It won't, of course. The £32 million man Kante should take up his habitual place at the heart of the Chelsea side on Saturday. Meanwhile, the £30 million midfielder Xhaka may be spotted in the stands or the dugouts. Or he may not be seen at all. The Swiss international is still suspended after picking up his ninth red card in three years. He is a cause of controversy, Kante a constant. One is a buy that threatens to backfire, the other a candidate for signing of the season for a second successive year. 

He is the division's definitive defensive midfielder, the man on course to win the title in consecutive years with different clubs, Eric Cantona-style, and the biggest single reason for the extraordinary 66-point swing between Leicester and Chelsea in the standings from last year to this. He is a guarantee of energy and efficiency, winning the ball and using it with quiet effectiveness. Xhaka is the Arsenal enigma, capable of scoring spectacular goals and always liable to be sent off.

So instead the on-field comparison will be between Kante and Francis Coquelin. The Chelsea man was nearly a Euro 2016 winner. His Arsenal equivalent will be one of the only uncapped starters at Stamford Bridge on Saturday. Along with home advantage, along with a fine record in the fixture, along with the league table, it is another reason why Chelsea start as favourites.

Part of Kante's appeal lies in the way he seems capable of dovetailing with anyone. He formed one formidable central-midfield partnership with Danny Drinkwater last season. He is comprising half of another with Nemanja Matic, a very different sidekick, now. Coquelin can also point to evidence he can combine hugely well with a colleague. But perhaps only one.

His partnership of opposites with Santi Cazorla, slow Spanish schemer and all-action French ball-retriever, is genuinely excellent. Yet the passer supreme's injury problems present an issue. The last league game they started together was September's 3-0 win over Chelsea and Coquelin is likely to be joined by Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain instead on Saturday. The evidence is that he is a good player without Cazorla, but a very good one with him.

Consider the numbers. Since Coquelin broke into the side in Dec. 2014, Arsenal have begun 35 league games without both in the initial 11. They have taken 77 points, a 2.2 point-per-game return that borders on title-winning if converted to a 38-game season. With only one or neither starting, they have 86 points from 46 games, an average of 1.87 per game. It is the sort of return to put a club in the Champions League, but not to make them champions. In the 34 league games before they were united, meanwhile, Arsenal took a mere 58 points, the kind of tally that, if such form was replicated over a complete campaign, would probably bring a Europa League place.

Granit Xhaka has shown flashes of brilliance for Arsenal but his tenure so far has been marred by his lack of discipline.

If Xhaka was supposed to reduce the reliance on Coquelin, or even to be a technically-superior upgrade to him, he has not had the desired effect because of his propensity to be dismissed. Whereas Kante made the most challenges in the Premier League last season, the small matter of 175, Arsene Wenger has now advised Xhaka not to tackle. "He's not naturally a great tackler," the Arsenal manager said last week. "He doesn't master well the technique. I would urge him to stay on his feet."

Xhaka has lacked aptitude, not enthusiasm. But for his bans, he would probably have made more tackles than Kante this season. He has actually committed fewer fouls. The difference is that when the Frenchman is penalised, it is not in serious fashion. His are tactical fouls and inconspicuous offences, not reckless lunges. His solitary suspension was a one-game affair for accruing five cautions, not the swinging three- and four-match bans Xhaka has received for his needless red cards.

Yet there was the sense his signing was ending a decade-long imbalance. While they have had fine players, Arsenal have not had one of the two premier defensive midfielders in the division since Patrick Vieira's 2005 sale to Juventus or Gilberto Silva's decline. Whereas once there was a balance between constructive and defensive midfielders, the emphasis switched to the attack-minded men in the middle as small technicians became Arsenal's defining figures.

That Wenger paid the third-highest fee he had authorised for the Swiss, seemingly to displace Coquelin, a graduate of Arsenal's youth system, felt a change of policy. But in many ways, it is Chelsea who are revisiting Wenger's past. It is not merely the presence of Kante who, when Leicester bought him for £5.6 million in 2015, was precisely the sort of signing Wenger used to make: French, comparatively unknown and ridiculously cheap.

It is Antonio Conte's strategy of fielding twin defensive midfielders. It was an approach that helped Wenger win three league titles in the first half of his reign at Arsenal. And now, with the talismanic Kante shaping up as the most influential player in England and giving Chelsea a consistency of selection and performance in the heart of midfield that Arsenal lack, it is looking a winning formula for Conte.