Viktor Gyökeres has articulated the hurt and defiance inside the Arsenal dressing-room after Sunday’s 2-0 Carabao Cup final defeat by Manchester City and promised to use it as fuel in the club’s pursuit of other trophies.
Arsenal picked a bad time to produce their worst performance of the season with everybody in the starting XI falling well below their best – apart from maybe William Saliba. No one will want to dwell on the period from the beginning of the second half to the moment when Nico O’Reilly scored his second goal in the 64th minute to put City in an unassailable position. It was one-way traffic, Arsenal pinned back, unable to get out.
The recovery mission has begun with the hunt for positives, some at the club hoping that the international break can offer a well-timed change of environment and focus. For Gyökeres, there is the small matter of Thursday’s World Cup playoff with Sweden against Ukraine in Valencia. If his country wins, they will face Poland or Albania next Tuesday for a place at the finals.
The Carabao Cup final was only Arsenal’s fourth defeat in 50 matches this season. They remain nine points clear of City at the top of the Premier League, albeit having played one game more than them, and are into the Champions League quarter-finals, where they will play Sporting. Their next game is the FA Cup quarter-final at Southampton on Saturday week.
“Of course, we don’t feel great right now but it’s not like we have a game in three days,” Gyökeres said. “For sure, we will go again and be even more motivated for those games.”
The showpiece at Wembley turned when the back-up Arsenal goalkeeper Kepa Arrizabalaga – who Mikel Arteta started ahead of the first-choice David Raya – dropped a cross to allow O’Reilly to score his first, although City had long established a grip on possession.
“We created some chances at the beginning of the game and then I think it was maybe 10 minutes from the break where they got the momentum,” Gyökeres said. “I think they had the ball … maybe they didn’t create so many dangerous chances but they had the ball a long time and it looked the same in the second half.
“Normally, when it’s two top teams it can be like that [with the first goal being crucial]. In the moment of the game where they scored … yeah, it was difficult to get going afterwards.”