Fleetwood Town knocked Arsenal out of the Carabao Cup fourth round on Tuesday, winning 5-3 on penalties after a 1-1 draw at their Highbury Stadium, and the shootout turned on Bruno Guimaraes' saved kick.
Fleetwood had scored all four of their first penalties and Martin Odegaard, Havertz and Viktor Gyokeres had kept Arsenal level when Guimaraes stepped up. His run-up stuttered, and Jay Lynch went down low to his left to push it away. That left the winning kick to Conor Haughey, a 19-year-old defender who sent Ilan Meslier the wrong way and said afterwards he hadn't practised penalties beforehand.
Mikel Arteta made ten changes from the side that beat Everton on Saturday, keeping only Gyokeres and naming the club's youngest starting XI in seven years. Max Dowman started, while Meslier was one of two players making their debuts. The game was under two minutes old when referee Michael Salisbury stopped it because a drone had been spotted above the stadium. The hold-up lasted around eight minutes, though counts run from seven to more than eight. Aaron Loupalo-Bi, on loan from Fulham, put Fleetwood ahead in the 21st minute when he held off Marli Salmon and slid a left-footer through Meslier's legs. Gyokeres equalised five minutes after half-time, scrambling in Ceadach O'Neill's ball into the box for his first goal of the season. Dowman was shown a straight red in the 85th minute, the first of his senior career, for kicking out after a late challenge in a flare-up with Harrison Neal. Red looks a lot for so little contact, but a player who kicks out hands the referee the decision. Lynch still had to save from Ben White and Odegaard in stoppage time. Only seven of Arsenal's 26 shots were on target, though one count has them on 18 attempts.
Fleetwood are 18th in League Two and 84 places below Arsenal on the pyramid, so Tuesday's win took them into the quarter-finals for the first time in their history. The ten changes will get the blame, but with five games in 24 days starting at Liverpool on Sunday 1 November the rotation was defensible. The exit came from a side that couldn't hit the target often enough against a goalkeeper who was ready for everything. Arsenal were second on 21 points as of 25 October, level with leaders Manchester City, who are ahead on goal difference.
"It's a really sad day for us," Arteta said, adding that Arsenal "need to take this on the chin" even though he couldn't fault the players' attitude. Odegaard put it more bluntly: "We were not at our level." Asked about the angry words he mouthed at Dowman as the teenager walked off, Arteta said it was "something that we discussed already before the match". Fleetwood's Matt Lawlor called it an "unbelievably special" night.
The night before the cup tie, Bukayo Saka won the Socrates Award at the Ballon d'Or gala in London for his work with the BigShoe initiative. Saka is its fifth winner after Sadio Mane, Vinicius Junior, Jennifer Hermoso and Luis Enrique. In Rwanda he has provided health check-ups for more than 580 children and health insurance for another 1,000 people. He used his acceptance speech to read out the words of Biringiro, a 14-year-old Rwandan whose eyesight BigShoe had restored. The night also saw David Raya finish second to Unai Simon and Arteta lose Coach of the Year to Luis de la Fuente.
For Arsenal Women, Renée Slegers used her pre-Benfica press conference to praise Taylor Hinds for playing Saturday's 2-1 derby win at Tottenham "with conviction for 90 minutes" after being left out of four matchday squads this season.
That derby win is what Slegers wants to build on against Benfica at Meadow Park tonight at 8pm, because she expects the same duels and physicality from "a very robust team". The last Champions League game ended with Arsenal throwing away a 2-0 lead in the final minutes against Paris FC, and Slegers was too angry to do her post-match press conference. Six players are out: Mariona Caldentey and Chloe Kelly with hamstring injuries, Frida Maanum with a quad problem and Selina Cerci, Katie Reid and Michelle Agyemang with knee injuries. Kim Little is back after illness and a small muscle injury. Arsenal won 2-0 in Lisbon when the sides met last season, but Barcelona at the Camp Nou comes next, so anything less than a win tonight puts real pressure on that trip.
In the academy, the Under-21s won 2-1 at AFC Wimbledon. Horseman also said he was proud of an EFL Trophy win he called "deserved".
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