Arsenal comes from behind to beat Chelsea at the Emirates, stays perfect in the Premier League

Chelsea needed barely a minute to go ahead at the Emirates Stadium. Morgan Rogers struck a low shot from outside the box, set up by a headed flick from Jorrel Hato off a quickly taken free kick, and the scoreboard already read Arsenal 0, Chelsea 1 when the match had hardly begun. In the end, though, it was Arsenal who took the three points, coming from behind to win 2-1 and keep the perfect start to their Premier League season intact.

The home side had reason to think the equalizer would arrive earlier than it did. In the 11th minute, Riccardo Calafiori turned the ball in from the center of the box, but VAR overturned the goal and a minute later the decision was confirmed: it would not count. Arsenal kept pushing and found their reward soon after: in the 24th minute, Kai Havertz curled a left-footed strike from outside the area, assisted by Declan Rice, to make it 1-1 before halftime.

The first half ended level, with warning signs from both sides: Pedro Neto crashed a shot off the left post right before the break, in one of Chelsea's best chances of the match. But Arsenal came out sharper for the second half and needed just four minutes to turn the game around. A counterattack ended at the feet of Martin Ødegaard, who finished with his left foot from the center of the box after a pass from Christos Tzolis, and by the 49th minute the scoreboard showed the 2-1 that would prove decisive.

A dominance the numbers back up

With the result already going their way, Arsenal managed the game's numbers better from there. Possession and shots on target show a clear edge for the home side, who also created the clearer chances:

Expected goals, calculated from the location of every shot in the match, also point to an Arsenal side that generated far more danger: 2.685 against Chelsea's 0.544. It's a post-match estimate, not a prediction, but it makes clear the gap in attacking output once the early shock wore off.

That gap lines up, too, with what we projected before the match: we gave Arsenal a 61% chance of winning, 23% for a draw and 16% for a Chelsea win, with expected goals of 2.02 for the home side and 0.95 for Chelsea. The final score ended up fairly close to that script, though the road to get there, with Chelsea going ahead in the first minute and a disallowed goal along the way, was bumpier than any projection could have anticipated.

What the result means in the standings

The win lets Arsenal keep their perfect Premier League record intact: three games played, three wins, and a spot they share at the top with Manchester City, both on 9 points with a goal difference of 5. Chelsea, meanwhile, sit on 6 points in fourth place, 3 points behind their rival after today's result. The loss halts the visitors' momentum just when they had started the match in the best possible way.

For Arsenal, the takeaway is a team that didn't unravel despite falling behind in the first minute and that, in the second half, made the most of a counterattack to seal the win. For Chelsea, there's a bittersweet feeling of having had the match in hand from the start and coming away empty handed after Neto's post and other chances that didn't materialize in the second half.