Arsenal appeared to get under Chelsea’s skin in their 1-0 win over their London rivals. [The derby consisted of some very strong challenges, plenty of yellow cards, players delaying the restart, Pedro Neto booked for dissent and Enzo Maresca being told to “try harder” by Jurrien Timber.](https://www.football.london/arsenal-fc/fixtures-results/fofana-red-card-timber-penalty-31216116)
Moises Caicedo went even further with his post-match interview and came out with quite the claims. [Going as far as to say that the Arsenal side that his Chelsea teammates were comfortably beaten by had been together for perhaps longer than what reality might suggest.](https://www.football.london/chelsea-fc/news/moises-caicedo-walking-suspension-tightrope-31205934)
“We were better than them,” Caicedo said. “They (Arsenal) are working like seven years together, and us just two years. We showed we were better than them, and yeah, that’s good.”
Seven years? Is that right Moises?
Well, let’s rewind time and take a glance at what this Arsenal team looked like seven years ago. Mikel Arteta of course was not the manager, he was still under the tutelage of Pep Guardiola at Manchester City, getting his first taste of an Amazon All or Nothing documentary.
Unai Emery had not even had his spell in charge as Arsene Wenger was at the helm. On the same week seven years ago, on March 15 2018, Arsenal played AC Milan in the Europa League, winning 3-1, 5-1 on aggregate.
Would you, reader, like to take a quick guess at how many of the current Arsenal squad were involved in that particular matchday? I shall pause here for dramatic effect.
That’s right, well it is if your guess was zero! A grand total of zero current Arsenal players were in the matchday squad.
The starting eleven consisted of: David Ospina, Hector Bellerin, Shkodran Mustafi, Laurent Koscielny, Nacho Monreal, Granit Xhaka, Aaron Ramsey, Jack Wilshere, Mesut Ozil, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Danny Welbeck. The bench was made up of: Petr Cech, Calum Chambers, Sead Kolasinac, Mohamed Elneny, Alex Iwobi, Ainsley Maitland-Niles and Eddie Nketiah.
Quite the squad, but certainly not a group that had worked together for seven years like Caicedo might have claimed. In fact, of the eleven starters from the 1-0 win on Sunday, five players have been involved with the senior starting eleven for less than two years.
Losing a derby is painful and clearly can make you say some pretty ludicrous things. Moises Caicedo, however, may have reached new heights with this humdinger.