”Would you accept,” someone asked Arsène Wenger on Friday, “that if you lose against Chelsea, you will be out of the title race?” “First,” replied the Arsenal manager, “we have to get back into the title race.” An acknowledgement of fact that makes today’s rendezvous at Stamford Bridge rather difficult for the Gunners. How difficult the test when a draw at Chelsea isn’t much good. It is not where Wenger wanted his team to be as the Premier League marathon inches towards halfway, but he and his players have only themselves to blame.

Wenger spent time trying to find a new centre-back but wasn’t able to find one. Samir Nasri was bought to replace Alexander Hleb but, otherwise, the manager placed his trust in the current squad. “Maybe \,” he said, “but I will tell you frankly, at the start of the season we lost Hleb, who was in a Webster situation \ so we had to let him go. We didn’t want to lose \ Flamini but we did because of the financial potential of Milan. And at the start of the season we lost \ Rosicky, \ who is an important player for us, both in the dressing room and on the pitch.”

One of Wenger’s most endearing traits is his intelligence and the certainty that his interests transcend what happens inside football’s white lines. You know, for example, that he will frown when reading how much the Arctic ice-cap melted last summer, and Arsenal’s chairman, Peter Hill-Wood, wouldn’t be the only one to say that the collapse of the world economy would not have happened on Arsène’s watch.

“I believe the job of a real manager is to try to be successful while respecting the need for a balanced budget,” said Wenger. “People don’t yet realise what will hit society in the next 12 months. Arsenal made £30m profit last year. I am quite proud of that because no matter what happens, this club cannot die. It is in a strong financial position.

“We will try to make the same kind of money again, although at the moment this is something nobody cares about. To win, some people are ready to make the club explode and say, ‘Okay, you buy, spend £50m, £60m’. Nobody cares. But if you are in a financially unstable position, you are in a weak position. We have two important strengths: a very young and promising team, and a football club in the 21st century with a new stadium and training ground that also has a strong financial situation.”

But it is to escape their unbalanced books that people turn to football, and should the team lose this afternoon, what will it matter to Arsenal’s faithful that at last Chelsea have discovered the seam in Roman Abramovich’s pocket: the playground kid who used to be able to buy all the marbles now says he’s only doing swaps. But Arsenal go into this match 10 points below their west London rivals. To have a chance of winning at Stamford Bridge this afternoon, they must perform with what Wenger calls “extreme desire”.

Ah, desire? This touches the most sensitive nerve in Arsenal’s young team. Forget, for a moment, the long list of injured players, forget the failure to find a top-class centre-back. Recall that when the young Gunners beat Manchester United three weeks ago, they were right back in the title race. That afternoon they played with “extreme desire”. One accepts it is not possible to produce that level of motivation every week but for the top four teams in the Premier League, many games can be won without it. After the adrenaline rush and the confidence boost of beating United, one expected Arsenal to be formidable against Aston Villa a week later. They knew what was coming — a Villa smarting after bad losses to Newcastle and Middlesbrough and certain to be fiercely competitive. All Arsenal had to do was match that. Their passing and high-tempo football would do the rest. This was the moment for their young players to say that beating United was nothing if it was not followed by a performance of similar quality against Villa. It was the moment for the young players to remind us that they were growing up quickly. Against Villa they played without passion. It was a crime against themselves.

Wenger accepts his share of the responsibility for that performance. “When you are beaten by desire, you go home and you question yourself.” Did all of his young players question themselves in the same way? There was a telling moment in that game when Manuel Almunia dived to his right to brilliantly parry Ashley Young’s penalty. As the ball waited to be cleared or finished into the net, depending on who was quickest or most determined, it was William Gallas who flew back between two Villa players to get there first. He was the only Arsenal player anywhere near the ball.

You saw that and weren’t surprised that, one way or another, Gallas’s reservations about the mental strength of the group surfaced. Perhaps he should have been more discreet and as captain, he probably should have kept his views within the team room, but sometimes the lack of “extreme desire” merits extreme disapproval. If they are what we hope they are, Arsenal’s young players can only benefit from the criticism.

They will surely be formidable this afternoon because Chelsea’s goalkeeper, Petr Cech, has taken off his fluorescent shirt, replaced it with a white coat and become Arsenal’s psychologist. “You have to know how to win the game in a different way and that is the difference between us and them,” said Cech. “You need to be physical and fight, this is what they are missing.” The first thing Arsenal’s new CEO, Ivan Gazidis, should do is make Cech’s position permanent.

The physicality and the fight will be there in abundance this afternoon, because Arsenal’s young guns will see Chelsea as they saw United three weeks ago. The tougher tests for them come next weekend against Wigan and, even more so, against Middlesbrough at the Riverside stadium a week after that.