Ranking the 25 Arsenal bottlejobs from Max Dowman to Mikel Arteta | OneFootball

After a brief bottling hiatus which saw Arsenal grind out some results in the Premier League to reaffirm their status as heavy favourites for the title the Gunners are back at it again as Carabao Cup final slapping by Manchester City was followed by the humbling FA Cup exit at the hands of Southampton.

What will those defeats mean for their Champions League and Premier League hopes? Could the quad-chasers end up with nothing? Should we care?

In any case there will have been plenty of looks in mirrors and home truths spouted following the loss to the Saints in particular, and ahead of their clash with Sporting on Tuesday we bring you the updated ranking of the Arsenal bottlejobs from least to largest.

The 25 players’ last positions after the consecutive draws with Brentford and Wolves in February are shown in brackets.

25) Max Dowman (n/a)

Start him, give the armband, get him on the plane etc. etc. Or maybe just leave?

24) Mikel Merino (19)

Came off the bench against Manchester United to equalise but ultimately fail to prevent defeat having played no part in the limp draw against Liverpool (what many believe to be the bottling inception) a couple of weeks before. Foot surgery has kept him out of the recriminations firing line since.

23) Myles Lewis-Skelly (21)

He’s not played in any of their last 10 Premier League games, featuring for just 312 minutes in total, nor did he play in the Carabao Cup final, and although he only lasted an hour against Southampton it’s very difficult for a player to bottle it having played such little football.

If a good game for the England U21s against Moldova isn’t proof of his class we don’t know what is.

22) Christian Nørgaard (n/a)

Looked every bit the footballer who should never have joined Arsenal that he is against Southampton. No bottling to be seen here, just a not quite good enough midfielder lacking any sort of match sharpness.

21) Declan Rice (20)

One of our absolute favourite campaigns from the panic-stricken Arsenal fans amid any sort of strife this season is their bid to make Declan Rice captain as if handing him the armband would magically make the rest of the Arsenal team play with as much dynamism and quality as he’s exhibited for the vast majority of the campaign.

He was given a bit of a lesson by Rodri in the Carabao Cup final but there’s not much shame in that.

20) Eberechi Eze (15)

Missed the cup defeats through injury and has masterfully managed to make himself being really quite bad in his debut season entirely Arteta’s fault as the Arsenal manager should just let him do whatever the f*** he wants, goddamnit.

19) Gabriel Magalhaes (10)

A wonderful defender, maybe the very best in the Premier League, which for the purposes of this ranking puts him in very real danger owing to the height of the pedestal Gabriel can bottle it from.

Hope remains after his part in the disastrous goal against Wolves but he was his usual unfussy, solid self in the defeat to City and at times looked to be defending on his own against Southampton, reasonably well too (aside from when he needed Mosquera to save his blushes from that flicked header), and played the killer pass for Gyokeres’ equaliser.

18) Viktor Gyokeres (17)

The benefit of being mostly useless for the majority of the season is that you can’t really be blamed for bottling no matter what happens.

Abdukodir Khusanov had him in his pocket for most of the Carabao Cup final but four goals for Sweden during the international break, including scoring the pressure penalty to send them to the World Cup, looks to have offered Gyokeres a much-needed confidence boost as he came off the bench to score with a fine finish against Southampton, albeit in vain.

17) William Saliba (16)

Missed the draw with Brentford through illness but returned for Wolves and basically looked fine. Couldn’t pin the blame for either of those goals on him and a very solid defence in general this term has remained thus for much of this bottling run.

Dealt with Erling Haaland pretty comfortably in the Carabao Cup final but didn’t look all that sharp having come off the bench as Shea Charles scored Southampton’s winner.

16) Noni Madueke (14)

It won’t be long before Madueke is made a scapegoat again by an Arsenal fanbase that begrudgingly accepted he might not be entirely terrible having initially petitioned against his transfer, before insisting he is actually quite sh*t and more recently dubbing him fine.

Contrasted favourably with Bukayo Saka against City in that he at least tried to get the opposition backpedaling and was similarly direct having also come off the bench against Southampton.

Madueke has performed precisely as well as we would have expected a mercurial winger like him to perform, has been consistently inconsistent since his arrival and thus not one of the bottle.

15) Cristhian Mosquera (18)

Played the full 90 against Brentford and got a bit of a duffing up by Igor Thiago, but he’s not the first nor will he be the last.

Got a couple of clean sheets in consecutive Premier League starts against Brighton and Everton and although he looked a bit ropey against Southampton, true bottlings are for more senior players than the 21-year-old.

14) Martin Odegaard (12)

Anyone who had not seen Martin Odegaard play this season would have looked at the draw with Wolves, the lack of creative spark and attacking fluency, and insisted that the captain’s absence was keenly felt by the inert Gunners. The positive impact he made from the bench against Brentford would support that narrative.

But Odegaard had been playing in plenty of games this term in which Arsenal’s attack looked similarly blunt. His displays in 2022/23 when others slumped around him suggested he was a guy Arteta could rely on to stand up and be counted in the tough times and that may very well be the case despite him missing a gilt-edged chance to break the deadlock against Southampton.

13) Jurrien Timber (4)

William Saliba has hailed him as “the best right-back in the world” and he’s been outstanding all season, which made his performance against Wolves, and one moment in particular to illustrate Arsenal’s collective sh*tting of the bed more than any other, all the more shocking.

Late in the game, with Wolves coming back into it and preying on the obvious neuroses of the visitors, Timber picked the ball up in defence under no pressure whatsoever, with no few passing options – long or short – available to him, and kicked the ball roughly in the direction of the Wolves goal but very clearly not to anyone in particular, like a five-year-old who’s been taught the most basic principles of football that morning might have done.

But he did then answer critics suggesting he should be dropped with a goal and two assists in his next three games, before Ben White answered those critics even more effectively by being utterly terrible as his stand-in for the defeats to City and Southampton.

12) David Raya (3)

Being quite comfortably the best goalkeeper in the Premier League while remaining a guy ‘who’s got a rick in him’ throughout that time made Raya a standout bottlejob candidate, and he duly delivered in stoppage-time against Wolves.

We don’t and probably won’t ever know if he called for the ball before clattering into Gabriel but it doesn’t really matter – just catch the ball, mate. He was also far from convincing and looked at one point as though he might cry under the high balls of Brentford.

Was given his dues following  Kepa Arrizabalaga’s headline-grabbing blunder in the Carabao Cup final, and although that moment doesn’t actually make Raya a better goalkeeper, he’s conceded just three goals in his last five appearances since Wolves to put some fairly daft questions about his ability to bed.

11) Gabriel Jesus (8)

Shoved Yerson Mosquera over like a big rattled baby having come on for the last 25 minutes against Wolves in his last Premier League appearance. He was very fortunate to come back out after half-time in the defeat to Southampton but in truth it’s hard for someone to be an Arsenal bottlejob when they barely still register as an Arsenal player.

10) Kai Havertz (22)

There was more than a whiff of a desperate scramble for an explanation after the draw with Wolves from Martin Keown as he hailed Havertz as an “all too important match-winner” they desperately need back given Arsenal have done without him for pretty much the whole season and seeing as his only match-winning turns came in the Champions League dead rubber against Kairat Almaty and in the Carabao Cup semi-final second leg against Chelsea when they were heading for the final in any case.

He was just about the only consistent factor in non-bottling as Arsenal won 12 and drew one of the 13 games Havertz had featured in before City and Saints, but Keown’s big-game player claim was brutally exposed in those defeats with the Gunners now having lost two of the seven games the Germany international has started for them this term.

9) Kepa Arrizabalaga (n/a)

Eight wins from eight appearances followed by two defeats is classic bottling before you consider his astounding Carabao Cup blunder and his history of blunders in that competition. Saved from top spot by virtue of no Premier League appearances and just one in the Champions League.

8) Riccardo Calafiori (5)

Scoring his only goal in the very first game of the season and his only assists coming in game two begs the question as to whether Calafiori has in fact been bottling it since mid-August before reaching a bottlejob nadir against Wolves by scoring an own goal with his second touch against Wolves in stoppage time after he blocked Tom Edozie’s shot onto the post with his first.

Returned to Arsenal having been denied a place at the World Cup by Bosnia and came off the bench against Southampton to lose Tom Fellows far too easily for Charles’ goal.

7) Martin Zubimendi (9)

He’s evidently an improvement on the predecessor who shall not be named, has scored some lovely goals and looks very comfortable at the base of Arsenal’s midfield. But is Zubimendi a little too comfortable?

No doubt with his manager’s caution-related buzzwords ringing in his ears we’ve see increasing numbers of forward passing opportunities snubbed in favour of the safe option and having marvelled at his style and elegance in the early part of the season we now find ourselves more frustrated by the shackles that restrict him.

Barely noticed him in the defeat to City, other than when O’Reilly nipped in ahead of him to score the opening goal and there’s more than a hint of Zubimendi shrinking into the shadows now the going’s getting tough.

6) Ben White (13)

An uptick in game time handed to him through the injury to Jurrien Timber has served as a stark reminder that Ben White isn’t Jurrien Timber.

Jeremy Doku gave him a torrid time in the second half of the Carabao Cup final as Nico O’Reilly scored both goals from his side, and was targeted by Southampton to outstanding effect in the FA Cup quarter-final, in which he misjudged the cross leading to Ross Stewart’s opener.

Arsenal would have got more for him at the end of the season had he remained on the bench in this run-in.

5) Leandro Trossard (6)

Often billed as a player who ‘makes things happen’ Trossard has made just one assist and no goals happen in his last 16 domestic appearances for Arsenal after five goals and three assists in his previous ten.

4) Piero Hincapie (11)

He was probably also quite surprised to see Hugo Bueno channel the forces of Arjen Robben as he cut inside and curled a left-footed shot into the top corner of David Raya’s net in the draw with Wolves, but Hincapie can’t really use that as an excuse for just watching and allowing him to do it.

Such lame defending after scoring such a lovely goal is in essence a small-scale bottling, which became rather more industrial against City as he never knew what to do with the two-footed Semenyo and was nowhere to be seen stopping the two crosses for Nico O’Reilly’s goals.

3) Gabriel Martinelli (7)

Arguably the paradigm of a bottlejob, Martinelli would be far higher on this list if he had been of more use to Arteta before the downturn.

He looks perfectly capable when the going’s good but when you really want him to step up he shrinks pathetically into a lone furrow on Arsenal’s left wing, colloquially known as the zone of possession loss when he’s on the pitch.

Awful in the draw with Wolves and arguably worse against Southampton, who defended his one-trick style with consummate ease and could rely upon Martinelli’s stunning profligacy when he did get into positions to make a difference.

Booked for shoving the referee when trying to take a free-kick late on in a show of petulance to mirror his pathetic football.

2) Bukayo Saka (2)

Not Starboy?! Yeah, sorry. We love him and don’t in any way begrudge him being made Arsenal’s highest-paid player. He deserves a ludicrous wage as much as any professional footballer does.

He was horribly ineffective after opening the scoring against Wolves, which was just his third goal contribution in 2026 and his only other one since was his deflected effort to beat Brighton.

Where’s the Saka who’s ripped some of the best defenders in the world apart? When was the last time he cut inside and curled one into the top corner? It felt like he used to do that on a bi-weekly basis.

Having been the guy Arsenal would get the ball to in order to turn a game on its head or put it out of sight, Saka has been as meek as any of them.

1) Mikel Arteta (1)

Articles being written about his sacking this season and fans suggesting his time at Arsenal is up while they’ve remained steadily on course to win the Premier League title offers a very clear insight into past misdemeanours re bottlings, widely held opinions on Arteta’s ability to avoid another one and frustration at his style of football.

He resembled a cold and lonely child on the touchline against Brentford and genuinely scared pretty much throughout the draw with Wolves. Even at 2-0 up he looked as though he would need at least two hours in a dark room on his own to recover and another hour of therapy after that.

The vow he made in January that “we’re going to live and play with enjoyment” is as laughable as his insistence that they would show “courage and conviction” in the process.

They’ve been stumbling their way to the title since then, and after Arteta was bang on the money after insisting the humbling by Manchester City was going to be “part of who you’re going to be in the next few weeks, in the next few months, in the next few years” as they were then were outplayed by Championship Southampton.

Here’s hoping Arsenal fans refused Arteta’s offer “to jump on the fun boat” that’s now full of holes and downcast footballers desperately jettisoning water with buckets to keep themselves afloat.