They have history, do Kepa Arrizabalaga and Wembley. When Thomas Tuchel revealed that the world’s most expensive goalkeeper would start in the final of the world’s oldest cup competition, it seemed a reward. It may have felt a punishment.
The Spaniard had lost his place four days before last season’s FA Cup semi-final defeat to Arsenal. He replaced the rested Edouard Mendy for this season’s meeting with Manchester City in the last four. He kept a second Wembley clean sheet against Pep Guardiola’s team and, under other circumstances, that statistic might have stood out.
But the moment that defines Arrizabalaga’s Chelsea career came at the end of 2019 League Cup final; his refusal to be substituted prompted Maurizio Sarri to almost walk down the tunnel and, it felt at the time, out of the club. That insubordination cost Chelsea the services of the penalty specialist Willy Caballero in the shootout.
#OnThisDay in 2019...#CFC goalkeeper Kepa refused to be substituted by manager Maurizio Sarri during Chelsea's Carabao Cup final clash with #MCFC! pic.twitter.com/9kXQrXENazFebruary 24, 2021
There may be a paradox in Tuchel’s decision to parachute Arrizabalaga in against Leicester on Saturday. Sooner or later, someone will lose a cup final because they have picked their second-string goalkeeper; arguably, though, Chelsea may have been beaten in 2019 because they could not remove the regular and bring on their reserve.
Perhaps the risk in turning to the understudy is less than it has been at any point when Sarri, Frank Lampard or Tuchel has benched Arrizabalaga. His record under the German is remarkable: six games played, one goal conceded, and even that thanks to Jorginho’s misplaced back-pass against Arsenal on Wednesday. Many a goal in Arrizabalaga’s ill-fated spell in England has been his fault, but this one wasn’t. His last mistake came in Lampard’s last game, and it gifted Luton a goal.
Keeping five clean sheets in six was probably the sort of record Chelsea envisaged when they met Arrizabalaga’s buyout clause, finding a successor to Thibaut Courtois and ensuring Alisson’s stint as the most expensive goalkeeper in history lasted about three weeks. If that £71.6 million fee feels a millstone, Tuchel has been handed a difficult balancing act.
The far cheaper Mendy is an outstanding goalkeeper. If Arrizabalaga, who had a desperately low save percentage in his first two Premier League campaigns, represents a failure of recruitment, the Senegalese is a triumph of scouting, a success for goalkeeping coach Christophe Lollichon and a previous Rennes and Chelsea shot-stopper, Petr Cech.
He has been a bargain and a revelation, a relatively unheralded newcomer who looks capable of keeping his place for years. It both solves a problem and creates one: what to do with Arrizabalaga? If there seemed the sense that Lampard was under pressure to pick him, in the hope he would come good, even improved form now is negated by the evidence Mendy is considerably better. If there is no rush – Arrizabalaga is 26 and still has four years left on his deal – it nevertheless feels unsustainable even for a club of Chelsea’s wealth to have a £71 million keeper on the bench.
It may simply be a damage-limitation exercise. Chelsea will never recoup much of their initial outlay. They would not have done even before football’s financial crisis drove down prices and reduced the number of possible buyers for most players. The better he does in sporadic outings, the more of his remaining value he protects; the fewer clubs see him as too great a risk. But how much, realistically, would anyone pay for a goalkeeper who posted the lowest save percentage of any Premier League first choice in history (54.5 last season)?
Certainly any Premier League club with a vacancy between the sticks next season might think they are better off targeting Sam Johnstone, who excelled despite West Brom’s relegation and has a solitary season left on his contract. The logical assumption has long been that the main market for Arrizabalaga would be back in his homeland. But he has lost his place in the Spain squad to Robert Sanchez, who was being borrowed by Forest Green at the time when Chelsea bought his compatriot. His outings under Tuchel have restored his reputation a little but it may only take one mistake to revive old criticisms and doubts. And the higher the profile of an error, the more damning it could be. And so to Wembley, to try and make amends and extinguish memories of his past.
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