Mikel Arteta reflected on a 2-1 win for **Arsenal**against Chelsea.
The Premier League leaders put a five-point gap between themselves and **Man City**with another victory in an all-London affair. **William Saliba**and Jurrien Timber took their chances from set-pieces, and the Gunners rode the wave of a ropey finish to pick up the result that they required.
“A proper London derby. We expected that because of the quality of the opposition, the individual quality they have, and because we played them four times already, so we know how good and difficult they are to play against. After we started the game so well, the first half was very dominant.
“I think the margin and the scoreline should have been bigger. But we were 1-1, so game on. I reminded them that we were in exactly the same position against the Spurs seven days ago in that dressing room. They said, look what happened in the second half, so we're going to do it again.
“But probably we're going to have to go through some difficult patches to end the right to win the game. We certainly did that. We took the moment to score the second goal and after the red card, we all expected a very different outcome in the last few minutes.
“But we didn’t manage to control and dominate that scenario as well as we wanted. On top of that, Chelsea did some very, very good things in that period and we needed David to win us the game.
“I'm trying to stay calm, but obviously we weren't getting the dominance and the sequences of play that we wanted and expected against the 10 men. So you have to navigate through that, and it's a big part of the game. When you see the manner in which other teams are winning games, everybody's suffering. The manner and the margins are so small, so it's good.
“We hadn't scored from set pieces for a few weeks now, but we scored so many in open play. Today was an option to score from this kind of situation. We've done it so well, but we conceded as well.
*“You have to play the game that is there for you to play, and against Chelsea, you know exactly the game you're going to play. For me, it's a beautiful game to play because they have so much quality.*
“You have to adapt so much to what they do, and they have to do the same against us. So the margins are very, very small, and the duels at the end decide these kinds of games. Hopefully we can play many top games like this.”