A lot will depend on what happens with the current Arsenal reserve keeper David Ospina when the Colombian international recovers from his shoulder injury. It will certainly be interesting to see what happens in our Champions League games after the next international break.
The feeling in the football media is that Ospina will not be happy with merely playing a bit part role for Arsenal, especially after he did so well for us last season. And then you have the player that he replaced between the posts, Wojciech Szczesny.
The Poland international was forced to go on a season long loan with Roma in Serie A, because Arsene Wenger clearly preferred to keep Ospina in north London to cover for and compete with Petr Cech, so Szczesny´s only realistic chance of a decent amount of game time was to go elsewhere.
But he only did it to keep his hopes of a long career as a Gunner alive, as a Daily Mail report explains. The 25-year old has been with our since he was 16 and he is Arsenal through and through, and so is hoping that his performances for the Italian club this season can get him back into Wenger´s good books.
Szczesny said, “If a year ago someone had told me that I would go to Rome I would have thought it was impossible.
“I saw Arsenal as my whole life and I do not hide that is still my dream.
“For me it is a family, I owe so much to those people that if I were to be given a chance I would play for them. I do not know what will happen, nine months is a long time in football, things can change from week to week.”
All he can do right now is perform well for Roma and hopefully this latest wobble in his Arsenal career will make the Pole realise that he must work hard and earn back the right to be a Gunner. His stats for the season so far, compiled by Squawka.com suggest that he is going the right way about it as well.
I have compared him to the numbers of Cech and Man United’s De Gea and also to Gianluigi Buffon of Juventus to give a Serie A comparison and Szczesny comes out well in almost every category. Do you think it weill be Szczesny or Ospina challenging Cech for the Arsenal first team place next season?