Arsenal goalkeeper David Raya has vowed to ‘learn from his mistakes’ after his moment of madness allowed Spurs back into this weekend’s north London derby at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
The Gunners held an imperious three-goal lead over their bitter rivals at the halfway stage as Bukayo Saka and Kai Havertz both found the target following Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg’s own goal in the 15th minute.
But Raya handed Spurs a lifeline with half an hour remaining as he inexplicably dinked the ball straight to Cristian Romero, who made no mistake from the edge of the box to give the hosts a glimmer of hope.
Son Heung-min held his nerve from the spot to set up a tense finish – after Declan Rice fouled Ben Davies inside the penalty area – but the Gunners withstood a flurry of late attacks to preserve their narrow advantage and come away 3-2 winners.
The result put pressure on Manchester City ahead of the champions’ trip to Nottingham Forest and Pep Guardiola’s side responded at the City Ground, despite not being at their best, to move to within a point of the leaders.
Last year’s treble winners have a game in hand over Arsenal ahead of their meeting with 11th-placed Wolves at the Etihad next weekend.
Speaking at his post-match press conference, Arsenal head coach Mikel Arteta defended Raya over his second-half error and praised the shot-stopper for his ‘sensational’ reaction to the blunder.
‘It’s part of football,’ Arteta told reporters when asked about Raya’s mistake that led to Romero’s goal.
‘It’s a sequence of play, I don’t like it, I don’t like the principles that we apply in that moment and the orientation of the ball.
‘After that, that can happen, you misjudge the situation, you try to make the pass and you don’t and you are in doubt. They scored to take advantage of that.
‘The penalty is another principle inside the box that you cannot do. It’s part of football.
‘What I love is that David does that [the mistake], he picks Gabriel Magalhaes up – that is quite heavy! – and then he was sensational in the last 20 to 25 minutes of the game.
‘This is what I love about our players.’
In a post-match interview with Sky Sports, Raya argued that mistakes were ‘just part of football’ but reassured Arsenal fans that he would learn from the experience.
‘I’ve learned from making mistakes. If you don’t make mistakes, you don’t learn. It’s part of football, everybody makes mistakes,’ Raya said.
‘But the thing is, when the ‘keeper makes a mistake, is normally it is a goal and it’s more seen, more talked [about] compared to a striker missing a tap-in or whatever.
‘But it’s just part of football and you learn from that, that’s the most important thing. You just learn from the mistakes.’
Ian Wright had little sympathy for Raya as he reflected on the Spaniard’s moment of madness in the SuperSport studio, highlighting how the ‘rash’ decision could have cost Arsenal on another day.
‘I was really pleased with the way they were so in control of what they needed to do, especially once Tottenham got back into the game,’ the legendary ex-Arsenal striker said.
‘They’ve done so well to get to this point. You can’t do rash things which is what the we saw the goalkeeper do, unfortunately.
‘Even the penalty that we given away was quite a rash decision to make from Declan [Rice], simply because of where the ball is. There’s going to be a player in and around it and you’ve got to be a lot more careful about that.’
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