ARSENAL NEEDS ANOTHER GOAL KEEPER by Uche
Hello there homies. Good day to you all and please put down your pitch forks. I am just messing with you. I felt you could all use a mild heart attack to keep you occupied until our next game with Swansea! Lol. Anyway, on to the topic of today, I believe we all agree that we have a solid squad already. But we will still look for one or two additions in the summer just like everyone else. Coquelin needs a backup. No arguments there. Giroud may or may not need additional competition. It all depends on how Wenger feels about Welbeck and Walcot as striking backups especially seeing that we have a decent amount of versatile offensive players. However, it is in goal that I believe we will DEFINITELY need to buy. Arsenal needs a new goal keeper but not to replace David Ospina. The new goal keeper in question will be replacing Wojciech Szczesny. Just in case you have not worked it out, Szczesny will not stay beyond this season.
Media pundits have been banging on for a while now that Arsenal needs a new goal keeper, but for the wrong reasons. They think David Ospina is not good enough, simply because well, nothing coming from Arsenal is ever good enough for them. And that is the problem with talking points. They rarely get updated. Yes there was a time we needed a new Number One because we had the mediocre Almunia and Fabianski as our only options. But fast forward to 2015 and we have a guy named David Ospina, a world class Colombian international we bought in the summer after his phenomenal World cup exploits.
Surprisingly, many continue to doubt Ospina’s class and I put this down to the fact that he did not start the season as Number one. So he is somehow taking the rap for Szczesny’s failings. The laziness of media pundits isn’t helping matters either because if they did their research, they would realize that Ospina is as good as it gets. He was outstanding for Colombia in the World cup and has been in equally splendid form for the Gunners. I mean, check out his stats. In the 14 appearances he has made for us, we have only lost once – against Tottenham – and Ospina was amazing in that game. We just failed to get our tactics right and invited a colossal amount of pressure on ourselves causing the defeat so Ospina was bombarded nonstop for ninety minutes. I remember that game very well because it was against our enemies down the road. Ospina made save after save and eventually cracked and conceded the goal that made us lose the game. That is the only blemish in an otherwise impeccable Premier league record.
Ospina has since kept seven clean sheets and has 10 wins. Many think we should ditch him for a ‘top goalie’ like Manchester United’s David De Gea, but if De Gea still looks good to most after shipping three goals against Everton and losing his last three games, their argument doesn’t hold water. Even the almighty Manuel Neur shipped in seven goals against Madrid in last year’s Champions league and yet to some, he is god. David Ospina is as good as it gets. End of story.
However, there is the small matter of his current back up in the name of Wojciech Szczesny. If we are one Ospina injury away from being stuck with Szczesny, I think we can all agree that we are not out of the woods yet as far as the goal keeping department is concerned. At the back of our minds, Szczesny is okay as Number Two, as long as he is not playing! But whenever Wenger picks him to play, we all begin to sweat. Szczesny is good but even good these days is not good enough. Consistency is what makes the difference and Szczesny has been anything but consistent. His poor positioning and attention lapses continue to trail him whenever he is in goal. A world class save every now and then is not enough. If he cannot do that week in week out, he remains a weak link in the team.
Chelsea just won the league. Their consistency is what put them above the rest. I am sure many will want to keep Szczesny for sentimental reasons, after all, he is still young and he has been a Gunner since he was sixteen. But let me ask you a question. Imagine that next season, we are tied with Chelsea on points with one game to go and news breaks that Ospina has a broken finger. Will anybody here be okay if Szczesny’s inadequacies cost us that last game needed to clinch the title? I think not. If we want to win the title, we must man up and do what needs to be done. Every position needs two solid players. We don’t have that in goal yet.
But I am confident that all of this will be sorted in the summer because for starters, Szczesny and his dad are too arrogant to admit that Ospina is the better keeper. It is no coincidence that we have looked invincible in 2015 since Szczesny was benched – but then stats mean nothing to some. So young Wojer will not sit on the bench beyond this season, which makes replacing him an easy decision.
We need a new goalie but Peter Cech is not the one. For a start, Mourinho will not sell us dog poo and even if we magically pull off that transfer, Cech himself will not trade one blue bench for a red one – and Ospina does not deserve the bench either. Saying that Ospina should be benched is like saying Sanchez should be benched because Ronaldo and Messi are upgrades. That may be logical but Sanchez does not deserve that kind of treatment and neither does Ospina. Peace.
Uche Edochie
Lagos-Nigeria