David Raya shocked Manchester United legend Peter Schmeichel by denying he produced a ‘world class’ performance for Arsenal against Manchester United.
The Spain international continued his fine personal campaign with a series of outstanding saves to ensure his side left Old Trafford with a share of the spoils on Sunday.
Raya’s positioning was called into question for Bruno Fernandes’ opening goal, but he redeemed himself in stoppage time with a stunning double save to deny the United captain a winner.
The former Brentford star produced an equally remarkable stop with an outstretched leg to prevent Noussair Mazraoui from doubling the home side’s lead, while he also did well to smother Joshua Zirkzee’s impudent flick which also would’ve put United 2-0 ahead.
Asked to assess his performance after the game, Raya told Premier League Productions: ‘Defensively yes, attacking I could’ve done a little bit better.’
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Schmeichel was taken aback by that response and said: ‘I’m not having that, today you’re making three unbelievable saves, actually saving three situations. The last one it’s in the last minute it’s unbelievable.
‘I’m quite intrigued here because I think you put out a world class performance I think you saved your team a point. Can you use a point or not use a point, that’s kind of irrelevant now.
‘I’m intrigued about what you said about offensively I didn’t play well what does that mean?’
Raya was happy to take the credit for his agile goalkeeping but confessed he was disappointed with his distribution, particularly in the second half when he was guilty of playing some of his teammates into trouble.
He said: ‘The standards that I give to myself and I with the team I should’ve been better with decision making sometimes in the second half where we could’ve played more to break the press.
‘Sometimes United press very well, very aggressively man to man and it’s tough but my demands are a bit higher than that and I want to do the best for the team.
‘I know I made a few passes that were risky and I put Saliba into a little bit of trouble but that’s just my standards.’
Raya’s manager, Mikel Arteta, was equally disappointed to have dropped two points that means the title race is over, if it wasn’t already.
Asked on the chances of his side catching Liverpool, Arteta said: ‘I don’t want to say that but today the frustration is that we haven’t won our game – we know the urgency and it’s about winning every single match if you want to have any chance of doing that. I don’t think it’s the right moment to talk about that.’
On his side’s current form, he added: ‘Today the efficiency we had in the last 20 metres, it wasn’t good enough, we know that.
‘Those are big parts of a lot of things that the game demands when you come to Old Trafford and what we did was superb, but at the end, you have to capitalise on that when the team is so dominant and much better than the opposition and today we didn’t.
‘Then you have to overturn a result, which we know is very difficult to do here. You have to expose yourself a little bit more because you have to take more risks and then the game could have gone their way in the last few minutes.’
