Chelsea: Four things to look for as Blues survive Liverpool trophy lift

3. Willy Caballero or Kepa Arrizabalaga?

Four months ago, Chelsea beat Liverpool in the FA Cup, which was one of the clear highlights of the season. It was not only the manner in which the Blues totally outclassed the Reds that made the fixture so memorable for the fans, but the sparkling performance from their record signing goalkeeper was one to behold.

After being dropped by Lampard for one of the most crucial runs of games of the season, Arrizabalaga was given a chance to prove himself. As the fans and his manager watched his glorious triple save with sheer amazement, Arrizabalaga put in quite a defining performance, which has been a rare sight during his stint in Blue. He ended the game with a clean sheet and put in another confident performance against Everton just before the pandemic break.

After the back to back clean sheets, the feeling was that Spaniard was finally turning the corner of Chelsea career and beginning to justify the 72 million spent on him. Alas, as the Blues gear up to face the Reds again on Wednesday, it would appear that Arrizabalaga’s place in the starting eleven is in jeopardy yet again.

After a slew of unimpressive performances since the restart, Lampard dropped Arrizabalaga in favor of Caballero against United. The changed seem to work as the back line looked assured with the Argentine veteran guarding the goal. For a player who hadn’t played a competitive game for over six months, Caballero was remarkably sharp against the Red Devils.

The Argentine was always aware of Daniel James’ and Marcus Rashford’s runs behind the lines and was quick off his line to deal with such situations. In those moments, the slightest uncertainty in decision making can lead to disasters like penalties and open goals but Caballero did his job confidently. He seemed in sync with his defenders and did all the basics of the game right.

Unlike Arrizabalaga, who often seems to be just glued to the goal line, Caballero offered support to his defenders by getting off his line to make clearances and jumping to deal with crosses. Those actions may seem fairly routine but subtly make a huge difference to the composure of back line. The defenders were at the top of their game because they believed in their teammate in goal.

At such a crucial stage of the season, one has to wonder if Lampard can gamble on Arrizabalaga again. The Spaniard does pull off some extraordinary saves from time to time but that is not enough to look past his save percentage, which is the worst in the Premier League. Unlike Caballero, his reluctance to get off his line can diminish the confidence of the back line and his all round game is underwhelming, to say the least.

Even if he is still in Lampard’s plans for the long term (which does not seem to be the case), Arrizabalaga simply does not make the case to start over the unspectacularly yet solid Caballero in the must win game against Liverpool.

When the team sheets are announced on Wednesday, it will be interesting to see who the first name from the top is.