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6 September 2026

Just hold on a second. We had seen that goal before, hadn’t we? We had seen Martin Odegaard in almost that exact area, drifting unnoticed into a pocket of space between midfield and defence. We had seen Christos Tzolis cut infield and thread precisely that pass into the middle. We had seen Riccardo Calafiori make the decoy run and Kai Havertz cleverly let it go. We had seen Odegaard’s sharp movement, the velcro-like first touch, and the calmness as he paused for a split second before finishing.

If Odegaard’s winner against Chelsea seemed familiar, it was because he had produced an almost identical strike against Manchester City in the Community Shield three weeks earlier. The same players, the same patterns, the same result, with a world-class goalkeeper — then Gianluigi Donnarumma, now Emiliano Martinez — left on the turf as the ball found the net.

The main question at the beginning of the season was not so much who would win the league, but how Arsenal would go about winning it. Would they stick to the 2025/26 template, battering opponents through endless corners, suffocating possession and closing off every route to xG? Or would there be something more fluid and instinctive now that the burden of a 22-year wait had finally been removed?

You could already sense an energy around the Emirates, a feeling that the fragility of previous years had been blown away. Music booming from the megastore DJ could be heard along every road leading towards Armoury Square three hours before kick-off. Inside, hundreds stood in line to buy an Arsenal scarf, pyjamas or even a cushion carrying Declan Rice’s face. Outside, content creators battled for room while supporters filmed other supporters being interviewed for YouTube.

It is that peculiar point in the season when the leaves are still green and summer has not quite let go. The transfer madness has only just finished and, in truth, nobody really knows much yet. The sample sizes remain small and, in this in-between period, poor conclusions are often drawn. At exactly the same point last year, after three matches, champions Liverpool beat supposed challengers Arsenal and the title race was considered all but finished.

So what kind of Arsenal are we going to see? The opening matches of the campaign had not yet provided a conclusive answer, but this one felt different. That was certainly shaped in part by Chelsea’s decision to make it a basketball-style contest, by Morgan Rogers’ early goal which forced Arsenal to react with urgency, and by Martinez — the Premier League’s chief s***house — whose very presence stirred the Emirates into a furious volume. Even so, this display was packed with roaming positions, crisp combinations and smooth rotations that were thrilling at times, and Chelsea found it difficult to keep track of them.

Martin Odegaard drilled in Arsenal’s winning goal against Chelsea.

Odegaard got the decisive goal as the Gunners kept up their 100% record.

There was one moment late in the first half when Havertz was stationed on the right wing, Calafiori was surging into the right half-space, Odegaard was effectively the striker and Bukayo Saka had moved inside as the No 10. Only David Raya, Ezri Konsa and Gabriel Magalhaes could really say they were in their usual positions. And Odegaard’s goal came from a quicker rhythm that this Arsenal team had, at times, drifted away from in the closing months of last season — understandably, because of tension, fatigue and perhaps even simple fear over what might slip away.

It also mattered that Arsenal did not have this version of Odegaard for much of last season, a campaign disrupted by injury. He found his rhythm again while captaining Norway at the World Cup and has carried that form into Arsenal’s season with three goals in four matches, if you count the Community Shield as a match. At times in the past he has settled into taking the safer option, becoming Arsenal’s playmaker on the edge of a game, but here there was real daring in his movement. He got closer to Havertz, nearer to goal, and demanded the ball in crowded areas where his close control can damage opponents.

“He’s fit, his confidence is one of the highest that I’ve seen him and he has a point to prove,” said Arteta. “Kai the same, Bukayo the same. We missed so many attacking players last season for long, long periods, and I don’t know how many times they’ve played together, those three, in the last few years. Probably not much. You feel the chemistry that they have between them and what they can produce. You have to play with real intent and that’s what I loved seeing today. He was running forward, he took shots, he created so many situations for his teammates.”

Are Arsenal now about to deliver a season of wild, entertaining chaos-ball? Probably not. Arteta is not going to throw away the positional principles that have shaped his coaching career so effectively. Arsenal will not come up against a side as frantic as this Chelsea team every week. But there is a paradox here: the understanding and relationships within this team are now so polished, so finely developed, that Arsenal can create rehearsed attacking patterns that are every bit as captivating to watch and as hard to stop as something improvised.

Maybe this is the next stage in the evolution of Arteta’s side: to become just as carefully drilled in the disorder of open play as they already are over the certainty of a set-piece. The fact that Odegaard has scored the same goal twice in a month suggests that, even within the framework of their manager’s highly calibrated system, Arsenal may be discovering a fresh attacking edge.