Wojciech Szczesny has faced the anger of Arsenal fans after his blunders in the 2-0 defeat at Southampton last week, and annoyed Arsene Wenger even further when he was caught having a sneaky fag in the showers after the match, and the consensus seems to agree that he should be dropped in favour of David Ospina for a while.
But the legendary Arsenal keeper Bob Wilson, who made over 300 appearances for us over 11 years, is adamant that the young Pole should retain his place in the Gunners first team, based on past performances.
“Wojciech deserves to be the Arsenal No1 at this time,” Wilson was quoted as saying in the Express. “What niggles me about this recent criticism after the Southampton game is that if people go back four days to the West Ham game, his performance was so good he won us the three points.
“If you are looking for incidents to blame him, put the first goal at Southampton against him, fine, but don’t start arguing with me about the second goal because it was not his fault.
“Any goalkeeper will tell you, lying on the floor with the opposition closing in on you, you make contact and you have no chance to get any leverage on it. It could go anywhere as a result of a situation not of his making.
“He did not have his best game but most ex-keepers would say the last thing you want to do with your No1 goalie is give him a rest. If I was goalkeeping coach there now and Arsene was asking me, I would say, ‘don’t drop him’.
“Every goalkeeper makes mistakes. I spend a lot of time with David Seaman and all anybody asks him was, ‘what happened with Ronaldinho and Nayim?’
“The people in the know should recognise who is the best goalkeeper there. Ospina looked pretty good at the World Cup and he looked fine in the Hull game.
“He made a couple of really good catches and made one save low down. But that is all he had to do. It wasn’t a serious test.”
Well this situation seems to have split the Arsenal fans, but it is Wenger’s opinion that matters. We will have to wait until Sunday to find out what his decision will be. Personally I’m guessing that Wenger will announce that Szczesny has picked up a mysterious muscle strain in training and will have to stay on the sidelines for a while…..