Those of us of the Arsenal persuasion will always say that David Seaman was the best keeper to play for the England national team, but others will disagree and a lot of those will say that the former Nottingham Forest star Peter Shilton was the Three Lions’ best ever, and he did amazingly win 50 more caps than the 75 of the Arsenal legend. He was certainly a brilliant keeper and knows what it takes to excel better than most.
So maybe we should be a bit worried about what Shilton said about the new Arsenal Number One. As reported by the Daily Star, Shilton suggested that the Arsenal might not have solved all our problems and suddenly turned into Premier League winners overnight because of this transfer.
He claimed that the Chelsea defence which operated in front of Cech was a big reason for the Czech keeper’s reputation, and that the likes of John Terry in the back line gave Cech the confidence he needed to perform. So Shilton reckons that the Arsenal back line will need to offer our new keeper the same sort of protection and if we don´t, then it could see Cech struggle.
The all-time England caps record holder said, “He is not getting any younger. I have always rated him, he is a top quality good goalkeeper, but I’ve just thought on a few occasions that when Chelsea struggled, he struggled a bit sometimes.
“He was playing behind a really good defence at Chelsea and that gives you confidence week in, week out but if he doesn’t get that cover we will see if he has that top quality and that confidence to perform.”
Before you start to panic though Arsenal fans, check out this stats comparison on Squawka.com between Cech and Chelsea´s new Number One Thibaut Courtois, rated as one of the very best in the world and playing behind that same miserly defence. It shows that Cech more than holds his own in lots of key areas like saves per goal, distribution, clean sheets and more, including the total score, where Cech beats Courtois in both of his last seasons as first choice.
Do you think we should worry about what Shilton said?