Now let’s be clear. I was, and still am, glad we signed the big Czech. However, I’ve been disappointed in how we’ve used his value.

Even before Cech joined us, the signs were there that he wasn’t going to be one of those evergreen performers. He was a fantastic solution for a year or two, three at most, but then we would need to look to the future. To Wojciech Szcesney.

To my mind, we signed Cech as more than just a first team player.

I wrote back then of my hopes that he was to be a role model, an exemplary professional, to guide the career of Wojciech Szczesny. The Pole was the obvious choice to succeed Cech when he came to hang up his boots. Indeed, I assumed Szczesny would be briefly displaced, but following a glorious twilight of Cech’s career, the younger man would return to between the Emirates sticks.

Our Pole in goal has a fantastic array of skills; it was his off-field behaviours and concentration lapses against lesser sides that were threatening to derail a promising career. Playing understudy to one of the game’s greatest professionals could only be a positive thing in correcting that. Except we didn’t let him.