Raya is a better goalkeeper but right now Ramsdale looks a better ‘Arsenal’ goalkeeper

We’re pleased for Aaron Ramsdale. It’s lovely that he’s become a father. Well done on the baby and all that. Tremendous stuff. But, selfishly, the timing has rather peed us off.

It really would have been tremendously good fun for Ramsdale to be on Arsenal’s bench at Stamford Bridge. Specifically, because it would have forced Mikel Arteta to either sh*t or get off the pot with regards to his stated willingness to sub a goalkeeper just as he would any other misfiring or underperforming player.

We’re frankly unpleasantly desperate to see it happen. Short of what we’ll dub the Tim Krul Manoeuvre of bringing on a theoretically superior penalty saver in the dying moments of extra-time, we struggle to think of a time a goalkeeper has been tactically replaced. It’s a wonderful fresh dimension to our game, and one which would see us instantly forgive Arteta everything else from his showily full head of hair to his repeated meanderings outside the sanctity of his technical area.

It would be amazing. And, frankly, it’s pretty likely that it’s going to happen at some point anyway. If not the substitution itself, then at least another situation where it’s an option if he’s serious about the policy. Because goalkeepers make mistakes and David Raya currently makes several.

Of course, the sensible argument against all this is that the goalkeeper performs a uniquely and starkly difficult role as any team’s last line of defence, one in which errors are highly visible and most likely to be demonstrably costly. These thoughts are in goalkeepers’ minds at all times already; the last thing the poor sods need to worry about on top of it all is whether their manager is about to sub them off to prove some point or other about the project or the process just because they keep throwing the ball in their own net or kicking the ball directly to opponents or standing three yards in front of the near post when a cross is coming in for some reason.

At Arsenal now, the problem is that it doesn’t actually matter whether Arteta would or will carry out that threat. The idea is there. We’re already talking about it. It already exists as an idea and that’s all it needs for a goalkeeper’s thoughts to turn to the pessimistic.

And that’s why, if it were our decision – which inexplicably it is not – we’d rather have Aaron Ramsdale in our goal if we were Arsenal manager.

There’s been criticism of Arteta for creating a problem where none existed by bringing in Raya. We don’t quite agree. For one, it’s not like Arteta left Arsenal horribly short elsewhere. It’s not like it was attention that could have been put to better use. They needed a top-class new centre-back and got one; Jurrien Timber’s almost instant serious injury is one to file under the most cruel of bad luck. They needed a top-class new central midfielder and got one.

They could do with a pure goalscorer of a striker but are not alone in that regard, quite rightly turned their noses up at a lot of the prices going around for the few who were available and are not in any case the sort of team that desperately needs a 25-goal focal point to keep them going. They’ve got enough 10-15 goal sorts to be absolutely fine.

The Raya deal was also a cleverly engineered one, financially.

But above all, he’s also on a purely technical level a better goalkeeper than Ramsdale. Ramsdale is loved by the fans, which rarely happens to dodgy goalkeepers, but he is in the very good but not great category. He would not displace the current number ones at many elite or elite-adjacent clubs.

Premier League keepers ranked: David Raya still ahead of Sanchez, Onana, Ederson

Raya’s form for Brentford was, pretty much as a point of objective measurable fact, better than Ramsdale’s has ever been for anyone.

Yet right now none of that means Raya is a better Arsenal goalkeeper than Ramsdale. He is visibly struggling with it all. The extra attention that comes from being Arsenal goalkeeper and the extra competition that comes from having another keeper breathing down his neck, are the only really plausible explanation for why it’s going a bit wrong. Especially as the numbers aren’t really that bad. He kept a clean sheet against Manchester City, and has conceded just four goals in five Premier League games. But he was ropey as all hell in the first half against City, just as he was in the second against Chelsea.

His errors are not ones of technique or skill but decision-making. He now looks terrified when given the ball, and the worry there is that this becomes a self-fulfilling problem. Once you have a reputation for looking shaky at any part of your game it’s almost impossibly difficult to shift that reputation. Partly because it’s presumably there for a reason, partly because opponents will seek to target and expose said perceived weakness and partly because of good old-fashioned confirmation bias.

Shaky with ball at feet or not good under crosses are the goalkeeper’s equivalent of a batsman who can’t handle the short ball. You’re going to get so much exposure to that thing you’re apparently not good at dealing with that you’re bound to make the occasional mistake and that’s all it needs to confirm suspicions and keep the cycle going.

Raya’s starting position for Mudryk’s goal was just an absurd piece of decision-making. It’s surely born of a desire to be a proactive front-foot keeper and it smacks of someone still trying to convince themselves they belong at the level they’ve now reached, never mind trying to convince anyone else.

Ramsdale, whatever his faults, does not appear to suffer similar doubt. Essentially what we’re saying here is that at an elite club you need a keeper who actually is just brilliant – your Edersons, your Alissons – or a very, very good one who’s enough of a cocksure dick to convince himself and everyone else he’s better than he is.

Even if you accept as we do that signing Raya was a reasonable gamble, it no doubt created a tension that didn’t previously exist and a situation that put both Raya and Ramsdale – who was performing the job perfectly competently if not necessarily unimprovably – under greater pressure and scrutiny.

But there is definitely one of the pair who looks more likely to grow rather than wilt under that harsher spotlight. Which is why, right now, with a midweek game where a decision must be made but can still just about be spun as European rotation, Arsenal need a Ramsdale more than they need a Raya.

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