Arsenal (0) 0 v Manchester City (0) 2
Football League Cup
Final
Talking Points
By Kaz Mochlinski at Wembley Stadium
“Second again, olé, olé!” must be something that Arsenal hate hearing. But the Gunners had a great chance to start silencing the song by winning at Wembley and lifting the League Cup, only to finish as runners-up again.
So the singing is set to get louder still, and it is already coming from every opposition that Arsenal face, at each away ground which they travel to - even recently at Mansfield Town, humourously and laced with laughter.
Ironically, it was not audible at Wembley from the Manchester City fans, who were far too busy celebrating their own side’s 2-0 victory to care about mocking the beaten team and its growing sequence of falling just short of meaningful success.
Disappointingly for Arsenal, there was no one among their players who went out to win this cup final in the manner of Nico O’Reilly for Manchester City, twice coming up from left-back into the six-yard box for two goals in the middle of the second half.
Separated by just 4 minutes 26 seconds, O’Reilly’s two headers won him his first major trophy, one day after his 21st birthday, having made his senior debut at Wembley when starting in City’s FA Community Shield success last season.
Counting the Community Shield, Pep Guardiola now has 19 titles as the City head coach, and 16 even without the traditional campaign curtain-raiser. His fifth League Cup is the most of any manager, maintaining a 100% record in the competition’s finals.
Moreover, City overcame Arsenal again, after failing to do so in their previous six games. It also means that Guardiola has still only lost four times in 17 meetings with Mikel Arteta since his former assistant became the Gunners’ manager.
The big post-match debate around Wembley was whether this will now have any impact on the Premier League title race. The 66th League Cup Final was the first ever to feature the two leading teams in the top division - and the chasers won.
From the Arsenal perspective, the greatest concern will be about how flat their side seemed. In the club’s 50th game of the season, the performance did not rise to reflect the size of the stage or the occasion, as they faded from physical and mental fatigue.
For long periods, particularly in the second half, the Gunners struggled to retain possession or to escape from their own defensive third of the pitch, looking like they were lacking in energy and ideas to break out of City’s superb high press.
Arteta has established a clear first XI, and eight of them started the final, minus the injured Jurriën Timber and Martin Ødegaard (plus the latter’s possible replacement in Eberechi Eze). But the boss additionally had to make one really significant selection.
When there were so many other fundamental flaws evident, it may be unfair to focus on the choice of goalkeeper. However, David Raya leads the Premier League once more this season with 15 clean sheets, yet he stayed on the substitutes’ bench at Wembley.
Afterwards, Arteta understandably defended the decision to continue with his cup ’keeper, Kepa Arrizabalaga, despite the dismay about his mistake in letting Rayan Cherki’s cross slip through his fingers for the decisive opening goal.
“I have to do what I feel is right, which is honest and which is fair, and I think we have an outstanding goalkeeper in Kepa. He’s played all the games in the competition, and I think it would have been very unfair for him and for the team to do something different.”
And Arteta then reiterated: “He helped us to go all the way through to here. I believe it’s the right thing to do, and that’s it. Errors are part of football, and today it happened unfortunately in a crucial moment.”
It was Alan Bennett in his 2012 play ‘People’ at the National Theatre, who came up with the phrase “Doing the right thing isn’t always the right thing to do.” Rarely has there been a more obvious example than playing Kepa in a cup final at Wembley.
If Arteta had any regrets, he kept them private. In public, he strongly backed his players to recover rapidly and to harness the hurt of losing the League Cup Final as motivation to reach for the remaining prizes still achievable by Arsenal this season.
“To have some perspective on it, what this team has done in the last eight months has been incredible. And we’re going to use this disappointment and this fire in the belly to have the most amazing two months that we have ever had together.
“And that’s on us, and we’ll manage that energy in the right way. Now we have to go through that pain and disappointment, and it’s normal and it’s part of football.”
Setting aside the Community Shield, it is six years since Arteta won the FA Cup, his only substantial success so far with Arsenal. And nine years have elapsed since the club’s supporters saw a major trophy lifted, when again taking the FA Cup.
Guardiola had endured just one season without any domestic silverware, so his celebrations were perhaps surprisingly exuberant for such a multiple title winner with several sides in different nations.
“It means a lot. It’s always difficult to win trophies. Always to win this cup is difficult, a lot. So there is joy and satisfaction, at beating, alongside Bayern Munich, and Barcelona as well, the best team in Europe…
“We made an incredible victory. Yes, it’s the Carabao Cup, it’s not the Champions League or the Premier League, of course, there’s no denying this. But we won against that team, and that team makes it very special.”