David Raya has lifted the lid on how he turned his Arsenal career around following a lengthy meeting at the club’s training ground. The Spanish goalkeeper has won the Premier League’s Golden Glove award for the last two seasons thanks to his impressive haul of clean sheets.
However, Raya suffered a difficult start to life with the Gunners after first joining on loan from Brentford during the summer of 2023. Mikel Arteta’s decision to play Raya over England international Aaron Ramsdale initially drew raised eyebrows in the early stages of the 2023/24 campaign following a series of high-profile blunders.
The 29-year-old admitted he hit “rock-bottom” after making two howlers in Arsenal’s 4-3 Premier League victory away at Luton in December 2023. Raya has now told former Manchester United and Wrexham shot-stopper Ben Foster how he met with the club’s goalkeeping coach Inaki Cana the same evening to try and address his poor form.
Speaking on the Fozcast podcast, he said: “It was a turning point against Luton. That game was one of the worst games I ever played and that’s where I hit rock bottom. From there, the only way was up with changing my habits and trying to change my mindset.
“From that game, I said, ‘Listen, this is not me.’ I think there’s been a massive change from there. I met with the goalie coach after the game at the training round and we were there for two hours, talking about things that we could change.
“He helped me a lot in that situation and just believed in me. I worked with him, worked with the sports psychologist and relied on my missus and my family to try to help me as much as possible. That’s when I started feeling better.”
Raya made his move to the Emirates permanent last summer, while Ramsdale was sold to Southampton. Fast forward to 2025, and Arsenal announced last month that the Spaniard will officially be given the No.1 shirt next term after opting to change from his previous number of 22.
The move will see him follow in the footsteps of David Seaman, Jens Lehmann, Manuel Almunia, Wojciech Szczesny, Petr Cech, Bernd Leno and Ramsdale.
Reflecting on his tough start at Arsenal, though, Raya said he may have been playing with too much fear due to the controversy surrounding his selection.
“I wasn’t myself 100 per cent,” he said. “Maybe I was backing off a little bit and you cannot do that. You will make more mistakes if you are backing off a little bit.
Maybe it was in the back of my head last year with all the thoughts that were behind the goalie situation. There could’ve been a lot of factors like the loan thing and maybe not having that [permanent] contract.”
Arsenal have finished in the runners-up spot in the Premier League for the last three seasons. While the club’s standing has improved under Arteta, Raya said the players were disappointed to miss out on the title to Manchester City by five points last year.
He said: “I think it hurt more last season because of everything that we’d done, all the points that we got and the run that we went on.
After the [mid-season] Dubai trip, we lost one game, we drew another one and we won the rest. But not fulfilling that title, and being so close and not getting it, that hurt a little bit more.”
