Martin Odegaard and Bukayo Saka were brilliant again and yet somehow this is still bad news for Mikel Arteta on a night when there are absurd calls for his sacking in the depths of Arsenal’s social media.

The only reason any Arsenal fan cares about the Carabao Cup is because it doesn’t look like they’re going to win the Premier League. They wouldn’t give a damn that Mikel Arteta hasn’t won them a trophy for over four years (and no, mate, we’re not counting the Community Shield because you don’t really either) if they, and not Liverpool, have six points would have been clear the top of the table.

And part of the problem for Arteta – in deciding whether or not to target this smaller trophy – is that these fans believe in it should Be the trailblazer in the Premier League. The doubts aired by AFTV about whether Arteta is the man to take them forward in recent weeks are fueled by the out-of-the-pants belief that they have earned the right to be the next team to do so Title wins after Manchester City have been their closest rivals for the last two seasons. Guys, that’s not how it works.

Comparisons to Jose Mourinho and Tony Pulis have not helped Arteta, given the growing narrative that he has taken Arsenal as far as he can go, and the first half won’t show here either, but his perfectly reasonable view will be, that winning the Carabao Cup is unlikely to be a success. In terms of his reputation as Arsenal coach, he will make all the difference.

He would have come under fire from fans and the media if he hadn’t made significant changes to the starting lineup here and then failed to beat Palace in the Premier League on Saturday as rotation was a commonly used stick against him to beat.

Many Arsenal fans would have approved of his selection, mainly to give his star players a break, but also to bring the second string closer to the required level to help them in more important games. But after less than four minutes, the nod of approval turned into a feeling of suspicion: eight changes were always too many.

For Jakub Kiwior, it’s feast or famine. Based on his performances, we can absolutely understand why Napoli and Juventus are interested like the one he showed against Monaco last weekBut if the Gunners dream of securing a decent transfer fee from Serie A in January, they’ll hope recruitment chiefs weren’t watching.

Jean-Philippe Mateta didn’t even look as Dean Henderson’s long ball flew towards him and battled with the centre-back. We say scramble, the Palace striker didn’t have to do much at all for Kiwior to lose his spatial awareness and let the ball bounce back and forth between them. At this point he had no hope left against Mateta, who held Kiwior back as if he were a Shire Horse hitting a fly with his tail before pushing the ball past David Raya.

Kiwior did the same three minutes later, lost the ball, this time to Ismaila Sarr, and generally endured a harrowing evening in a makeshift Arsenal back four, alongside a defender who had never played in the club’s centre-back, a midfielder at right-back and a left-back who has not played for the Gunners since May 2023.

Most of the team seemed like they hadn’t played for Arsenal in so long. The demands for Odegaard, Bukayo Saka or bust were reinforced by a first half without them in which the home side failed to get anything done, with Dean Henderson parrying Raheem Sterling’s free-kick the only promising moment.

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The game predictably changed when Odegaard was substituted at half-time, and although William Saliba’s substitution for Thomas Partey also helped turn the tide in Arsenal’s favour, Jurrien Timber nominally switched to right-back and made a difference as he pushed into midfield Outnumbering Palace, it was the captain’s antics between the lines that had the visitors nipping at their heels.

He played the pass to Gabriel Jesus, who got one touch away from Trevoh Chalobah – who perhaps should have done better – before playing the ball beautifully over Henderson.

Then Bukayo Saka, the second half of the Arsenal team, came into the game and played Jesus for the second time in the game after Bonnie and Clyde scored an assist each with a great touch and a reverse pass before Bonnie got another.

The doubts that would have prevented Jesus from playing through at half-time had vanished thanks to his first two goals of the night, and his hat-trick was the key to victory here – as Eddie Nketiah scored soon after with a brilliant header a night that has been a night for Arsenal’s backup strikers past and present – and one that could prove hugely significant for the rest of the season as Arteta looks for attacking qualities to go beyond the World class duo go out who came off the bench to save them here.

And while the absurd calls for Arteta’s sacking won’t gain any traction thanks to a hugely dominant second-half performance, they will gain traction due to a team selection that, while making sense, is a means of calling them into question Depths of social media continue to echo him and because of their absolute dependence on Odegaard and Saka, without whom they looked apathetic and carried no threat whatsoever.

Any thought of Arsenal letting Arteta go is entirely mental, but new, ridiculous reasons for his sacking will come to light in the coming weeks as a section of Gunners fans become increasingly convinced that he is not the man , to which they give the final push can win something significant.

The Carabao Cup will never be anything like that, but it is now in a situation – as the reaction to a draw against Fulham showed very clearly – where it has to win every game in every competition to keep the Bat*t Wolves out of the game Door.