As Arsenal and Chelsea prepare to do battle on Sunday afternoon, it will give Arsene Wenger another chance to end his disastrous head-to-head record against his opposite number Jose Mourinho.
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The Frenchman is yet to taste victory in any competition against the Blues under the Portuguese manager in a run that now stretches to 12 games, and that record seemed to get the better of the former in the reverse meeting at Stamford Bridge back in October.
Since Mourinho’s return to the Premier League at the beginning of last season he has masterminded three victories in four games against the Gunners, and has conceded none, with the most comprehensive result being the 6-0 hammering at the Bridge which would have surely hurt Wenger even more than any other loss.
But it has to be pointed out that Wenger has come close to beating a Mourinho side on some occasions and we take a look at three examples:
Arsenal 2-2 Chelsea (December 2004)
This was the very first meeting between the two managers just over a decade ago in a game that the home side will certainly feel aggrieved not to have come away from with three points.
Twice they took the lead through Thierry Henry but on each occasion they were pegged back by the Blues and in the dying stages of the game the French forward blasted an excellent chance from close range high and wide to deny Wenger a victory against Mourinho at the first time of asking.
Arsenal 1-1 Chelsea (May 2007)
A game in which the Gunners denied Mourinho’s side the Premier League title but in reality they should have won as they played the entire second half with a one-man advantage but Wenger was still unable to find that elusive victory against his nemesis.
After Khalid Boulahrouz was shown a red-card for bringing down Julio Baptista and Gilberto Silva had converted the resulting spot-kick, it seemed there was only going to be one winner at the Emirates.
But against all the odds the Blues found an equaliser with 20 minutes to go as Michael Essien found the net with a brave diving header before Emmanuel Eboue smashed an effort against the crossbar injury time.
Chelsea 1-1 Arsenal (December 2006)
Wenger came within six minutes of getting one over on Mourinho at the Bridge in 2006 but it was another late goal and a stunning effort from Essien which means that record still stands to this very day.
It was a very un-Arsenal like performance that day as they struggled to get their fluent passing game going but they went ahead after 78 minutes through Mathieu Flamini and it looked as if they would go on to claim all three points until a long-range piledriver from Essien extended Mourinho’s unbeaten record against the Gunners to six.