Five Reasons Why Arsenal Lost The League Cup Final – And Five Things They Must Do To End Their Trophy Drought

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As he weighed up the cost of Arsenal’s League Cup final failure, Arsene Wenger paved the way for what could be another brutal inquest of his team’s methodology.

“We will face a lot of questions after that mistake tonight,” the Frenchman reflected, both of the 89th minute mix-up that made Obafemi Martins the most popular man in the blue-and-white half of Birmingham, and the more general inability to overcome Birmingham City.

Goal.com UK analysis the five reasons why Arsenal lost their way at Wembley:
1. Another mental breakdown

Compared to 48 years, six is nothing. But, as Alex McLeish pointed out afterwards, there are different expectations at “small” Birmingham and “mighty” Arsenal. The expectation on Arsenal to play beautiful football and win seemed to suffocate the players, most of whom chose the day of the club’s first cup final in four years to deliver below-par displays.

Alex Song, Gael Clichy, Laurent Koscielny, Tomas Rosicky and, most tellingly, Wojciech Szczesny were among those who seemed beset by nerves at various points. This highlighted a general mental fragility in the squad that will only have been enhanced by the failure to hurdle the growing psychological block at the club.

2. Putting Nasri out wide and Rosicky ‘in the hole’

Robbed of his conductor through injury, Wenger chose to hand the baton of the Arsenal orchestra not to his next most creative and outstanding player but one of questionable form and fitness.

Perversely, Rosicky replaced Cesc Fabregas as the team’s most advanced central midfielder and Samir Nasri took up a starting position on the right flank.

It was a gamble that failed miserably. Rosicky spent most of the game eliciting groans from the Arsenal fans for wantonly giving away possession and the cohesion that Fabregas brings to the team’s play in the middle of the park was conspicuous by its absence. Nasri would have been a far more logical choice in the ‘hole’.