Wojciech Szczesny was hailed as Arsenal’s big star of the future when Arsene Wenger made him his Number One at just 21 years of age, but this season his star has fallen right out of the sky. He was unceremoniously dropped by Wenger after some ridiculous mistakes against Southampton on New Years Day and was quickly replaced by a now-fit David Ospina.
Since that change Arsenal have played 11 games with the Colombian between the sticks and the Gunners have won ELEVEN of them – and six of those games have ended with clean sheets. That is an amazing 92% win ratio!
Another amazing stat is that Ospina makes an average of 3.29 saves between goals, that compares with Szczesny’s paltry 1.4 saves per goal. How much of a difference is that?
It is obvious that Wenger has lost faith in his Polish shotstopper, who has even been replaced by Lukasz Fabianski in the Poland national team, and Szczesny now has a hill to climb to get some first team football in the future if he stays at Arsenal.
It will be very interesting to see if Wenger allows Szczesny to play in the FA Cup semi-final next weekend, as he has always preferred to use his sub goalkeeper in that competition, but considering the steadiness of Ospina I wouldn’t be surprised if Wenger sent the Pole a message by leaving him out. It would certainly be a massive signal if Wenger played Martinez instead…
Whatever happens in the Cup I really can’t see Szczesny staying on as second fiddle next season, and if the rumours are true and we are aiming to buy Petr Cech, then he will DEFINITELY be on his way out. It would be better for Wojciech and obviously better for Arsenal, but who would buy him?