Six players who f***ed their Carabao chance, including Arsenal polar bear and sold former Arteta favourite | OneFootball

Viktor Gyokeres has no place in this Arsenal team, but the plight of a sold ex-Mikel Arteta favourite shows the grass isn’t greener either.

How do you mess up being given a third-round Carabao Cup chance?! These guys took it.

Viktor Gyokeres (Arsenal) It is difficult to recall a player so incongruous, so polar-bear-in-Arlington-Texas, so disconnected from the rest of the team’s wavelength as to be analogue in a digital world.

Two moments against Ipswich summed up the current plight of Gyokeres best.

First, when he went to slowly collect an Eberechi Eze pass at a transition, and instead could only watch as Max Dowman sprinted onto the ball, glided past him and ghosted through another couple of defenders before scoring.

Then the wider reaction of his team-mates after Gyokeres received a pass on the touchline in the first half, ignored three straightforward passing options for four seconds and instead attempted an absurd through ball to Noni Madueke after entirely misreading his movement.

Igor Thiago (Brentford) Last season, Thiago scored with 24 of his 87 shots in all competitions at a conversion rate of 28.7 per cent.

This season, Thiago has scored with one of his 13 shots in all competitions at a conversion rate of 7.69 per cent.

The Brazilian is being outscored by Callum Wilson this campaign, despite playing more than twice as many minutes.

A quarter-hour cameo against Reading really ought to produced something tangible, especially with a one-on-one among his two shots.

Keith Andrews hasn’t “seen any dip in his endeavours” and is convinced that “the goals will come”, but when even the Saturday 3pm kick-off is betraying Thiago it is a point of immeasurable concern.

Emile Smith Rowe (Fulham) Alvaro Arbeloa insisted he has “a very, very good group with a very good attitude,” adding that he wanted any disgruntled players to “show me that they are not happy during the training session” and essentially force his hand.

That missive came after that most modern of player revolts: a couple removing all reference to the club from their Instagram profiles, while another posted a cryptic message after a defeat.

Smith Rowe might be heeding Arbeloa’s message behind the scenes in furiously putting out the cones or sulkily bringing the nets in, but in terms of his playing opportunities the Arsenal hero continues to flatter to deceive.

Since the start of last season, Smith Rowe has scored as many goals in the domestic cups – all against lower-tier opposition – as in the Premier League. Yet 70 minutes at West Ham did little more than pass him by like Konstantinos Mavropanos from a ball to the back post.

Josh King assisting the winner within eight minutes of replacing Smith Rowe crystallised a pecking order few have been given reason to doubt for weeks, if not months.

Cedric Kipre (Ipswich Town) The 29-year-old has never played in the Premier League. And after casting himself as Roger Johnson to Dowman’s Yaya Toure, it feels like even more of a distant pipedream.

Bradley Barcola (Liverpool) 007 is coming. Not sure when he’s expected to score or assist when chasing overhit Jeremie Frimpong passes, to be fair.

Marcos Senesi (Tottenham) Lewis Koumas emerging as the single greatest and most tireless pressing centre-forward in the sport’s history is quite the caveat, but it does feel like Senesi ought to be above being turned and left sprawling by a novice 20-year-old.

While the Italian was typically strong in possession, he remains the first back-up at best and has seen one route to semi-regular minutes closed off before the end of September, having ended the game understandably fleeing from a Dominik Szoboslzai thwacker.