After Their Capital One Cup Exit, Arsenal Can Focus on the Premier League Title

There weren’t many positives to be taken from Arsenal’s 3-0 defeat at Sheffield Wednesday. It was an abysmal performance, and the disappointment of the fans will only have been aggravated by two potentially costly injuries to first-team players. 

However, if there is one favourable element to Arsenal’s fourth-round exit from the Capital One Cup, it’s surely that they can now focus their resources on their Premier League title challenge.

Arsene Wenger made no bones about it in his post-match interview. The Gunners boss said explicitly, per Arsenal's website: "The Premier League is our competition we want to focus on and ideally you want to win them all but we have to focus on the Premier League. We had six players at home, at least they didn’t get injured so we have to prepare well for Saturday."

It’s clear that in Wenger’s mind the match at Swansea City matters far more than a domestic cup tie. Although he has never won the League Cup, he is far more motivated by the prospect of ending a 12-year wait for another Premier League trophy.

That attitude was evident in the Arsenal players, too. Even though Arsenal chose to rest some of their more celebrated stars, there were still plenty of senior internationals out on the field. The likes of Petr Cech, Per Mertesacker and Olivier Giroud should still have been able to help secure the Gunners a safe passage into the next round.

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However, they simply didn’t perform to the requisite level. The first-team players Wenger called upon largely played as if they were scared of following Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Theo Walcott to the treatment room.

Losing those two players is undoubtedly a blow for Arsenal, especially because they’re both capable of filling in on the right wing. Wenger’s preferred choice in that position, Welsh midfielder Aaron Ramsey, is already out. To suffer three muscular injuries in the same part of the field is definitely unfortunate, and it leaves Wenger facing a difficult decision over how to restructure his attack on Saturday at the Liberty Stadium.

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He certainly won’t be in a hurry to call-up any of the youngsters he trialled in the Sheffield Wednesday game. There were high hopes for the likes of Alex Iwobi, who has already been capped by the Nigeria senior team, but no one delivered a performance that suggested they were ready for first-team inclusion.

The reality is that the most promising young talents at Arsenal—the likes of Gedion Zelalem, Isaac Hayden and Chuba Akpom—are out on loan. In fact, Akpom and Hayden both featured for their temporary club Hull City last night as they progressed to the next round by beating Leicester City.

Overall, Arsenal gave the impression of a team who couldn’t wait to be out of this competition. The sense prevails that the club feel they have bigger fish to fry. With Chelsea floundering, the Gunners appear to be the only real competition for the Manchester clubs in the fight for Premier League superiority.

That won’t be much consolation to the Arsenal fans who travelled to Sheffield to watch such a poor performance. However, if their team can rally to sustain a genuine fight for the title, this inglorious evening will be swiftly forgotten.

James McNicholas is Bleacher Report's lead Arsenal correspondent and is following the club from a London base throughout 2015/16. Follow him on Twitter here.