Monotonous positional football grants Arsenal the most comfortable of 1-0 wins as ‘Cole Palmer FC’ label lingers

Jadon Sancho will go down in history as having been on the pitch at the Emirates Stadium. He was on the right wing, dressed in blue, watching closely as a tepid game unfolded around him. Yet whether Sancho was actually involved as Chelsea produced another monotonous performance in attack was debatable. After all, failing to register a single touch in the Arsenal box did not exactly suggest that this was a player in possession of the personality to lift a team weakened by the absence of their most important forward.

This was the Sancho who drifted along at Manchester United, never justifying his £73m fee. He looked callow every time he thought about taking on Arsenal’s 18-year-old left-back, Myles Lewis-Skelly. There was no mystery about why Sancho was nowhere near Thomas Tuchel’s first England squad. It was less that Lewis-Skelly won their battle after his first international call-up, more that there was never any prospect of Sancho having the wit, invention or speed to trouble the youngster.