Paul Merson is backing Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta to keep faith with Kepa Arrizabalaga for the Carabao Cup final this weekend.<\/strong><\/p>\n Writing in his Sportskeeda<\/em> column, Merson acknowledges that number David Raya is \u201cworld class\u201d, but he believes the keeper who has played in all the previous rounds of the competition should keep his place:<\/p>\n \u201cThe big decision that Arsenal need to make is whether they go with Kepa Arrizabalaga or David Raya in goal. Kepa has been first-choice in the Carabao Cup and I think they should stick with him. It\u2019s only fair because he played well and got you to this stage.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut I must admit, Raya is world-class! The saves he made against Everton and Leverkusen, absolutely phenomenal. However, if I were the manager, I would still stick to my principles and choose Kepa as the keeper for the final. He\u2019s not let the team down in this competition and deserves to start.\u201d<\/p>\n If Arteta were to drop Kepa in favour of Raya, most would assume he would have done so for the semi-final tie against Chelsea, but the shot-stopper played both legs versus his former club.<\/p>\n Jurrien Timber remains a doubt for the showpiece event at Wembley on Sunday. The defender picked up an ankle problem during the 2-0 win over Everton and missed the victory over Bayer Leverkusen midweek.<\/p>\n Arteta is also sweating on the fitness of captain Martin Odegaard<\/strong>who has been sidelined with a knee injury since the North London Derby. Mikel Merino has already been ruled out for the rest of the season, having undergone surgery on a stress fracture in his foot.<\/p>\n Read more about the Arsenal First Team Squad for 2025\/26 here<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/article><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Paul Merson is backing Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta to keep faith with Kepa Arrizabalaga for<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1236,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/osport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/osport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/osport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/osport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/osport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/osport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1235\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/osport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/osport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/osport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/osport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Kepa has not let anyone down in the Carabao Cup<\/h2>\n
The 31-year-old has played 5 games in the tournament, conceding three goals and keeping three clean sheets.<\/p>\nArsenal team news ahead of the final<\/h2>\n