midfielders, essentially creating space on the wings that can be exploited.
The midfield play
Now that they have got the ball into the midfield, Chelsea will be expected to rely on the 5-man midfield (deep-lying midfielder goes up) to hold possession with lots of lateral passing in the hope to find the front 3 via diagonal supply lines that negate the opposition's defensive pressure.
Once somebody like Willian or Hazard is fed, it takes a good back line to stop their deadly inward dribbles. Though we are well aware of Morata's poor form, he still has immense importance as he acts as an offensive pivot, who holds the ball down under pressure and feed it to any of Hazard/Willian/Pedro who often make darting runs in behind the defence.
Sarri's system can also take up a 2-7-1 formation, with the two attackers behind Morata dropping deep and the full-backs overlapping. An accurate cutback or a good cross can find the midfield runners to create dangerous goalscoring opportunities.
Sarri seems to encourage the unlikely candidates to venture into the box when a cross is played in. Kante's goal from the right side of the box from a cross from the left by Willian against Huddersfield is a prime example of Sarri's offensive tactics that can throw off a zonal marking system.
The 2-7-1 is a modern-day offensive Catenaccio or a Catenaccio which holds siege at the offensive goal with a single fulcrum upstream as opposed to the defensive Catenaccio of the 1950's. This takes time to build with continuous lateral possession in the final third of the pitch.
The defensive shape
Chelsea lose no time in regaining their defensive shape when they lose the ball. They fall back into a 5-4-1 with Jorginho playing the role of a defensive pivot.
Arsenal could have a difficult afternoon in breaking down the Chelsea defence or find a way to penetrate past their compact lines as Sarri's men demonstrate high defensive work rates. The only weak link might be the understanding between Rudiger and David Luiz and the occasional mistake that shows from time to time.
Chelsea do not fear to play the long ball while defending and find it an incredibly useful tactic under new manager Sarri, who believes in building up attacks from their defensive positions.
He followed the same pattern at Napoli with the hope of finding Hamsik, who was his go-to-guy on the wings. At Chelsea, he could do the same thing with Hazard, Willian and Pedro. Even if the counter does not go as planned, "Sarriball" doesn't mind going back vertically and up again, as long as they retain possession in what the Italian media describes as vertical tiki-taka.
Last season Chelsea hosted Arsenal on two occasions with both the Premier League games and the Carabao Cup match, ending at 0-0. However, this time around, such a scoreline seems improbable with Maurizio Sarri's "Sarriball" in full effect - which can prove fatal for Arsenal who are still getting the pieces of their jigsaw together under Unai Emery.
Emery Has To Ignite The Cannon Or Perish
Emery's biggest mistake on the opening day was not pressing the City back line and the goalkeeper who played out from the back at every opportunity.
On the other hand, Arsenal who for some reason insisted on playing out from the back as the two wide central defenders struggled under the unrelenting pressure from City's front line - with the most notable being Cech, who almost played the ball into his own net.
Arsenal also failed to mark Fernandinho in midfield as he waltzed in and fed the creative outlets on more occasions than a Gunner fan would like to see. On the offensive front, a lack of urgency in key men including Ozil sealed the fate for Arsenal who couldn't come back from a 2-0 deficit.
Unai's tactic was to play Xhaka and Guendouzi as two pivots in a 4-2-3-1 with Ramsey finding a place in the 3 upfront and exchanging positions with Aubameyang but City's zonal positioning didn't allow Ramsey to have much effect on the game.
This forced the likes of Ozil and Mkhitaryan, who are the creative hubs of the team, to be pushed out wide, where they failed spectacularly. Kyle Walker outrunning Mkhitaryan on the right wing for City stands as testimony to highlight the gap between the two outfits.
Whether Emery can learn from his mistakes will play an important factor in deciding the fate of the game. Unai is only a few losses shy of being painted as the next Spanish fraud by the English media and therefore faces an acid test at Stamford Bridge this weekend.
Somewhere in France, far away from the maddening crowds of London, Arsene Wenger breaths a sigh of vindication, but he too wouldn't want the club he helped build with his own hands to falter again, as an epic clash looks to go down to the wire in the English capital between the two new managers.
