Kepa Arrizabalaga has come under immense criticism since Arsenal’s Carabao Cup final defeat to Manchester City.
Mikel Arteta decided to stick with the Spaniard instead of starting David Raya, and that decision backfired as Kepa made a mistake that helped City open the scoring.
Paul Merson has acknowledged that Kepa made a terrible error, but he feels that by taking all the criticism, the goalkeeper is doing a favour to several other Arsenal players, who were just as bad.
After watching the Carabao Cup final, which Arsenal players do you think need upgrading?
Paul Merson says eight other Arsenal players deserve as much criticism as Kepa Arrizabalaga
Arsenal were nowhere near their best in the Carabao Cup final, especially in the second half.
The Gunners struggled to even get out of their own third in the early stages, and that allowed City to attack them continuously.
The deadlock was broken when Kepa Arrizabalaga dropped the ball in the path of Nico O’Reilly, and that led to Arsenal’s downfall.
Since then, everyone has been criticising the goalkeeper, and he has had no choice but to take it on the chin. Merson thinks Kepa has been doing eight others a favour because they all deserve the same treatment.
He wrote on Sky Sports: “Only two Arsenal players could walk off the pitch with their head held high, and they are William Saliba and Gabriel Magalhaes. They were outstanding, and they couldn’t do any more.
“For the other eight players, Kepa’s done them a favour because everyone’s now talking about him and the mistake, but no one will talk about the other players not deserving more than a five out of 10.
“I was at Wembley and what I was watching was: who on Arsenal’s team wanted the ball when they were getting beat and it was going horribly wrong? And no one wanted the ball. Nobody!
“If any of those players want to sit down and watch a video of me and go: I was looking for it here and there, I would say: ‘I’m afraid you weren’t’. It was pretty worrying.”
The eight players Merson is talking about are: Ben White, Piero Hincapie, Declan Rice, Martin Zubimendi, Kai Havertz, Bukayo Saka, Leandro Trossard and Viktor Gyokeres.
I think Jamie Carragher was spot on here, do you agree?
Merson is right – Kepa wasn’t the only reason why Arsenal lost to Manchester City
Kepa’s mistake definitely cost Arsenal, but most of his teammates failed to help him.
The North Londoners barely laid a glove on Manchester City in the second half, and that is down to the eight players Merson mentioned above.
The fact that Riccardo Calafiori and Gabriel Jesus, who came off the bench, came closest to scoring, tells you that the starters failed to do their job.
All of those players will need to accept their shortcomings now and use that as fuel to go on an incredible run in the three remaining competitions.
If they do that, this will still go down as an iconic season for Arsenal.
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