Declan Rice, Kai Havertz and Jurrien Timber can be forgiven if they all have a sense of deja vu during this weekend’s Carabao Cup final against Manchester City.
This will be the trio’s second trip to Wembley as Arsenal players, with their first coming in Community Shield-winning debuts in August 2023. Much has happened since that sunny summer afternoon 959 days before this Sunday’s final, but the first impressions made by each turned out to be lasting ones.
All three were signed early in the summer, with the intention of hitting the ground running.
The general perception of Rice on arrival from West Ham United was that he would be the defensive midfielder Arsenal were missing. Mikel Arteta was never going to pigeonhole the England international like that. His first six months in north London may have been spent in deeper areas, but Rice’s debut came in a more aggressive box-to-box role that has since become the norm.
Havertz was signed with the view of playing in midfield after Granit Xhaka’s transfer to Bayer Leverkusen, but he too debuted in a position that he would occupy more often after his first half-season at Arsenal — centre-forward.
Timber completed the versatile trio of 2023 summer signings, starting this game at left-back. An unfamiliar role at the time, he still transferred the qualities from his usual station at right-back seamlessly, which made his anterior cruciate ligament injury the following week all the more cruel.
That day was about belief, and these three instilled their new side with that in their own ways.
Rice has since been nicknamed ‘the horse’ by his Arsenal team-mates because of his relentless ability to cover ground, and the seeds for that idea may have been planted by two similar moments on his debut. Manchester City tried to play through Arsenal in the first half, but Rice’s anticipation and hunger off-the-ball gave Rodri a genuine shock, forcing one of his passes out for a corner.
He made another decisive sprint in the second half, this time towards his own goal to stop Bernardo Silva when it seemed there would be no chance.
Wembley was split between Arsenal and City supporters, but the eruption of noise both these moments produced made it seem like there was just one set of fans in the ground. They lifted everyone wearing red that day and bred confidence. Rice’s crunching tackles that came in the following months all felt like events within matches that helped set the tone. Arsenal were evolving because of him, and the emotional aspect of that seemed more present than the tactical.
Havertz’s way of building belief that day was by doing what he often does so effectively now: being a platform to play from. Early on, he allowed Arsenal to get from their goalkeeper, Aaron Ramsdale, into the City half within two passes.
The three new faces helped them genuinely compete. After all, Arsenal’s previous encounter against City was the traumatic 4-1 away defeat that cemented their fate as runners-up the previous season.
Each of Arsenal’s recent summer windows has seemed to follow a theme. A youthful rebuild came in 2021, with six signings made under the age of 23. The following year was about raising the level, so in came Gabriel Jesus and Oleksandr Zinchenko from Manchester City. The aim for 2023 was to create a more adaptable and robust team to challenge Pep Guardiola. A couple of tweaks came in 2024 with Riccardo Calafiori and Mikel Merino, before the push for unforeseen squad depth with eight signings in the summer of 2025.
Nobody in 2023 would have guessed that Arsenal would be waiting another three years before being so close to lifting more silverware, but the three players who made their debuts that day have still pushed the club forward.
Some may point to Rice’s free kicks against Real Madrid last season or his consistently threatening deliveries from corners, but his influence goes beyond that. Arteta described him as a potential ‘lighthouse’ when he first signed. When asked about that assessment in December, the manager said: “That’s the way I perceived him. Now he’s become a lighthouse, which is very difficult to do at a big club like Arsenal. He’s done it with how he is behaving, acting, with performances and an attitude that are at the highest level.”
Much has been made about what Arsenal have missed on the pitch without Havertz available for large parts of the last year. But similar to Arteta on Rice, after the German’s goal against Chelsea secured Arsenal’s place in this year’s Carabao Cup final, Timber told reporters: “Kai is not quiet. When he’s not there, everyone notices that.”
Both players had won European club competitions before joining Arsenal, with Havertz scoring the Champions League-winning goal for Chelsea in 2021 and Rice captaining West Ham to a Conference League triumph in 2023.
Timber won two Eredivisie titles with Ajax in 2021 and 2022, and on his consistency since returning from that ACL injury in the 2023-24 season, Arteta told reporters in November: “He’s been phenomenal in every department. He’s taken his level and the team’s level to a different dimension. His courage, the way he penetrates, the way he wins the duels, the way he understands the game, the way he wants to make things happen. He is a big example for the rest of his team-mates.”
That game understanding was clear from that performance at left-back three years ago. Timber’s runs into the opposition box may be a point of debate among Arsenal supporters this year, but he was making similar runs from the opposite flank even then.
What could have happened had he not been injured for most of the 2023-24 season, when Arsenal finished just two points behind Manchester City? The same could be asked of Havertz during the second half of last season and the first half of the current one. But thankfully for Arteta, that will not be a question when he reunites with Guardiola once again at Wembley — a stadium he has beaten his old boss at twice.
After that Community Shield win, he said: “I don’t think it gets much better than winning a trophy at Wembley against the best team in the world, doing it the way we did it. It’s really encouraging.
“That’s the reason we’re here — to win trophies for this football club and make it successful. Just the joy of seeing so many happy and proud people, seeing the connection again, doing it at Wembley in front of our supporters feels very different and it was great.”
It would be generous to call today’s Manchester City the best in the world, but meeting them could be a nice full-circle moment for the three players who started their Arsenal careers with a win over the team to beat.
