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Mikel Arteta reveals surprise biggest Arsenal regret following Everton win

The Gunners boss had some surprising comments after their first Goodison Park win since 2017

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Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta has revealed that one of his regrets during his time in charge of Arsenal was not having the courage to change his goalkeeper midway through a game, before predicting that someone is going to do it in the near future.

The Gunners signed David Raya from Brentford over the summer, and the Spaniard was handed his debut for the trip to Goodison Park over regular first-choice goalkeeper Aaron Ramsdale.

He turned in a flawless performance, keeping a clean sheet as his side edged to a 1-0 win over Everton courtesy of a goal from Leandro Trossard, their first win at Goodison Park since 2017.

Quizzed on why he opted for Raya over Ramsdale and the competition that may be brewing between them, Arteta revealed that at times he has wanted to change goalkeeper midway through a game for purely tactical reasons, something that is virtually unheard of.

“I’m a really young manager. I’ve been in this job for three and a half years and I have few regrets with what I’ve done. One of them was that in two occasions, I felt after 60 minutes and 85 minutes, in two games, in this period, to change the keeper in that moment”, he explained.

“But I didn’t do it. I didn’t have the courage to do it. But I’m able to take a winger, or a striker, or put a central defender on to drop to a five and hold that result. We drew those games and I was so unhappy.”

“Trust me — it’s like playing Fabio Vieira or Eddie Nketiah… it is nothing different”, he added when further pressed on who his no.1 would be going forwards.

“I have 11 players to pick and no-one is different”.

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Ben Browning

Football writer and analyst. Long-time writer of all things Arsenal and avid watcher of European football. Happy to discuss all things football over on Twitter.

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