Football
Tom Adams, Arsenal blogger 6y

Cup success a boon but Arsenal and Wenger need more in trying season

Tottenham may have officially made Wembley their home this season but at the very least, Arsenal are now claiming squatters' rights.

An excellent 2-1 win over Chelsea in the second leg of the Carabao Cup semifinal on Wednesday night ensured that Arsenal will visit Wembley again on Feb. 25 for a showdown with Manchester City.

Rather incredibly, it will be the 10th time Arsenal have played at the national stadium in under four years: three FA Cup semifinals; three FA Cup finals; three Community Shield matches; and now a League Cup final too. It is the kind of record which invites fans of lower-league clubs to ponder just what it is Arsenal supporters have to moan about as they rail against the ownership and management.

Arsenal fans know better: standards are higher the further you climb up the league ladder and underachievement for one club would be the greatest season in history for another. Even a full decade of underachievement in the league and European competition.

But there is something about the domestic cups which undeniably brings out the best in Arsene Wenger. Maybe it's the fact that they too appear to be a relic of a more idealistic time in football, before roubles and petrodollars helped concentrate power in a few clubs, and in a parallel process status was concentrated in only two competitions.

No manager in history has won more than his seven FA Cups. If Wenger wins the League Cup at the third time of asking -- with defeats in the final to Chelsea in 2007 and Birmingham in 2011 -- he will join a select group of managers to have won all three domestic trophies, including Sir Alex Ferguson, Jose Mourinho and George Graham.

But it is not just the numbers. Over the past 18 months, the domestic cups have provided the achingly rare glimpses of Wenger as a manager who deserves to share a stage with his contemporaries in the managerial elite. If the Premier League and Champions League have ruthlessly exposed his limitations, the cups have given a few demonstrations that Wenger is still capable of the odd bit of magic.

As strange as that may be to say just weeks after losing to Nottingham Forest in the third round of the FA Cup, it is nevertheless true. Wednesday was another good example.

It is not often that Wenger tactically outwits a rival manager at a top club, but he does have a very impressive record against Antonio Conte. Across eight meetings in less than two seasons, Arsenal have won four (one on penalties), drawn three and lost one. Three of those victories came in cups: last year's FA Cup final and Community Shield and last night's win at the Emirates.

Wenger never looks more like a man who can still cut it at the top level than when he takes on Conte in the cups. The Italian earned huge praise as a tactical revolution -- the move to a back three -- swept him to the Premier League title last season, but on Wednesday night he had no answer when Wenger quietly deployed the tactic himself, with Mohamed Elneny dropping back from midfield.

Conte, the great revolutionary, the man who brought down Spain at Euro 2016, has been consistently outwitted by a man who is said to be finished as a top-level manager. Even the opponents in February's final, Manchester City, offer some encouragement in this regard.

It was at Wembley, again, last season when Arsenal beat Manchester City 2-1 in the FA Cup semifinal. That City team were nowhere nearly as highly evolved as the current crop, but the story of the game was unmistakably Wenger getting the better of Pep Guardiola with a more considered and reserved game plan. Again, it invited reassessments of Wenger.

This is a manager still capable of surprises and triumphs, but there remains a critical mass of shock and disappointment too. If the cups have managed to prop up Wenger's creaking regime -- two of his three FA Cups in the past four years were fortuitously timed to coincide with moments when his contract was about to expire -- he may not be able to fall back on the same firewall this year.

The League Cup is not the FA Cup, and coming in winter it doesn't act as a crescendo to the season. Finally winning the competition would underline Wenger's undeniable status in the history of the English game, and masterminding a win over Guardiola would indicate he is far from spent. But the truth is Arsenal would need something else to sustain them through the rest of what could be a long second half of the season.

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