Since the start of the 2000s, 11 players have made a competitive appearance for both Chelsea and Arsenal – and, as it happens, they can be slotted into formation to make a well-balanced team…

The rivalry between the red half of north London and the Blues of the west of the capital hasn’t stopped a huge number of players pulling on both shirts over the years. This century it has happened at an average of one player every two years, with the latest addition to this collective coming in the summer.

Without further ado, here is our combined Chelsea and Arsenal XI since the year 2000. As you’ll see, it would probably give a lot of Premier League sides a run for their money…

Petr Cech is among the very best goalkeepers in the history of the English top flight, with no goalie claiming more clean sheets than him in the Premier League era. We undoubtedly got the best of big Pete in the 11 years he spent at the Bridge between 2004 and 2015, as he was a key presence in numerous Premier League title wins and helped us become champions of Europe for the first time.

Even when he left for Arsenal his standing among the Blues faithful remained largely undiminished, and his last game in professional football came in the 2019 Europa League final, when Chelsea put four past him.

The defence is also filled with several Chelsea legends, although we’ve got to start with a player who undoubtedly had bags of potential, but never quite fulfilled it. Lassana Diarra joined Chelsea in 2005 as the next Claude Makelele, but more often than not he played at right-back and he left for Arsenal two years later – shortly after playing in a League Cup final win over the Gunners. However, he spent only five months with them before moving on once more.

Our two centre-halves would complement each other well, starting with David Luiz, the larger-than-life ball-playing defender who came to Chelsea from Benfica in 2011 and left three years later having helped us conquer Europe, before returning in 2016 to win his first Premier League title.

His time at Arsenal, whom he joined in 2019, was less successful, although he’s enjoying his football again with Flamengo in his homeland, where he recently became only the 12th player to win the Copa Libertadores and the Champions League.

Alongside the Brazilian, playing in his favoured centre-half position rather than at left-back, despite enjoying his most successful years in club football there, is William Gallas. The Frenchman was part of the stingiest defence in Premier League history when we won the trophy in 2005, and he helped us win it again a year later.

But he wasn’t happy, and so a few months after finishing as runner-up at the World Cup he moved to Arsenal, where he spent the next four years playing in his preferred position, despite wearing the No10 shirt. He later went on to join Tottenham Hotspur, but his only honours in English football all came with Chelsea.

Completing our back four is a man who joined Chelsea in exchange for Gallas in the summer of 2006: Ashley Cole. He was already well on his way to being England’s best-ever left-back by the time he joined us, having helped Arsenal to a Double in 2002 and then been part of their Invincibles, and at Chelsea the honours kept rolling in.

As well as joining a select group of players to do the Double with two clubs – Nicolas Anelka is also part of it – he topped all his previous achievements by winning the Champions League, six years after losing the final in his last game for Arsenal.

Our holding midfielder is Emmanuel Petit, someone it’s fair to say we never saw the best of at Chelsea due to injuries. His peak years in the game undoubtedly came at Arsenal, where he won the Double in 1998, which is the same year in which he scored a memorable third for France in their victorious World Cup final on home soil. He’s also the first player selected, and one of only three in this team, not to have moved directly between the two clubs.

That wasn’t the case for Willian, who endured a torrid time at the Emirates Stadium after his Chelsea contract had expired in 2020. The Brazilian had famously spurned Tottenham to join us seven years earlier, becoming a household name at the Bridge and winning multiple honours domestically and on the continent. He’s in our top 10 Premier League appearance makers and scorers, too.

If Cole had a lot to do to win over Chelsea fans when he joined us in 2006, it felt like Cesc Fabregas had just as much making up to do after he’d been a willing combatant against us for not just Arsenal, but Barcelona too.

It didn’t take long for Cesc – and his magic hat – to become a big hit at the Bridge, as he just missed out on a remarkable tally of 20 Premier League assists to help us become champions in 2015, which was his first season at the club. He continued to pull the strings for a few more years before departing for an interesting finale to his career that has now taken him to Como, where Dennis Wise is chief executive.

Completing the attacking-midfield line-up is Yossi Benayoun, a player it’s fair to say neither set of supporters really got to see at his best. He’d been a creative talent for both West Ham and Liverpool before, but at Chelsea he suffered a serious injury shortly after joining our Double-winning squad in 2010, before spending a year on loan with Arsenal.

The two centre-forwards would give most defences a run for their money – and they’ve also done it in this fixture on the biggest stage, scoring in cup finals between the two sides. We’ll start with Olivier Giroud, who spent six years with Arsenal and was a more-than-handy goalscorer with an eye for the spectacular, as he proved by winning the FIFA Puskas award.

The same could also be said of his time at Chelsea, which may have been much shorter but also yielded two European winner’s medals – including in the Europa League in 2019, when he opened the scoring in the final against his old side. He was also top scorer when we won the Champions League two years later and his bicycle kick against Atletico Madrid remains one of our best-ever goals.

Prior to his arrival from Barcelona in the summer, we already knew plenty about Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang after he almost singlehandedly helped Arsenal past us in the 2020 FA Cup final, played at an empty Wembley Stadium.

He scored at a rate comfortably above one in every two matches during a prolific five years at the Emirates, sharing the Premier League Golden Boot in 2018/19, and he’s enjoyed a strong start to his Chelsea career. Should he find the back of the net on Sunday he’ll join Fabregas as only the second player in this XI to score in Chelsea vs Arsenal matches for both clubs.