Mikel Arteta has suggested he doesn’t have a ‘cup team’, raising doubts over whether Kepa Arrizabalaga will face his former club Chelsea on Wednesday night.
Speaking to the media on Tuesday, Mikel Arteta denied that he thinks of certain players as being part of his ‘cup team’, insisting that he’s just picking lineups to try and make Arsenal as successful as possible.
“I don’t believe in players for competitions,” Arteta insisted. “I believe that we have competition and we want to compete in all competitions with the best moment of the players that we have at our resource, and that’s what we try to do.”
But those comments obviously raise the question of whether or not Kepa Arrizabalaga will come into the side for Wednesday’s trip away to Chelsea.
The general public largely consider Kepa to be Arsenal’s cup goalkeeper, suggesting he’ll be favoured over David Raya for Wednesday’s League Cup semi-final even if Raya is first choice in the Premier League.
But if Arteta’s comments are true, then he’ll just be picking the best man for the job on Wednesday night.
When pressed on this particular point, Arteta confirmed that his primary focus is on winning the game, though he did add that goalkeepers are a bit of a special case.
“Well it’s because at the end our job and my job is to prepare the team the best possible way to win the competition, every competition that we are in,” Arteta said.
“Every game is different, every game requires different qualities and players, and players have moments when they are really high, when they don’t have much confidence and minutes and every case is different.
“The keepers on top of that is a very particular case as well, because obviously they have less opportunities than other players to play throughout every week. But we try to treat them in that sense.”
Kepa has generally done a good job for Arsenal when called upon so far, with the possible exception of the goal he conceded to Portsmouth at the weekend.
But Raya is widely considered one of the best goalkeepers in the world, so it’s hard to argue the Gunners wouldn’t benefit from having him between the posts for this semi-final.
It’s a tough decision for Arteta to make, and his lineup on Wednesday night will probably tell us more about his ‘cup keeper’ philosophy than his press conference has.