A depleted Arsenal u21 side were eliminated from the EFL Trophy on Tuesday night, with the club opting not to give any minutes to their senior players.
Despite talk earlier in the day that Arsenal might choose to call up one or two of their injured senior players for the u21 match against Cardiff City on Tuesday night, the club ultimately opted against it.
The idea would have been to give a player like Noni Madueke some minutes in a lower-stakes match before the north London derby next weekend, but for whatever reason, Arsenal decided not to.
Unfortunately, that left the team very short, with 10 eligible academy players away on international duty. Arsenal needed a win to progress to the EFL Trophy knockouts, but they definitely didn’t have their strongest side available to achieve it.
Going into the game, one of the issues highlighted was that Arsenal had only really been left with Alexei Rojas or Remy Mitchell as options in goal, with neither having played much in recent times.
The pair had a combined 47 minutes on the pitch for Arsenal in the 18 months before this week.
Even if Rojas did play one friendly with the Colombia u20s in September, and Mitchell spent most of 2024/25 playing for Haringey Borough, neither were match sharp on this occasion, and both lacked experience playing with Tuesday’s u21 team. In the end, those problems came to the fore.
Things certainly didn’t start badly, with left-back Marcell Washington giving Arsenal the lead with his second goal in four games. Charles Sagoe Jr. laid the ball off to Washington in the penalty area, and the defender powered home a finish for 1-0.
But the lead didn’t last, with Troy Perrett finding an equaliser almost from kick-off. Though the two teams went into half-time at 1-1, things were about to get a lot worse after the break.
After Arsenal survived a scare with a shot hitting the crossbar, Rojas was shown a red card having failed to reach a backpass from Washington before a Cardiff attacker.
It would be harsh to blame Rojas alone, as the pass was certainly short. But it’s the kind of error you expect from players who don’t play together regularly.
With Rojas off, Arsenal were down to 10 men and down to their only remaining goalkeeper.
Eight minutes later, another mix-up proved costly. Ife Ibrahim withdrew his leg from a block at the last moment, and substitute Mitchell had no time to react as a relatively tame shot by Will Spiers found his bottom corner.
Arsenal did their best to stay in the contest, but Cardiff’s progression and the Gunners’ elimination was confirmed as Trey George made it 3-1 with a close-range effort in the 94th minute.
“Really disappointing night,” coach David Horseman said afterwards. “I think we actually started the game relatively strong and got in their penalty box, and with a little bit more quality could’ve maybe scored quite early on.
“We get to half time and tweak a couple of little bits, and actually just as I thought the game was starting to settle down the back pass gets Alexei sent off and it’s backs to the wall a little bit.
“They scored a third in the end and it’s just a really disappointing night, because it’s a mixed team, we’ve given some opportunities and not enough took their opportunity tonight.
“You can learn in the difficult moments, right now it hurts a lot but we’ll sit with the individuals, I think we need to sit with some individuals now, and have some good, honest conversations.”
Arsenal u21 lineup vs Cardiff City
Rojas, King, Onyekachukwu, Sweet, Washington, Ibrahim, Dudziak, Copley, Kamara, Harriman-Annous, Sagoe Jr.
Substitutes
Mitchell (for Dudziak, 62), Bailey-Joseph (for Kamara, 62), Julienne (for Ibrahim, 72), Ogunnaike (for Washington, 72), Stevens (for Onyekachukwu, 86), Nichols, Owusu-Gyasi