Toni Kroos impressed by something Arsenal did vs Chelsea that he had never seen before

Arsenal had an early scare against Chelsea on Sunday.

Morgan Rogers opened the scoring at the Emirates Stadium after just 77 seconds. But it didn’t faze Mikel Arteta’s side at all.

Arsenal still went about their business and even from the crowd there was no real doubt that they were going to come back and win.

And for Toni Kroos, that’s a side of Arsenal he had never seen before.

Speaking on his podcast with his brother Felix, via Luppen TV, the former Real Madrid and Bayern Munich midfielder gave a fascinating verdict on the game.

“What impressed me about Arsenal was that this was a completely different situation for them,” he said. “Because if you look at last season, when they became champions — I checked again — they were able to play almost every game on the front foot from the start.

“They were almost never behind. Either they won comfortably, or it was 0-0 for a long time. They focused heavily on keeping a clean sheet, but they always had the individual quality, a set piece, whatever it might be, to do what a top team needs to do and win games. They won 1-0 very often.

“And now they were tested in a completely different way. They went behind early. I think that’s a situation they simply hadn’t been used to for a long, long time. And that’s what I was really interested to see, because there had always been a few doubts about Arsenal: do they have that footballing — not the quality of the individual players, because they obviously have that — but as a collective, are they capable of playing a very good team like Chelsea off the park and turning a deficit around?

“I think they passed that test with flying colours. A thousand per cent. I saw another facet of Arsenal in that game. I think they’ve taken another step forward in terms of their football, and they were immediately able to build waves of pressure after going behind, almost at regular intervals right up until the end.”

Arsenal have had plenty of sceptics over the past couple of years. They have been a defensive juggernaut and the masters of going ahead, relying on set-pieces, and then closing out 1-0 wins.

But when forced to chase games against top sides, there were questions over whether they could change gears without losing their structural solidity.

That has a lot to do with the players on the pitch — who’d have known? With Bukayo Saka, Martin Odegaard and Kai Havertz playing together, fit and firing, Arsenal are a much more dangerous team in the final third.

With that trio, Arsenal can deal with any match scenario, whether they’re chasing a lead or already in front.