Morning all.
A quick, early blog for you. Later Mikel Arteta will have his Carabao Cup final press conference around lunchtime today, and from there the build-up to Sunday can start in earnest. There are some interesting/tough decisions to be made in terms of his squad selection for Sunday, which we can discuss once we’ve heard from him.
There’s a lot of focus on the goalkeeper choice, for example, and I expect him to be asked about that. How much he’s willing to make public, we’ll have to wait and see, but beyond that we seem to have a lot of players available, which could mean one or two aren’t even included in the squad. That was always going to be something he had to contend with, but for the most part this season, because of injuries, it hasn’t really been an ongoing issue.
Now however, he may well have to have a couple of very difficult conversations with players who will, understandably, be upset and hurt not to be included in a cup final squad. The flip side of that is that it’s far better problem to have than having to dip into the double-barrelled but vastly inexperienced reserves of the Hale End Academy, but it will still require some careful man management.
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The League Cup final hasn’t always been the kindest to Arsenal down the years. Maybe it’s not fun to relive some of those, but in his excellent column this week, Tim explores our history in this competition, calling it ‘complex’ in his headline. I think that’s entirely fair, but if I were the meddling kind of editor, I might have added the word ‘painful’ in there too.
There have been shock defeats to ‘lesser’ opposition, going back as far as the 60s, but there was Luton in the 80s, and in the 00s 2011 and 2018 were really quite damaging losses to Birmingham and Man City, but in different ways. The former was a chance to break the drought that we’d experienced since Patrick Vieira’s penalty had secured the 2005 FA Cup final.
Since then, there had been a Champions League final (too soon); the 2007 League Cup final that Tim mentioned; and a league campaign in 2007-08 that should have seen us become champions but for various and mostly quite unpleasant reasons, it didn’t happen. Each of those games would likely have been a sliding doors moment to some extent for the club, and in particular the ‘project youth’ team, but the losses left indelible scars.
After 2011 final, and that late Birmingham goal, I wrote:
Alan Smith reckons we should use the pain of Sunday’s defeat to provide motivation for the future, but how about this? We chuck the Carling Cup in the first round each season. Or simply refuse to enter it on the grounds that it has, quite frankly, been little more than a source of pain down the years. Think about it.
I wasn’t being 100% serious, because there was stuff about using the defeat as motivation etc etc, but the reality of what happened after that game was we won just 3 of our remaining 14 games that season, and the summer of 2011 turned out to be, perhaps, one of the greatest clusterfucks in the entire history of the club. We don’t need to relive that.
After 2018, when Man City (with Mikel Arteta on the staff) didn’t really need to get out of first gear to win, I wrote:
There’s no shame in losing, especially to a team as good as Man City, but there’s something shameful about barely going through the motions during a final. We can pin it on the players all we want and of course they have a responsibility, but it’s ducking the real issue. At any club the man in charge is the one whose job it is to elicit the performances from them. Whether it’s tactical, motivational, or anything else, it’s his job to make sure his team is ready and able for the game, tailored to the opposition regardless of how good they are or how bad they are. And yesterday I felt really sad watching an Arsenal team so far off the pace on a big occasion.
Less than a week later, Man City came to the Emirates and it was the same story. 3-0 up at half-time, Pep Guardiola’s side just passed the ball around in the second half, the stadium gradually emptied out as serious apathy permeated the fanbase, and it felt like that was the final nail in Arsene Wenger’s coffin. A few weeks later, we learned his long tenure at Arsenal was going to come to an end, and that season would be his last.
Fast forward to now, and we’re looking at this final in a different way. Yes, there’s a bit of a parallel in that we haven’t had silverware since 2020, but this Arsenal team feels different to those of 2011 and 2018. We weren’t as reliant on one or two individuals of quality as we were when we faced Birmingham, without an injured Cesc Fabregas, and in a game when Robin van Persie, then probably the best striker around, went off with about 20 minutes to go. In 2018, a motley crew of players assembled from haphazard recruitment lacked everything you need to compete against a very good team. It was emblematic of where we were as a club.
Now, we’re fighting on four fronts with a team (and bench) replete with quality, depth and determination. We still have it all to prove on the pitch, but both those previous finals felt like a win would be kind of sticking plaster, and this one could potentially be, regardless of how you view this competition, a step forward into a period where this side could achieve ongoing success. Let’s hope so anyway.
Right, I’m off – I’m gonna try and remember how to play golf. As I said, we’ll bring you the stories from the press conference on Arseblog News, and we’ll have a Carabao Cup final preview podcast for our Patreon members later this afternoon.
Until then, have a good one.
