This is the goalkeeper that Arsenal need now

Should Arsenal resign Szczesny? by Robert Parker

Hello fellow Arsenal supporters, I hope you’re having a wonderful start to the week and enjoying the hope that Emery brings with him, I am.

Not only am I excited to see how the players will act to the homework that Emery gives, according to various reports, I am also excited to see how well the players can carry out the tactical instructions. Will the players improve? Which players will benefit from this? Which ones will fail to push on and end up being sold?

So much of this also depends on the coaching from the coaches, not just instructions from the manager, I have read many other supporters also express their desire to see better coaches come in. A top goalkeeper coach comes to mind quickly which transitions my thinking onto Cech, he had his own coach which I had hoped to see come with him and improve our backroom staff but Wenger blocked this. This could never happen while Wenger was still manager. While we gained a top quality goalkeeper in Cech we also committed ourselves to a coach that never truly replaced Bob Wilson when he left at the end of the 2002-03 season, the man who would be key to maintaining and developing our goalkeepers capabilities, Gerry Peyton.

A new goalkeeping coach allows for a new goalkeeper to be bought and not end up ruined, we couldn’t have done this before as even someone like Oblak would have been made to look average at best after a couple years with Peyton, Cech is a prime example of what I mean. If Emery brings along Garcia… The hope is unbearable, I can not wait! I want to see how we can move forward as a club in regards to goalkeeping.

We still need a new goalkeeper though, I have read about Leno a lot and also about how well Rico did while Emery was his manager, one name I have not read about is someone who not only knows the EPL but also loves Arsenal, Szczesny.

While it may be difficult to get Juve to part with him, Juve are reportingly close to capturing Mattia Perin as a goalkeeper to challenge for the number 1 shirt (according to Italian outlet Corriere dello Sport), Szcz isn’t guaranteed to be the starter. Convincing him to join us may be a bit harder without UCL football but he has admitted to being an Arsenal supporter. He reportedly had an issue with Peyton, his stinging comments about learning more at Roma is an indication at how bad it was between them, who is no longer at Arsenal. We do not have a clear long term goalkeeping solution and even next season will be rough with an aged Cech as our number one, this is the perfect way for Sczc to come back home and help the club he supports to compete again.

Although Arsenal have not been rumoured to be interested in him, at least from what I have seen, would you all be happy if Arsenal did make him a transfer target?

Should Arsenal make him a transfer target?

Robert

30 Comments

  1. I’ll accept Szcezney back happily.. Not sure I got the spelling right. LOL. He once won the golden glove along with Czech years ago, he showed massive potential until he started having issues with his father and the club I think. Juventus who got him to replace Buffon ain’t stupid. Moreover he made the comment about how the training at Roma is so different from Arsenal’s and how it helped improve him a lot.
    Now that the club is having a fresh start, I wouldn’t mind getting him back for the number 1 shirt. Plus he has matured a lot and learnt a lot

        1. I have to google to make sure I get it right, I can’t remember past Szcz most the time XD lol

  2. Goalkeeper isn’t the biggest priority atm, First we need a CB, DM and a right winger

    1. I disagree, cech is part of defense but didn’t stop much. penalties? spectacular game winning saves?

    2. I don’t know if I would put a priority on one pos over another currently, we need to fix a few areas and we need to do that in one window if we want to compete for UCL football next season.

      CB and DM for sure, it looks like the board are looking at Left sided wingers as well.

      A GK is on that list, the board do appear to be looking around and it is more important when we consider that Cech is getting close to retirement (unless he drastically picks up) and Ospina has 1 year left on his deal, in 12 months time we could be left without a 1st team GK.

      I do personally think that Cech has been dropping in form and as his form drops, our def gets worse. Not saying Cech is the cause, I do think he is a factor in our overall capability to defend.

      Our coaches (and as such, Wenger) failed all our GKs, maybe we have real gems in Macey and Martinez? Under Peyton… I was losing faith. With a new GK Coach? I’d be interested to see how well they can improve, improvement can take time though and I do hope we go into next season with all guns blazing… Afterall, we are the gunners (Bahh, sorry for bad wordplay lol).

    3. Unless you already have a top. top, quality keeper, which we don’t, then keeper is ALWAYS the biggest priority for any sensible club. And its “sensible” fans!

      1. Previous years I would have been sarcastic and asked why? So we could prove that any great keeper can look average after a couple seasons with poor coaching… 😛

        We have picked up some fantastic keepers over the years but just failed them.

        Fabianski was another one who had bags of potential, does poor for us and gets that nickname of FlappiHandski 🙁 He done brilliant for Swansea in his first season which did frustrate me, think he had about a dozen clean sheets that year which was impressive I thought.

        The keeper situation, for me, has gotten worse year after year since Bob Wilson left.

        New keeper coach and new keeper is something to get excited about 🙂

  3. Szczesny should never have been sold in the first place.He was young and error prone but this is the case with all young players.Je had talent and would have improved with time and proper coaching.Two years as an understudy to Cech would have benefitted both him and the Club.A very bad decision from Wenger.Ospina has proved he is not up to the job @nd we are left without a GK other than Cech whose best days were over before he joined us.

    1. It was a fine decesion by Wenger to severe ties with Szczesny. Let’s not forget his shenanigans at the back (though not completely all his fault) cost us the Carling cup trophy versus Birmingham city back in the day. Considering the embarrassing trophy drought we were going through at that torrid time his blunder was tantamount to a treacherous stab in our collective backs.

      1. Quantic dreams
        Agree with you on that but how was he
        Still a pup learning his trade
        In home sight he should have been no.2 to an experienced gk.
        Look at him now. No.1. At juvu
        Would have loved for him to stay and take over but
        He has been let go which was a mistake but what is done is done and we move on.
        Fore sure a new no.1 is what is needed.
        Someone who can command his box safe pair of hand and with good distribution …a lot to ask for in this day and age

    2. When I first read that Arsenal had signed Cech my initial thoughts was “F… YEAH! We’ll get his GK coach and Szcz will become one of the best GK in the world after a year or two with top training”

      Oh how mistaken I was, instead of bringing in a top GK coach with Cech, who Cech wanted to bring with him, we just allowed Cech to get worse each year and shipped Szcz out.

      I wonder how well he could have developed if he had… De Gea coach? Oblak coach? The GK coaches for some of these ‘best’ gks.

  4. Cech will look a lot better with 2 quality centre backs, better RB and a quality defensive midfielder

    Cech is a part of the defense. Not fair to only blame him for goals

    1. Talking about the def, while I will not try to say we have a great defense (even I aint that crazy) I do think the numbers we concede has made it look worse than it has been in the past.

      During our bad def years we have picked up 2 golden gloves…

      When we let goals in we don’t do it half hearted, we let a bucket load in lol.

  5. Yes we should as it would be nice to have a smoking break buddy for Wilshere.

    On a more serious note – I don’t think he should have been sold. He was just made a scapegoat for a poor defensive team. I can only imagine how hard it must be for keepers when they have all the uncertainty added by the random mistakes our defence makes all the time

    1. PMSL!
      Good one VanPayslip 🙂

      Not too sure which was the better joke, yours or our def the past few years 😛

  6. No, it was good riddance with me for Szczesny. I had had enough of his wild runs from goal, lapses in concentration, poor distribution and later his couldn’t-care-less attitude. We must break the bank for Jan Oblak, if not then sign Jack Butland or Jordan Pickford. The latter two can be secured for 30M-£40M with the former being the easiest to extract from his team given their situation. All in all Szczesny was a grenade sitting on our lap he had to go and am glad we shipped him out so ruthlessly. Hopefully more passengers like Mustafi will share his fate.

    1. We’ve been linked to Jan Oblak in the past few days (I think, might be week…), I would be over the moon if we got him but it does feel a bit fantasy land due to his price… and teams who want him (other than us) have UCL football. Top GK though, we felt how painful it is to face AM with him saving them on the 1st leg, MotM performance to keep AM in the game in the 1st leg.

      While Szcz did have some issues, he did highlight how he had learnt a lot more in his short loan period at Roma than he did for years being trained by Gerry Peyton. Not to mention a manager who couldn’t develop goalies…

      Let us not forget that this inconsistent, wild run from goal and poor distributing GK shared the golden glove with Cech the one season. Cech had Chavksi def parking the bus, Szcz had our def… Sharing the golden glove that year was a mammoth achievement for me.

  7. I still think cech has Lots in him, at least one more season with us and a young goalkeeper as an understudy. Let’s give youth a chance too. Besides I support the coaching aspect too, lots of things wrong under previous management that we will all wish to see how better it can be under this new management. I hope we get good business done with the available budget to get us going forward. I don’t like mentioning names during transfer market

  8. We don’t have to look too far, just sign Jack Butland who could be the next David Seaman. Cech was a great keeper but he is definitely on the slide and not good enough to be our No.1.

  9. Do you really know what you are talking about?
    I thought could have told us is improvements to deserve a mention. If Liverpool were mourning their Kiev loss, it was due to a keeper who lost focus, and that was exactly Woj Szczesny.
    He was not close to the Juve now retired No1in performance ever since he has been gone.
    So why this joke?
    I would rather have Ospina, though not tall, he is Colombian No1, and Fabian Bartez ( forgort that last name) was good at Man U and for France with similar height.

    1. You and I will have different opinions and that is fine, that was part of the reason I asked what people thought, I know Szcz isn’t everyone’s ‘cup of tea’.

      It takes a good goalkeeper to share the golden glove with Cech when he was being protected by the bus Jose employed in defense. It takes a goalkeeper of enormous talent to be Arsenals GK and share the golden glove with Cech at that time. That keeper is Szcz. 16 clean sheets which equalled Cechs 16 clean sheets in the 2013-14 season.

      Surprisingly enough, Cech won his 4th golden glove in the 15/16 season with Arsenal, not something we would guess considering the reputation of our defense lol.

      To try and put Szcz into perspective with other goalkeepers we have been linked with I have compared Szcz to: Oblak, Leno and Rico along with Ospina as you brought him up.

      (Order: Szcz; Oblak; Leno; Rico ; Ospina)
      Goals conceded per game
      0.53 , 0.53 , 1.23 , 1.63 , 0.6

      Clean sheets per game
      0.59 , 0.62 , 0.3 , 0.37 , 0.4

      Saves per goal
      2.22 , 4.56 , 1.19 , 1.21 , 2.67

      Pass completion (play out from the back)
      81% , 49% , 68% , 64% , 77%

      Distribution accuracy
      81% , 55% , 70% , 66% , 75%

      Only stat Ospina beats Szcz on is saves per goal, while I will admit that Ospina is a good reflex keeper, I do not think he is a commanding keeper who will command his box.

      I do have to poke fun at Barthez, he set up Henry with a beautiful assist 😉 Also lost out to Henry and let the ball slip away to gift another goal. He has made more howlers than I have had hot meals XD Great saves but overall… Barthez made some wonderful YouTube moments (so to speak) but consistency… Do you wonder why he only lasted a few seasons at UTD?

  10. Keep Cech. Start grooming Martinez n macey. Remember how well manninger did for arsenal. Give youth a chance. Concentrate on the dm, winger n defence

  11. I think he was sold because of disciplinary problem.

    Unless he changed his ways, will never welcome such personality back. He could spread the rot.

    I think Ox was likewise gotten rid of for same reason.

    And he has a dad who thinks his son is world beater already.

    Anyway, I think we won’t have enough fund to satisfy all. The rumours are getting ridiculous each day, we are basically aiming at discarded players. Why do we need to get those two for recruiting players when we are only aiming at discards?

    Do we look like thrash bin?

    1. I did read that he and Peyton fell out and Szcz was being a bit of a bad boy as well.
      All kids make mistakes while growing up and Peyton has left now.

      A tough manager could be ideal. Just what he needs?

      His dad may be an issue but to be honest, I haven’t read much from his father since he left us, I don’t know if he is such an issue anymore.

  12. Not sure I’d want him back. Was quite rash and made stupid decisions at times. Also had disciplinary issues, and thought he was better than he was.

Comments are closed

Top Blog Sponsors