January wasn't an easy month for Chelsea. Thomas Tuchel's side faced Liverpool, Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur in the Premier League, while also taking on Spurs over two legs in the Carabao Cup semi-final.
And for four of those matches, they were without their number one goalkeeper, Edouard Mendy. The Senegal international flew out to the Africa Cup of Nations after the pulsating 2-2 draw against Liverpool on January 2 and there was a void to fill. So in stepped the world's most expensive goalkeeper.
That is a tag that has, at times, weighed heavily on the shoulders of Kepa Arrizabalaga, who signed with Chelsea in the summer of 2018 for a record £71.6 million. His first season at Stamford Bridge was solid; there were few errors but one rather high-profile incident in the Carabao Cup final when he substituted.
The Spaniard's second campaign with the Blues was, however, something of a disaster. Kepa's form disintegrated and by the end of the season, he had been replaced in the starting XI by veteran stopper Willy Caballero.
Mendy then arrived in the early weeks of 2021/22. From that point on, the 29-year-old has been Chelsea's first-choice between the posts with Kepa in the role as deputy.
First-team opportunities have been limited as a result; Kepa has featured in just 21 matches since the signing of Mendy from Rennes. However, his time out of the spotlight has proved beneficial.
Kepa has worked on his game and strived to improve weaknesses. Tuchel has always taken the chance to praise the Spain international publicly too in addition to handing him minutes where possible.
The rebuilding of Kepa's confidence has been a slow process and it's one that former Blues goalkeeper Rob Green – who will appear in BT Sport's upcoming documentary The Special 1 – believes needed to be carefully managed and understood.
“Goalkeeping is very emotional and very personal. You put your life and soul into it and sometimes it doesn’t always work out," Green tells football.london.
“What you don’t feel you need is analysis of why it didn’t work out and someone critiquing you, but it is probably the best thing for you. The analysis is a completely impersonal thing, but naturally, you are desperate to protect yourself and defend yourself.
“You’re keen as a young goalkeeper to be confident, to be resolute, to not have a chink in your armour. But the older you get the more willing you are to take things on board, to accept things that don't work.
“When I was 31 years old, Martyn Margetson came in [at West Ham] and said I’d been getting this really basic thing wrong with my goalkeeping technique all my life. If he’d come at me with that when I was 25, I wouldn’t have been able to take that on board.”
Kepa joined Chelsea in the same summer as Green. He was only 23 years old and had made just 53 appearances for Athletic Club before his eye-watering move to Stamford Bridge. At the top level, he was inexperienced.
Green continues: “I tend to forget how young he was when he signed, and he went from his hometown club to Chelsea as the world’s most expensive goalkeeper.
“He was still just a youngster really. I remember I was at the Chelsea Harbour Hotel after I signed and it was the summer holidays. My wife turned to me and said, ‘I think there is a fan here. He’s in a Chelsea tracksuit so he’ll probably be coming over to say hello. He’s the young lad over there with his mum and dad’.
“I looked over and then said, ‘Oh no, that’s the most expensive goalkeeper in the world. That’s Kepa’.
“It was easy to understand why my wife would look at him as just a young lad. That is what he was. So to have the chance to take a step back [over the past year] and to look at the overall picture [was important].
“Under Sarri, he came into a Chelsea side that was focused on controlling the game, controlling the ball, getting Jorginho to play 600 passes or whatever. That was the focus of the game. Like it or lump it, love it or hate it, that’s what Sarri’s game was about.
“With that, you have an element of control within the goalkeeping world that certain things are going to happen within a game. So your focus is on your own game.
“Frank’s game took it away from that. It was a lot more exciting, there were 5-2s with Tammy scoring hat-tricks and there being two own goals, there was a 2-2 with Valencia that I did the commentary for and we were exhausted just doing that!
“If you’re playing in games like that week in, week out while trying to also implement your own game, it’s very difficult as a goalkeeper. It was also something he’d probably never come across before.
“Now he has come back into the Chelsea side under Tuchel, who moved to a back three because it gives control, who has Jorginho back in the centre, and all of a sudden he is looking back to his old self.
“So there are a lot of extenuating circumstances in there. If you asked Kepa how he feels, he’d probably say exactly the same. But when the game around you is so, so different, it lends itself to a more settled and comfortable goalkeeper.”
Kepa has played five games in Mendy's absence over the past four weeks and three have ended with the Spaniard keeping a clean sheet. He has looked more assured, more comfortable in the Chelsea side, more like the goalkeeper who was on the radar of Real Madrid before he joined the Blues.
The harsh reality is, though, that Mendy will almost certainly reclaim his starting role when he returns from Cameroon.
Yet Kepa has proved to Chelsea and the world that he can be relied upon once more. And that is incredibly important ahead of reaching a career crossroads in the summer.
BT Sport will premiere The Special 1, the latest documentary from BT Sport Films, on BT Sport 1 on Tuesday 8 February at 10.45pm and is available to watch via the BT Sport website and App thereafter.
