Healthy competition or bad blood in the making: Ramsdale in the shoes of Casillas and Cech

He had an excuse at the weekend, since Aaron Ramsdale's wife gave birth, but Mikel Arteta indirectly told the English goalkeeper that he had lost his status as the first goalkeeper by knocking him to the bench once again. On Tuesday at Ramon Sanchez Pijuan, the Basque reignited the debate that had already taken the Island for a while - is David Raya living up to the Arsenal manager's trust?

When he arrived from Sheffield United just over two years ago, Ramsdale had no problem finding a place between the posts. In the first season, he defended in 34 matches in the Premier League, last season he kept a goal in each of the 38 championship matches. This competitive year, he has already missed five games in the championship alone, more than in the previous two combined, and since he has defended only in the League Cup out of the last nine games in all competitions - against Raya's Brentford - one gets the impression that Arteta has his favorite at the start of the new season.

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The favorite, because it's no secret that Raya arrived at the Emirates at the insistence of Inaki Cana, Arsenal's goalkeeper coach. Cana, who "shares" an agent with Raya, held the same position at Brentford before becoming a member of Arteta's coaching staff in December 2019 when the latter replaced Unai Emery at the Emirates and that winter Inaki tried to take him away from West to North London. However, it was too early for a renewed collaboration, since the Spanish goalkeeper arrived at Brentford from Blackburn only six months earlier. Three and a half years later, Cana and Raya put into action a long-conceived plan.

Many looked with confusion at Mikel Arteta's decision to hire another custodian of similar quality just two years after he spent close to 30,000,000 euros on bringing in a new goalkeeper this summer. However, the Spaniard justified himself by the need to have healthy competition in every position. Which makes sense, especially when it comes to a team with the highest ambitions, which improves more and more from season to season. However, the situation is somewhat different with goalkeepers. There, between the posts, every, even the smallest mistake, causes a worm of doubt and brings restlessness to the player, while the bravado of his "rival" only deepens the insecurity and raises the question again - why did the coach bring another man in the first place if he believes in him?

Among other things, Peter Schmeichel, the legendary goalkeeper of Manchester United, is of the same opinion, who was among the first, back in the summer, to condemn Arteta's decision to bring in another goalkeeper of the same caliber despite having Ramsdale at his disposal.

"I don't understand it at all. I don't understand how the coach came to the conclusion that it is a great thing to have competition in the goal. The goalkeeping position is very reactive... You are asking your goalkeeper here to prove that he is better than the other. It is the only position on the field where you just want reassurance. What he's doing just brings insecurity to the two of them."

That insecurity was oozing from Raya in the previous weeks in almost every game. Marked as the prototype goalkeeper that Arteta needs, primarily because of his better footwork compared to Ramsdale - which the Spaniard confirmed with statistics on a small sample in the Premier League - the impression is that Raya too often creates unrest among his teammates with risky moves. And there have been those since his arrival at the club. Against Lens, he 'wounded' of his teammates with a cross pass and caused a defeat in the north of France; in the derby with Manchester City, he almost gifted a goal to Julián Alvarez by hesitating to pass the ball; at Stamford Bridge he was harshly punished for bad positioning during a cross, and he had weak moments last night against Sevilla when he passed the ball to the opponent's feet on several occasions during the first half.

"David Raya started his career at Arsenal well, but then he had a poor start in the Champions League (against Lens) followed by that first half against Manchester City. Now it's getting 'hot' for him. It's the most difficult position and when you're in one of the biggest clubs in the league, you're under the most scrutiny - especially if you're a goalkeeper. Let's face it, Mikel Arteta created that situation between Raya and Ramsdale. It's unusual, although he says it can work. Personally, I never believed it was possible, and I believe that from now on we will watch the competition between the two of them, because there will be pressure," said Gary Neville recently.

Mikel Arteta, the creator of the whole situation, was under pressure. When asked to comment on the choice between the posts after the game with Everton in the fifth round (Raya's first appearance for Arsenal), the Spaniard hit back, defending himself by asking why no one asked him why multiple champion Gabriel Jesus did not start the match. And even then indicated that he was not completely satisfied with Ramsdale's performances.

"I am a very young coach. I have been in this job for three and a half years and I regret several things that I did. One of them is that on two occasions, in two games, after the 60th and 85th minutes, I felt that I should to replace the goalkeeper. But I didn't have the courage to do that. But I was allowed to replace a winger or a striker, bring in a stopper and play with five at the back and keep the score? Those two games where I didn't replace the goalkeeper we drew and I was very unhappy. Someone will do it and maybe it will be... Strange? Why? Why not? We have all the necessary qualities in the second goalkeeper to do something when something is not happening and we want to change the momentum," Arteta stressed out.

Cameras at Premier League games often "caught" Ramsdale applauding his teammate, either after a good intervention or a mishap, but he does not hide that it is not easy for him.

"It's difficult because it's the first time I've ever been in a situation like that. There's a lot of attention right now, there's too much talk about it. Whether it's me or David playing, we just have to stay focused and play, but at the same time it's weird. That is what we work on as a club and that's what the coach puts in front of us and we have to deal with it. We spend three or four hours a day together, there's four or five of us in the group and so if we don't work on that we wouldn't function properly. We work very professionally, we 'push' each other in training and there are days when I'm not doing well and he (Raya) picks me up. And for whatever reason, maybe one day he'll be down and no matter how much I suffer and it hurts me I'm not playing, I have to get up and push him forward," Ramsdale was honest during the international break.

So while there seems to be no bad blood between the two Arsenal goalkeepers at the moment, situations like the one created by Arteta at the Emirates have rarely ended well in the past. For example, in the summer of 2015, after 11 years at Stamford Bridge, Petr Cech had to leave Chelsea after Thibaut Courtois returned from a loan from Atletico Madrid and took his place as a starter, admitting later that he was not at all happy with that decision by Jose Mourinho. Iker Casillas also had to end his long-term stay at the Santiago Bernabeu for just one season after Keylor Navas arrived at Real Madrid, so that the Costa Rican would see the other side of the coin a few years later when he was "expelled" by Gianluigi Donnarumma from the goal of Paris Saint-Germain.

Clubs, even the biggest ones, generally have one goalkeeper for league games and another for cup matches, but the question is how long such a policy can last at the Emirates with two proven goalkeepers, because Raya definitely did not make it from West London to North London to warm the bench for Ramsdale. And that's why Arteta's decision to make such a move was marked as risky, so although Raya's arrival could raise Ramsdale's level and vice versa, it could also have a counter-effect and break the cohesion among colleagues and spill negative energy on the rest of the team.

One thing is certain - neither of them will easily accept the role of a reserve and one will always be unhappy that he is not playing. Raya arrived at the club on a loan with a buy-out option, but Brentford's sporting director Phil Giles emphasized at the time that both sides wanted the transfer to become permanent as soon as possible. And if that happens and Raya keeps his status as the first goalkeeper, the question is whether Ramsdale will even want to stay at the club or will he share the fate of Cech, Casillas and Navas and accept the fact that he has to move on...