Are Arsenal fans happy that Petr Cech is Emery’s first choice keeper?

The German international Bernd Leno arrived at Arsenal with much fanfare from Bayer Leverkusen in the summer, and everyone thought that after paying over 20million for him, Arsenal would immediately make him first choice between the sticks. But I made it clear back in June that Cech would still be Number One this season while Leno learned the ropes and playedin the Europa League matches, although very few readers believed me at the time.

But now Unai Emery himself has confirmed that this is the case, and told reporters that ‘the decision is easy’. When asked about Cech, he said: “I am very happy with his performance,”

“He has experience, he has quality, he has the capacity.

“Also, with Bernd Leno [it’s the same]. They are two goalkeepers who are important for us. They have different qualities but for us in the way we want to play, they can [both] play.

“For Saturday, the decision for me is easy. Petr Cech can continue to start the match, I believe in him. [But] If Bernd starts, I believe in him also.”

So it looks like we won’t be seeing Leno in action until the Europa League start in a month’s time (barring an injury to Cech of course).

Are Arsenal fans now happy with that?

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16 Comments

  1. For a keeper of his age to suddenly have to try-invent himself to play out from the back is obviously difficult for him as was seen against Citeh.If he continues to play as he did you can just see a mistake coming sooner or later.All teams will try to put him under pressure now and it’s then we will see Leno who is more adapt at playing out from the back

    1. Sorry Phill got to disagree how do we know Leno is better with his feet than Cech. Cech being picked ahead of him suggests otherwise. Infact Leno is known for being error prone and if you search YouTube (although not a very good source as Sanogo looks like a star on there) his mistakes are exactly from playing out from the back lol. The guy crumbles under pressure, hopefully this can be coached out of him. Trust the managers choice for longer than one game.

      1. You only have to watch these two keepers play to know who is better with their feet. it doesn’t require some inside knowledge.

        1. Got to admit I’ve never seen him in action-supposedly he is of the new breed of “Sweeper Keepers” isn’t he?I seen people say he’s error prone but I can’t believe he’s not an improvement on what we already had.He cost £20m and can’t believe we would gamble with that sort of money bearing in mind of our restricted transfer budget.

          1. Phil, I saw 45 minutes of leno in one of our pre-season friendlies and believe me mate he was different class. He knocked the ball around like an out field player, so comfortable on the ball that for me he’s got to start in front of Cech.

  2. not really to be honest … he is no longer top flight and certainly when comparing with rivals we are clearly behind the curve in this position … he would be a good back-up… so is the 20m pound man the answer? i havent seen enough tbh but we need to find out sooner rather than later

  3. Emery quite wisely shielded Leno
    from two very tough teams
    so early in the season.
    He (Leno) could have contracted Kariusitis 🙂
    Lots of soft games through Sept and October.
    What ropes does he have to learn any way?
    Rope a dope ? Reef knott? ? the bowline? Alfred hitchknot 🙂

  4. I think Emery is a smart man. everyone knows this is cech’s last season, Leno’s competition has improved cech. normally cech would not come out for that one on one with Aguero. we all know if it was cech of last season, seeing Aguero go towards him, we all knew it was a goal. but he pulled a fantastic save and several others which i believe is as a result of the Leno effect. Leno would be number 1 next season, no doubt. Bar the misplaced pass, cech didn’t do any wrong against city enough to have him benched… His experience on the field is an added advantage for Leno

  5. The keeper position is not the problem,I dont mind who he plays .its about getting the other 10 positions right which he didn’t do against Man City .
    To play AMN at left back when he had a perfectly good player on the bench to play there was stupid .
    Playing Ramsey at all and to play him where he did again was puzzling .
    Playing xhaka with the young French kid (who everyone was raving about but nearly cost us 2 goals and lost the ball countless times )agiain puzzling when your playing a top team.
    And tactics that wouldn’t look out of place watching a Sunday league team .
    If again he adopts the said above against Chelsea then we are going to see the same result and possibly see us in the bottom 3 buy the weekends finish .
    If this is how are season is going to pan out then it is the fault of the board for not getting in the right players in the summer for emery to have a chance this season .
    In my opinion the squad is no where near good enough ,I’m not being glum for the sake of it ,I’ve just seen this kind of season played out to many times.

  6. Cech should def start tomorrow. He will want to prove a point against his former employers. However, I think our team is simply not good enough. Compare us with the Chelsea team and only one of Aubameyang or Laca would get into their first 11 in place of Morata. No other Arsenal player is anywhere near their quality. Don’t believe me? Let’s see, Ozil vs Hazard? Easy!!!!…Mikhi vs Willian? Guendouzi vs Kante? Torreira vs Joghinho? Xhaka vs Kovacic? Iwobi vs pedro? Ramsey vs Fan? Odei vs Nelson? ….Easy choices, right? I won’t even discuss both defences as of now. How the mighty have fallen!!!

    1. Clean sheets should’ve been the main aim for our first two games. But after city went one up we should’ve went straight at that defence becoming very direct, even going long and trying to win the loose balls. It was rotten luck getting these fixtures, people can say everyone plays everyone anyway or you must gain points from these games all they want but it feels cruel that we got the worst fixtures of all the big teams for the opening weeks. We have new faces more new ones than most and we could’ve done with a few handy fixtures first just to get some rhythm going.

  7. Actually i for once i don’t care who is in goal they are all to quality keepers… cant believe wenger try to convince us that ospina was topclass
    ???

  8. Cech’s a good keeper, I’d say on average he’s maybe better than Leno, but that playing from deep is too scary from Cech for my liking. If Leno can be that keeper who comes out and collects most high balls and is fast off his line, that is a big advantage. The smash and grab teams, allot of those losses stem from one route one kick before going 1 v 1. It’d be great to stifle that tactic, we never had a keeper who could read that play and mop up in time. Cech was on it in preseason all the same, even penno shootouts, I’d wait til he is at fault for goals before trying the young man out.

    Can’t believe we lost Mavididi to the old lady. This is a much bigger loss than Gnabry who I didn’t rate. Mavididi’s speed is very good, but he’s one of the few who has great control and turns well even at full pelt. He’ll likely end up the type of winger we need. Amazed he didn’t get tried before some of the others.

    1. Klopp would’ve tried out Mavididi, and he looks a player that would suit Liv’s play right now. Not a starter, but at 20 and with some game time under his belt ..who knows.

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