Arsenal’s goalkeeping situation has been the subject of debate for many seasons now, so what is really going on?
Once bitten twice shy?
I was reminded this week of my heartbreak when Cesc Fabregas left The Arsenal for sunnier climes. For his eight years at the club, I was the Spaniard’s biggest fan. I might have worshipped him more than King Henry, or even the maestro himself – Dennis Bergkamp – right up until the day he departed for Barcelona.
But why is this relevant to Arsenal’s goalkeeping conundrum?
Well, when Lee asked me who my current favourite player was, back in 2011 when we were designing our column artwork, I chose our Polish Cockney, one Wojciech Szczesny.
To me, his heady mix of skill, potential and comedy made him someone I enjoyed as a person as well as a player. Until Lee changed things up, Szcz decorated every column I wrote, towering over Ashley Cole in triumph.
Just as I didn’t want Cesc to leave, I’m worried the club’s stance on our number one is somewhat different to my own.
Our two best keepers at the club – by a country mile – are Petr Cech and Wojciech Szczesny.
Which you prefer probably depends on whether you enjoy a flutter or not.
Mr Dependable
Cech is good, possibly great (if only for quitting Chelsea to join us) but he’s no long term solution.
He’s Mr dependable, combining professionalism with solid, consistent and calming performances which also filters out into his defence. You know exactly what you’re getting.
He might not make many spectacular saves any more, and will presumably never save a penalty ever again, but a Petr Cech mistake is something of a collectable.
He’s effectively the diametric opposite of David James, a goalkeeper capable of making impossible saves, but who never made it at the very top level because he was also capable of making impossibly bad errors, with no way to anticipate which was more likely to happen.
Mr High Stakes
Wojciech Szczesny, on the other hand, is capable of making the breathtaking saves Petr Cech produced regularly in his pomp. He’s much younger, and seemingly hugely improved at cutting out the lapses of concentration that punctuated his early years in London and saw him shipped off to Roma in the first place.
He still represents something of gamble, if only to see if he can reproduce his Italian maturity in the Premier League, but it’s a well-hedged gamble given he now has 132 Premier League appearances, 72 Serie A appearances and 38 Champions League games under his belt. He’s performed consistently well for the difficult-to-please Roma fans, and lest we forget he shared the Golden Glove with Cech in the 13-14 season despite Arsenal’s perennial defensive flaws.
He has also been touted as the replacement for Gigi Buffon, hardly the mark of a no-hoper.
When he went to Rome, I wrote at the time that I would rather he stayed in England to understudy Cech and learn from his experience. Time in the Italian capital seems to have had the same desired effect, infusing his game with a maturity previously lacking. He has cultivated his strengths, of which there are many, and addressed his weaknesses to return to us a much better keeper.
And of course, he once poleaxed Gareth Bale in a North London Derby.
The real challenge is to look around world football, recognising that Cech won’t play for many more seasons, and identify who we might replace him with who is of similar or better quality than Szczesny.
Price is one obstacle, but availability is another.
There are very few keepers even on a par with the Pole, and they certainly wouldn’t cost the kind of peanuts we’re being offered for our incumbent of the number one shirt.
Mr Finished
What’s that coming over the hill? Is it an elephant?
No, it’s David Ospina.
In my mind, the time for debate is over.
Put simply: he is not good enough for Arsenal Football Club.
He never has been. He never will be. And the longer it takes us to realise, the longer we are resigning ourselves to below-par performances.
He doesn’t have the spectacular saves nor the consistency of our two best keepers.
He lacks height and power. He can never be a world class keeper because his physical attributes don’t stack up, and that’s even before we start looking at his decision making.
He’s just about ok as a number two, but only ok – I would personally prefer to see us have an exciting youngster who might be able to supplant our first choice and can learn from them in between, than someone who is ticking along without the potential to improve or the chance of wowing us.
Mr Invisible
But what of Emi Martinez, I hear you ask?
Oh wait, you’ve never seen him player either? I jest a little, but a Martinez appearance this year has been as rare as a Bacary Sagna cross which beats the first man. The fact that we don’t even really know what his first name is – Damian? Emiliano? – pretty much epitomises how strong a view we’ve been able to form on his goalkeeping skills. [Edit, his full name is Damián Emiliano Martínez. He used to be known as Damian before asking to be refereed to as Emiliano, ‘Emi’ for short].
Pushing 25, he wasn’t loaned out last season, even temporarily, which strikes me as somewhat odd for a third choice keeper. He could be the best stopper in the world – he’s certainly not acquitted himself badly on his rare appearances – but it does make you wonder why he’s not had a chance, either here or elsewhere.
If he’s no good, surely we would have let him go a while back, rather than continuing to pay his salary?
And if Arsene didn’t trust one or both of Petr Cech or David Ospina, then surely Emi would have got a bit more game time?
Or if we simply had no takers, that would just be downright odd. After all, he is a keeper at one of the top clubs in the country. He has the classic Arsenal goalkeeper impetuousness but otherwise he has seemed a solid goalkeeper on his rare opportunities.
At the end of the day, Brad Guzan managed to have a Premier League career…
No, Emi ought to have been able to have found a berth at a decent level, and we must rate him somewhat, for him to have only signed a new contract last year.
Moving forward
This season, a loan seems best for everyone.
If Emi can prove he’s good enough to be a potential Arsenal keeper over a whole season then that’s winning for both parties.
If we’re completely honest with ourselves, we’re not like to get much cash for him this summer on the back of a campaign where he was largely invisible, so we don’t have much to lose either.
If he has a great season then we can either get him back per the above, in all likelihood as the number 2 for the 18-19 season, by which time Cech will be 36, or else we can recoup a decent sum if we sell him on.
Meanwhile, if he doesn’t cover himself in glory, we can let him go without having lost anything, or even do a Chelsea and turn him into a serial loanee.
Either way, he’s not in a position to challenge for the shirt at present, and at his age he needs to play in order to set his career and his potential on the right path.
Despite this, rumours persist that he will be Arsenal’s number 2 next season.
Time to shine
Szczesny has his flaws, but versus Ospina he looks like the illegitimate love child of David Seaman and Peter Schmeichel.
For me, he has the excitement factor for the future as well as the talent in the here and now. In short, he is the best goalkeeper we have, and I say that without meaning any slight on Petr Cech.
Cech has had a wonderful career and continues to be a top keeper, but at the highest level small percentages can make all the difference and I cannot say hand on heart that the Cech of 2017 is perfectly akin to his equivalent from a decade ago. He was a brilliant signing in 2015, but it’s now 2017 and we have to have more of an eye on the future.
My hope for the season ahead is that Wojciech reclaims his number one shirt, Cech enjoys a cup campaign and Emi Martinez steps out from the shadows to either secure a permanent move or make his case to replace Cech next summer.
I hope that David Ospina will be gone rather than play any part in it. It’s nothing personal, but we just have better options.
And I hope that Juventus do one, and find some other sucker to replace Buffon.
Get your hands off our Szczesny.