Mikel Arteta and the FA Cup

Morning.

Let’s start today with the draw for the FA Cup third round, and this time around it’s a trip to Portsmouth, who currently third from bottom in the Championship. It feels like during Mikel Arteta’s tenure we haven’t always had the easiest opposition at this stage of the competition, but we’ve also had some poor performances along the way too.

Obviously we won the cup in his first season, beating Leeds at the first hurdle in 2020. In 2021, we beat Newcastle 2-0 before going out in the next round to Southampton. I genuinely have no recollection of that at all, coming as it did in the surreal period where the pandemic had made life so strange. I went back to read what I’d written about that game, where a Gabriel own goal of all things cost us the game, and with rotation a key discussion point this week, so it was back then too:

Another player with a chance to find some form … any kind of form … was Willian, and again he dropped another stinker. Like I said yesterday and in the podcast, I understand why he was picked even if I didn’t like it too much. I even understand why the manager publicly pledged his support for him and Pepe. But if we’re not actively trying to find a way to cut short his tenure at the club and finding a new club for him this summer (yes I know how difficult it is), we’re not doing our jobs properly.

Blimey. The following year, 2022, was that infamous game against Nottingham Forest in the Amazon season. Nuno Tavares was hauled off after about half an hour, Charlie Patino started because we barely had a fit midfielder at the time, and we lost 1-0 in that all-white kit which is for a great cause but seems bit cursed. It’s like if someone made a donation box in a church that every time someone put a coin in it an orphan died. Mikel Arteta’s post-game rant became legendary because he would not accepting those ‘foggin standards’”

In 2023, we had a relatively routine 3-0 win over Oxford as our first FA Cup tie of the season, but came up against Man City in the next round and lost 1-0. The year after that it was a 2-0 defeat to Liverpool at home in a period where we went a few games without being able to score, and last year was that horrendous game against Man United where we played against 10 men for a long time, missed a penalty, lost Gabriel Jesus to an ACL injury after he’d remembered how to score goals again, and lost in a penalty shoot-out during which David Raya appeared to do the exact opposite of what you’d want from your keeper in those circumstances.

It must be a weird competition for Arteta when he thinks about it. The win in 2020 probably helped give him some measure of job security during that period the following season where our form was really poor. He had the trophy to his name, and who can argue with trophies? Now, everyone is desperate for the next one, because there have been none since, but the eyes are on a bigger prize than the FA Cup.

The demand is for the title, no question, and if you’re being ambitious/greedy [delete where appropriate], also the Champions League league. And look, that’s what we should be aiming for as a club, that’s why we’ve developed and built and assembled – at some significant cost too – this big, deep squad. And yet the cups remain important too.

You will hear people say ‘I don’t care about the FA Cup’, but then when we exit that competition, their reactions don’t really tally with that. I do care about the FA Cup, and I think our record in it as a club is fantastic. Nobody has won it more. Do I want it more than the league or the Champions League? Obviously not. That would be a bit daft, but would I thoroughly enjoy a cup run and a final win at Wembley? Obviously. You’d be mad not to.

A kind draw early on can help. In 2020, after we beat Leeds we came through ties against Bournemouth, Portsmouth and Sheffield United, before taking on Man City in the semi-final and then Chelsea in the final. The last time we’d won it was 2017, when our run was Preston, Southampton, Sutton United, and Lincoln City before again we beat City in the semi and Chelsea in the final. I’m sure Arteta would love a relatively uncomplicated FA Cup run, because it would be useful for progression, but also enable easier squad rotation.

The two sides of that would mean ‘fringe’ players get minutes, but also those minutes could prove useful as and when some of those guys are inevitably needed for Premier League games in the run-in. A cup run would mean they’re not necessarily coming in as cold as they might be otherwise. But it will be a challenge to mix and match, to rotate and prioritise if we’re in the middle of what looks like a title race that will be very tight between here and May.

Arteta’s mindset, as it should be, will be to win every game, and to achieve success in every competition. But if it’s perceived that a team selection for a cup game, deemed less important in the grand scheme of things, costs us Premier League points, then there’s always going to be a discussion about that. It’s only win-win if you win-win. Let’s see how it goes.

Right, I’ll leave it there for now. We’ll bring you any press conference snippets later this evening on Arseblog News after the team travel to Belgium. For now, have a good one and the Arsecast Extra is below if you haven’t had a chance to listen yet.