Gone is the time of EFL Cup finals heralding in a new generation - now is the time for Arsenal to be judged

Youthful Gunners sides lost in both the 2007 and 2011 finals but they do not have the same hope for their newbies this time

Arsenal no longer have a fleet of flourishing youngsters (Getty)

“For me there is no doubt: Arsenal have the best generation of young players in Europe.” That was the verdict of Cesc Fabregas, the 19-year-old with the world at his feet. “If we won the Carling Cup, it would be sensational for morale. We hope this will be our success.”

Theo Walcott, 17 years old and without an Arsenal goal to his name, was even more bullish. “Denilson is breaking through, he’s going to be a brilliant player. I expect a lot of players to break through, it’s a young squad and we’re going to grow up together. Next season is going to be our season.”

Arsene Wenger, taking this team of teenagers to Cardiff to face Jose Mourinho’s Chelsea, was most optimistic of all. “I have full confidence in these players,” he said. Abou Diaby was compared to Patrick Vieira, Denilson to a mixture of Tomas Rosicky and Gilberto Silva. “We have not just won, we have won with style. Now it would be a great reward to win it.”

Wenger even compared his own band of brilliant brave young performers – who had beaten Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur on their way - to those on huge part of late-noughties culture: The X Factor. “I like the show,” said Wenger, strangely enough, “because people are brave enough to come out, and they want to achieve something in their life. They have a target, they are committed to do it. People who turn up ready to fight for something, like our young players do, I like. Like the X Factor Academy.”

This was back in February 2007, when The X Factor, three seasons in, was still on its way to dominating the nation’s imagination. And it was impossible to avoid the same sense of an optimistic future about this young Arsenal team. Not just with Walcott and Fabregas, either, but 19-year-old Denilson, 17-year-old Armand Traore and 20-year-old Diaby.

Before the final, Arsenal’s League Cup youngsters were compared in one newspaper to the Busby Babes and their winning of the 1955-56 title with an average age of 22. This Arsenal generation had been ear-marked for greatness over the next 10 years, not least by themselves. They just needed that first win.

Of course it did not happen like that. Walcott did manage his first goal for Arsenal, but they were facing a Chelsea side which had won consecutive Premier League titles. Their immaturity showed and Chelsea eventually turned them over 2-1. That happy future mapped out for Arsenal was left undelivered.

Four empty years later Arsenal were back in the League Cup final, this time against Birmingham City. The team was not quite as young anymore but they did now have a 19-year-old Jack Wilshere, 20-year-old Wojciech Szczesny and 21-year-old Kieran Gibbs in the side.

The feeling was the same: if they could just win this one final, they could unlock the sunnier future that their young players promised. One newspaper column pointed to how Arsenal’s successes under George Graham followed the 1987 League Cup win. “I have no doubt something similar can happen to this generation,” wrote Kevin Moran in the News of the World. “With so much young talent coming through – Walcott, Nasri, Wilshere, Szczesny – Wenger could build on a triumph.”

Obafemi Martins scored the late winner in 2011 (Getty)

Wenger had the same view. “There is a weight on the team,” he admitted. “We have to deliver trophies because we have not won any. We have a young squad, and this will do much for their confidence.” 11 days before they had beaten Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona 2-1 at the Emirates. “Winning the Carling Cup will be like that: another step forward.”

Instead, it was another step back. Obafemi Martins won the final for Birmingham in the last minute. Nine days later they were out of the Champions League. Four days after that they were out of the FA Cup. And they won two of their last 11 league games as a potential title challenge dissolved into nothing. It took Arsenal the rest of 2011 to break out of that spiral.

Arsenal have won three FA Cups since then but this is their first League Cup final since the Birmingham City disaster. And what is so striking about this trip is that there is none of the promise of the brighter future that was so clear with the 2007 and 2011 finals. This will not be a young Arsenal team, and the struggles of Calum Chambers, Rob Holding and Ainsley Maitland-Niles against Ostersunds FK underlined that they do not have the same young talent that they used to.

The most exciting thing to happen to Arsenal this season, in fact, is throwing big money at players in their late 20s: a new deal for Mesut Ozil, and the signings of Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. Mkhitaryan will be cup-tied on Sunday, but these three players are Arsenal’s best now, established senior professionals whose level and ceiling is clear.

They are not a bad team, and they could beat Manchester City on Sunday, but there is no sense that anything is about to be unlocked. This Arsenal side – sixth in the Premier League, still in the Europa League – is built to be judged on now. There is none of that hopeful X Factor left.