And the winner is- Chelsea!!!

In the end it was much like all the other disappointments that Arsène Wenger has suffered against Jose Mourinho teams over the years, with the exception that this time one of his favoured sons was pulling the strings for the club the Arsenal manager has long considered to represent the dark side of English football.

Of course it had to be Cesc Fabregas who dispatched the ball over the top of Arsenal’s defence with 12 minutes left; the ball that Diego Costa chested down and lobbed over Wojciech Szczesny to seal victory. The former Arsenal midfielder was the game’s outstanding player, the chief architect of Chelsea’s victory and generally just as good as the away fans will have feared he would be.

As in the previous 11 meetings between Wenger’s Arsenal and Mourinho’s Chelsea, in which the former has also not recorded a single victory, there was a familiar outcome to this contest. Last season it was a humiliating 6-0 scoreline; on this occasion the performance was better and the margins tighter but still you wonder when, finally, one of Wenger’s teams will find a way to beat Mourinho’s Chelsea.

Seven times Chelsea under Mourinho have beaten Wenger’s Arsenal – in 12 meetings over the last 10 years – and perhaps that was partly to blame for the Frenchman’s extreme reaction to his counterpart in the first half. In the aftermath of a bad foul by Gary Cahill on Alexis Sanchez for which the Englishman could have been dismissed, Wenger placed two hands on Mourinho’s chest and shoved his smaller adversary.

Mourinho responded by flicking Wenger’s red club tie. All that was missing was the schoolyard headlock and knuckle rub on the top of the head.