Having come so close to masterminding a victory over Chelsea in the reverse fixture, Mikel Arteta would no doubt have been ruing his misfortune at seeing his Arsenal side go down to ten men mid-way through the first-half of the contest on Tuesday night.

Big games and derby clashes against your fellow rivals are often decided by the finest of margins, and having a player sent off for a professional foul after a teammate had dropped him in the mire with a sloppy mistake, is certainly the stuff of nightmares.

So after David Luiz had received his marching orders, and Jorginho had stepped up to nonchalantly slot his penalty past Bernd Leno, Arsenal's players may have started to experience a sense of deja vu. The north London side of course, having been on the end of a 6-0 battering at Stamford Bridge a few years earlier after Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain had been sent off.

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It would therefore have been little surprise to see Arteta simply concede that his side's chances of a positive result had gone out the window, and instead focus on an approach of damage limitation. Rob Holding vigorously warming up on the side-lines in preparation of coming on to reinforce the back-line was completely expected.

And according to Goal journalist Charles Watts, the Gunners were ready to send on the former Bolton man for Gabriel Martinelli. If ever there was a substitution to signal a team's intent, then that would have been it. But in a case of admirable bravery, Arteta appeared to have second thoughts, and started the second-half as he ended it. Granit Xhaka filling in at centre-back, and keeping the north London side's attacking options on the pitch.

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As the game would unfold, Martinelli's superb solo goal levelled things up, before Hector Bellerin ensured the Gunners escaped Stamford Bridge with a point late on. By not going defensive with the substitution of Holding either immediately after Luiz's sending off, or at half-time, Arteta sent out a message to his players that they could do the unthinkable.

“I was thinking about that and I said, 'I don't want to send that message to the team'. And we decided to keep us as we were and give them a chance. And I wanted to see how they could respond to that, you know? Don't make the response for them. Because I asked them to be accountable for what they do and I didn't want to make a decision that didn't let them decide for themselves.”

The Gunners head coach could so easily have waved the white flag in defeat, and written the game off. Instead, his bravery and courage seeped into his players, who fought to claim a hard-earned point. It was a game that under-lined the kind of never-say-die mentality Arteta is trying to instil.

Meanwhile, Arsenal fans have lauded this man as the "future Tony Adams" after his performance against Chelsea.