Some significant differences: (1) at Linares 2006, Aronian and Leko began the final round on identical tournament scores (7.5/13, part of a four-way tie for the lead that also included Radjabov and Topalov, each of whom got a draw in the final round); (2) Leko was trying to bounce back from a difficult loss in the previous round, whereas Aronian had a brilliant win yesterday; and (3) Aronian won the above-linked game (and rather convincingly) with the black pieces.

... except in those cases where they are difficult to achieve if one of the players wants to avoid them ...

In any case, although Tate is a strong player by most standards, he is not likely ever to be one of Aronian's rivals at elite international events, so the curious remark you quote is not exactly alarming smack talk by my lights.

Carlsen: "I noticed that Kasparov has spoken in a neutral fashion and has tried to play down the collaboration. He probably hoped that Nakamura would produce better performances before the collaboration was made public. After all, since the nice win at Tata, Nakamura has not achieved very much . . . I've had very good resaults against Nakamura in the period since Kasparov has been his trainer. I think Nakamura has made and will make more progress as a result, but right now there are four to five players in the world, including me, who have significantly better understanding of chess than Nakamura. And I don't know if even a man like Kasparov can change that in the short term."