Keeping Arsenal’s League Cup trauma in perspective | OneFootball

Arsenal’s League Cup final defeat to Manchester City was grim viewing, but with a nine point lead in the league and two winnable quarter finals ahead, this is just a small setback.

History of Wembley pain meets live title race as supporters weigh League Cup trauma against a season still alive on three fronts

Photo by Justin Setterfield/Getty Images

If you go back and read my last article for this website, you will find me talking about treating success and failure as the same two impostors.

Okay, there was then a sentence which began “That said…”, but I think it’s very important that we don’t get too carried away in the aftermath of Arsenal’s second half no show at Wembley, which saw Manchester City win the League Cup for what seems like the 10th time in a decade. I know it isn’t, I’m just saying that it seems like it is.

And, to be fair, it might be important to you and you might want to get carried away about it. That’s fair enough, trips to Wembley don’t come around very often and it is your right to be upset about yet another League Cup final catastrophe. Just as long as you bear in mind the fact that we have seven games left to play in the Premier League and are currently nine points clear at the top of the table. We are also in very winnable quarter finals in both the FA Cup and the Champions League.

You might call this copium, I prefer to think of it as perspective. And, let’s face it, if you’re here and still reading, it’s perspective that you’re here for, right?

Especially as regards a competition that just seems to exist only to kick us squarely in the balls at any given opportunity. Even sitting in the living room at my Uncle Stevie’s on Sunday as we watched the final and dreams of a first trophy in six years slip away; Stevie, generally the most frustrated Arsenal fan on the planet, let his anger at Mikel Arteta’s refusal to introduce Max Dowman subside. He laughed as he began to recall how, as a nine-year-old, he had watched, and cried, as Arsenal lost to third division Swindon Town in this very same competition.

He didn’t mention Luton Town and I have my own Birmingham City story from 15 years ago (yes, dear Auntie I was there with my head in my hands – like a lot people). Nine finals, seven defeats sits in stark contrast to our incredibly proud record in the FA Cup.

So, we’re dealing with intergenerational trauma here, right? Jo and I shared this Sunday afternoon with Stevie’s kids, Anya and James. Josh, the youngest, was playing golf and arrived home just before City’s goals. If there’s anything at all to take out of this game on a personal note, it was that we could share this miserable experience as a family and make it into something positive.

As Stevie said to me, it’s all about the Premier League this season. Yes, the League Cup would have been lovely, but it’s not where we’re aiming, is it? At the risk of being seen to introduce further copium perspective to proceedings here, I think it’s pretty clear we would have had a much better chance of winning had any one of Mikel Merino, Martin Odegaard or, of course, Eberechi Eze been available to provide us with a bit of technical security.

City coped with their defensive absences, Guehi and Dias, much better than we coped with our midfield ones, partly because we had nothing to threaten them with.

Photo by Julian Finney/Getty Images

I’m not gonna dig out Kepa Arrizabalaga too much or, indeed, Mikel for picking him. Kepa was picked as the cup keeper, that’s fine, and he made a mistake. Not one that David Raya would make, but we have also seen Raya make mistakes this season.

Where we really did miss Raya was in that first 20 minutes of the second half where Kepa just couldn’t pick a pass to get us out and up the pitch. In fairness to Kepa, I suspect that even if he’d been able to, we’d have just as soon lost the ball and it would have come back. As it was, though, his nervousness on the ball transmitted itself to the City team just as surely as Great White shark will smell blood in the water.

The annoying thing is City scoring with their first two, and as it transpired, only two attempts on target. However it would be very hard to try and argue seriously that they weren’t much better than us in that period where they covered the periphery of our penalty area with a sky blue blanket and suffocated the life out of us.

In his first final for us, the brilliant William Saliba deserved a lot better from the rest of his teammates.

For me, though, as long as Mikel learns from this experience and, as he said after the game, he and the players use this game as fuel for the run in, we’ll be able to park this game. Hopefully, by May 24, we won’t even remember that it happened; 19 April becomes a date with just a little more red pen around it on our calendars than it did before.

Stevie would still like to know why Max Dowman didn’t get on, so if you have any theories about that, please let me know here.

Otherwise, let me close this by reminding you how much worse things could be.

You could have spent the first part of your footballing weekend watching one of the worst games of football ever played on grass. I was in the away end with Gabs the Bee and his son, Aaron, for Leeds v Brentford on Saturday night, where 80 aerial duels were contested (equally) in the space of 90 minutes and no goals were scored. We didn’t get back in time for Match of the Day, but I can’t imagine they would have given more than 90 seconds to an absolute atrocity of a football match.

You could also be a Spurs fan and facing up to the very real possibility of your side being relegated whilst your deadly rivals remain in the hunt for the treble.

I can’t see us landing the three trophies, but just winning the Premier League and the thought of Spurs having to go into the final day of the season with the threat of being relegated would do me.