16 Conclusions on Manchester City beating bottling Arsenal in the Carabao Cup final | OneFootball

Arsenal were shown up by Manchester City in the Carabao Cup final at Wembley as the Kepa curse continued and Mikel Arteta’s players ‘shrunk’.

Nico O’Reilly was the hero for Manchester City with his two goals delivering their first trophy of actual consequence since the 2023 Club World Cup.

Kepa Arrizabalaga was the villain in a Carabao final yet again, even if it was absolutely the right call to start him.

1) There is no game in the English football calendar which carries more disproportionate narrative weight than the Carabao Cup final.

Its importance and irrelevance seamlessly fluctuates depending on the winner and loser; the delineation of its ‘major’-ness is an infernal, ongoing process between seasons.

Factor Arsenal and what was a vaguely feasible Quadruple into that and the pN (predicted noise) becomes almost unbearable.

Win the Carabao Cup and then any combination of the Premier or Champions League thereafter, and it was the platform for success.

Win only the Carabao Cup with nothing of tangible significance to complement it? Even better; the accusations of over-celebrating or taking their eyes off the ball flow naturally with the Gunners at the best of times.

As it was, defeat in this final ought to offer two distinct losing paths which were predetermined long before kick off: this is either the fuel necessary to drag them over the line in the Premier League at the very least; or the precursor to an almighty, generation-scarring bottling.

Arsenal either have a squad of burgeoning Michael Ballacks, or the Pep Guardiola/Jose Mourinho springboard to dominance was only ever outcome bias of the highest order. It will be a fun few weeks discovering which is more accurate.

2) Things are a little more straightforward with Manchester City: overhaul a nine-point gap to Arsenal in the Premier League and this was the moment they started to believe; fail to do so and this excellent display and deserved silverware is lost in the natural ebb and flow of a season.

It does, in any event, end lingering fears of a second consecutive trophyless campaign for Guardiola, and reiterates the glorious potential of a team still in the midst of a transitional phase.

Manchester City would still swap places with Arsenal right now, but this was a heartening, invigorating performance that could entirely conceivably form the basis of a long read on how Guardiola oversaw his next era of Manchester City hegemony.

3) It definitely felt like there was something momentous in Arsenal losing this game in that manner. A complete no-show in a cup final only feeds into the idea that this is an evidently brilliant team, phenomenal manager and exceptional group which nevertheless cannot quite get over the line.

Gary Neville can rarely be trusted to analyse Arsenal accurately but he nailed it: they “shrunk” and went “missing” in the second half especially, while Manchester City grew into the game and occasion.

Had they been beaten by a single goal after putting up a valiant effort and at least having their Wembley moment by scoring, it would at least be easier to compartmentalise as fine margins or just the way the ball fell on that day.

But this was passive and meek, something akin to stage fright when the game started to drift.

Mikel Arteta has instilled in Arsenal a remarkable spirit this season; they have reacted to each of their previous three defeats in 2025/26 by winning their very next game and cutting off unhelpful talk about their mentality at the source. Whether they do so this time, after an international break to let this disappointment fester, will be instructive and pivotal for how the next couple of months pan out.

4) Perhaps Arsenal simply aren’t a Cup Team. Since the start of the 2023/24 season they have now lost eight games by more than a single goal: three in the Premier League and five in the domestic cups.

There is a different dynamic to knock-out football in comparison to a league campaign; the attrition Arsenal lean on does lend itself more to the latter than these one-off games so it will be interesting to see how they fare in the Champions League and FA Cup from here.

5) Their three best chances all came in the first half – and in the space of two seconds. A poor Benjamin White touch counterintuitively opened Manchester City up, coaxing Rodri out and creating a space into which Kai Havertz could roam and Martin Zubimendi was able to play him in.

The German’s shot and the two subsequent follow-ups from Bukayo Saka were all thwarted by James Trafford, the frustrated back-up keeper given his moment to shine at Wembley and smothering it.

“It’s not been easy. It’s a testament to myself,” said Trafford after a difficult, unfortunate season was given a trophy-clinching, defining moment. He is comfortably the best second-choice keeper in the Premier League and a decision on his future will need to be made this summer, but this was a fine reward for his patience.

6) The only other save Trafford had to make came 66 minutes later when Riccardo Calafiori met a Declan Rice free-kick. Arsenal really were that painfully devoid of invention and thoroughly incapable of following up on Arteta’s pre-match demand to “attack the trophy”.

7) Trafford playing and thriving does help frame Kepa’s latest Carabao meltdown. It seems odd and result-led to criticise Arsenal for basically making the same decision Manchester City did in keeping the faith with their back-up keeper despite the stakes.

The No.2 reprising their rotated place in the final is a time-honoured Carabao tradition which surely does not need pontificating over every season, or for Jamie Redknapp to call it “a monumental error”.

It is slightly different for Arsenal with a shot at ending this smallest of trophy droughts. But really the call was straightforward in terms of basic squad morale and man management.

Both coaches trusted the deputies who had taken them to the final, much like Sir Alex Ferguson, Arsene Wenger, Mourinho and a great many others have before them. One of them just happens to be cursed in this competition.

8) Even in the second leg of Kepa’s imperfect Carabao final career hat-trick, he was bested by Alisson’s understudy Caiomhin Kelleher.

But after that, this and the 2019 debacle, perhaps Kepa should be banned from all of English football’s future drinks-based tournaments for his own sake.

9) Letting Rayan Cherki’s cross breach his grip was not even Kepa’s biggest mistake; that came ten minutes before when the Spaniard was booked after horribly misjudging a long ball from Matheus Nunes.

Kepa misjudged it horribly, ending up stranded and outside of his own area as his limbs tangled with Jeremy Doku’s.

The difficult angle and covering defenders meant it was only good for a Kepa booking, but it underlined the manifest threat posed by Doku’s tireless running. He completed six dribbles – at least twice as many as any other player – including one in the build-up to the second goal. No other Manchester City player can mimic that incredibly impactful direct approach.

10) Yet Doku still wasn’t the most compelling forward on the pitch. Cherki secured that crown by bringing a lofted Rodri pass down on his chest straight into some kick-ups, the third of which prompted White and Noni Madueke to close in with some form of Nani seal dribble-based retribution in mind.

The cameras cut to a disapproving Guardiola shaking his head on the touchline and White soon landed a reducer on the Frenchman once he got close enough.

“I think I might have done that myself,” said actual nerd Neville, adding: “I think it’s a bit too early for that if I am being honest. That was a little bit arrogant. You have always got to remember that Arsenal can get a goal and you start to look silly if you are celebrating with 20-odd minutes to go.”

It was three keepie-uppies. And considering most people have spent this entire season cryarsing about how boring, rudimentary, unoriginal and unwatchable everything is, criticising some incredibly mild showboating felt curious.

It is his manager’s wont to Pep-bot him but Cherki has become the most entertaining player to watch in the league.

11) Arsenal, by the way, completed three dribbles between them all game. And two of those were by subs made in the 66th minute. They suffered immensely for that lack of variation.

12) “I try to help the team as much as possible,” was how Bernardo Silva described his role, adding that he knows “exactly the way the manager wants to play”.

Having played at least 68 more games than anyone else for Guardiola, one would hope so.

And to be fair, it did seem like it as he racked up three play-disrupting fouls in an opening half an hour which saw Piero Hincapie and Abdukodir Khusanov both booked; the lack of caution for Silva’s cynical prevention of a Bukayo Saka counter-attack was particularly impressive.

In the first 70 minutes – by which point Manchester City had established a lead they never looked like relinquishing – Silva was the only player to make more than a single foul. He played his part to perfection.

13) It was Rodri’s best game since his return from injury, too, those seasoned, trophy-winning midfielders helping underpin Manchester City’s work out of possession and progression on it.

The reverse pass for Nunes to set up Nico O’Reilly’s second goal was the sublime made simple from a player who might finally have got up to speed again. And how fitting that Rodri foiled the final Arsenal attack of the game with an intelligent intervention made possible by fine positioning.

The gap to close in the Premier League might be a bit too much but Rodri’s availability and form is likely to be crucial again next season.

14) Beyond Kepa, no one specific Arsenal player really stood out for good or bad.

William Saliba fared well up against Erling Haaland. Zubimendi and Rice lost the midfield battle, much like their full-back teammates. Havertz wasted his only chance and neither Saka nor Viktor Gyokeres had a sniff.

The best Arsenal attacker was probably Calafiori, the full-back who drew a save from Trafford and clipped the post in his half-hour cameo.

And that will sting; this was an opportunity for these players to make a statement and the collective whisper that followed barely registered.

In the same way those Manchester City players without a career trophy – O’Reilly, Cherki and Antoine Semenyo were great here in delivering their first pieces of silverware – will be inspired by the experience of winning, the Arsenal squad members still waiting for that moment must channel this frustration properly.

15) O’Reilly has been a quiet revelation since properly breaking into this team – somehow – less than a year ago.

A player who made his first Premier League start last April has rarely come out of the picture since. Only Haaland has been given more minutes as a Manchester City player this season and O’Reilly was an England World Cup squad cert long before these two cup-winning goals.

His candidacy to start at left-back ahead of Lewis Hall seems strong, with no real weaknesses in his game at 21, and myriad strengths as a tall, fast, versatile, diligent, press-resistant defensive colossus and attacking threat.

This was his final, typified by that second header: O’Reilly ghosted into the space wonderfully to meet the Nunes cross, but it was he who started the move in the first place with an agile tackle on Havertz to immediately extinguish an Arsenal counter and keep them penned in.

16) Is there a plan in place for if Arsenal literally win nothing this season? Much like the now doomed tilt at four trophies, it feels like a faint possibility that might eventually become reality and ought to be accounted for with some sort of doomsday preparation.