It’s pretty funny as an Arsenal fan to see how many keepers we have burned through down the years. And how most of them have gone on to have a pretty good career – despite fan abuse.
The way Arsenal fans treated Lukasz Fabianski will always stick in my craw. They dubbed him “flappyhandski” and essentially ran him out of the club because he was a liability on set pieces and crosses. It was true that he wasn’t great but it wasn’t really his fault. Swansea snapped him up and then immediately worked on his set piece and cross defense. Fabianski credits goalkeeper coaches Javier Garcia and Tony Roberts for his improvement at Swansea and while he’s far from perfect, he’s one of the best keepers in the top five leagues now.
Emi Martinez is another keeper who has gone on from Arsenal to have a great career in the box. He’s saved 8 goals more than expected based off Fbref’s metric, more than any keeper in the top five leagues this season.
Of course, we’ve suffered with some pretty poor keepers as well. I have the Arsenal annual magazine from my red level subscription which has just Manuel Almunia on it, wearing a knit cap, in his training outfit, ring light casting his skin as a pasty white, a gloomy sky in the background, and a discordant look on his face. The whole cover looks rushed. Almunia looks like he’d rather be anywhere else.
That was a weird few years to be an Arsenal supporter. We had two promising young Polish keepers but Arsene Wenger insisted on sticking with Almunia. The real problem was behind the scenes, in my opinion. Based on what I’ve seen in interviews with Fabianski and Szczesny, the goalkeeping coach at Arsenal at that time was very poor.
Arsene Wenger has come in for well-deserved criticism for that period. How he could go into a Premier League season with Almunia as his number one could only be down to his unflagging loyalty to his assistants. The goalkeeping coach must have been telling him to pick Almunia and Wenger, ever loyal to his team, would have agreed.
But even Wenger’s patience isn’t infinite and eventually Wojciech Szczesny won the starting spot at Arsenal. Like all the keepers before him and many after, the performances were up and down.
There were many problems for a keeper at Arsenal at that time. The big one was coaching. All of the players above (except Almunia) went on to receive better coaching elsewhere and had good careers. Another was Arsenal’s very attacking playing style. Wenger’s men played extremely high in the opposition box, gifting loads of space for counters, and Wenger didn’t have a specialist DM in the team nor a very robust and efficient press. The result was that about once every few games, Arsenal would concede absurd 1-v-1’s with the opposition forwards. These led to mistakes by the keepers, conceding penalties, or just conceding easy goals. And the last big problem was that Arsenal didn’t have a dominant center back (Mertesacker was tall, which helped, but not aerially dominant like Sol Campbell and Tony Adams), nor teach the keepers how to command the box. So we were vulnerable on set pieces.
There was a lot of burnout at Arsenal. Players like Vermaelen would come in to the team, look great for a few years, and then just be cast aside. That happened with keepers as well, with Wojciech Szczesny having a famous falling out with Arsene Wenger after smoking in the showers. It wasn’t a spectacular verbal fight. Someone snitched on Szczesny for smoking in the showers and Wenger decided he’d had enough. David Ospina came in and played well enough, so Wenger just made the switch more permanent. Szczesny left on loan, then was picked up by Juventus for a song, and the rest is history: he took over the starting keeper role from Juve legend Buffon and helped them to with three Serie A titles. Ospina BTW started 16 matches for Napoli this season (they are different about keepers in Italy, a lot more changing of keepers than we do in the Premier League).
In those three seasons, Szczesny was in amongst the best keepers in the world. His passing percentages are top top drawer and he seems to have fixed the problem he had with his long distribution at Arsenal – if you remember, he was so poor at long kicks that he almost always passed to Bacary Sagna, who ended up leading Arsenal in headers won because of that odd quirk. In 2018-19 he reached a zenith, ranking top 20 in terms of goals saved over expected goals with +5. That’s pretty good, though that season Fabianski was 2nd in the top five leagues with +11.4!
But since then, Szcz has sort of fallen off. He doesn’t make a lot of obvious gaffes – just three total in the last two seasons, but his post shot saves over xG has been mediocre. And when I see him play (I watch Atalanta mostly but have seen more than a few Juve matches) he just looks kind of.. meh. He’s good, not great.
Well, now there are rumors that Szczesny is out of favor at Juventus and that the Old Lady wants to sell. £20m was the starting price but that has already been knocked down to £10m according to reports. That will almost certainly be the case because of his salary. It’s hard to get accurate numbers because salary reports from Italy are net but he’s on over £7m a year net plus bonuses. Since it’s net salary and they have a different tax structure in Italy for foreigners it’s difficult to tell what Arsenal would have to pay him. If we kept the same salary, Arsenal would be paying £288k a week to him (gross) – which isn’t going to happen (I hope). I think Juventus would essentially have to pay out most of his contract (expires in 2024) to make any transfer almost anywhere in world football feasible. And the big problem I have is that I don’t think he’s better than Leno. I think that the two of them would be good competition for each other, however.
A lot of fans have a lot of angst toward Leno. I guess it’s understandable but other than one or two errors (especially recently) he’s been a very solid keeper for Arsenal and still ranks 17th in saves over xG this season (that’s good) – though Fabianski is slightly better! Leno’s distribution and footwork in handling the style of play that Arsenal demand are also very good.
In the end Szczesny will always hold a place in my heart. He’s a Gooner through and through and I would welcome him back. But with cautious optimism. While he’s been at Juve he’s been pretty good but Arsenal are a totally different beast and the Premier League is a very different league. I’ve got no expectations of him one way or the other.
Just don’t have a cheeky smoke in the showers.
The sentimental fool in me would love to have either of our Polish ex-GKs back. I don’t think Fab is going anywhere soon, but who knows about Szczesny?
But we don’t need sentimental old fools like me making those kinds of decisions. We had one for almost 20 years. My great respect, admiration and affection for Wenger doesn’t blind me to his faults.
Leno is good. Is he good enough, is the debate, I guess. Our D has rarely given the kind of cover our GKs needed (those couple of years with Mert & Kos excepted), and this continues to be the problem now.
Good defenders aren’t sexy and they’re extremely hard to come by. We got a gem in Tierney but the kid is crocked a lot of the time. If we can manage some stability in the back 3-4 foe even a third a season it could make a huge difference.
“My great respect, admiration and affection for Wenger doesn’t blind me to his faults.”
If that could be made readable on a bumper sticker– you’d sell a million of ’em.
If Wenger had a choice between Almunia, Manuel Nauer, or in their prime, an Oliver Kahn or Edwin van Der Saar, I think he actually would be conflicted over NOT choosing the Spaniard!
Thankful David Seaman convinced! Small miracles. 😄
I’d welcome Chezzer back if he’s affordable. He’s also home-grown, unlike our other first-team keepers.
Pretty sure Leno wants out this Summer. We’ve been mid table for two seasons which isn’t great for your international selection prospects. Plus the recruitment of the Icelandic goalie suggests our GK department isn’t quite elite.
Leno is a good enough keeper, and is going nowhere (I wish we kept Emi instead but that’s a whole different story). He’s also making a decent buck so I don’t see us bringing in another (most likely backup) GK who’s also on high wages. Can’t say that I’m sad about it either. Never cared for Chezzer. Was he better than T-Rex Arms Oops-pina? Sure… Bu then again, pretty much everyone was. One of the worst (recent) Arsenal signings, IMHO.
I’m still in therapy over Almunia. And Jar Jar Binks. I might still take Jar Jar over Almunia. His stupid floppy ears might deflect a shot or two…
Leno is an outstanding keeper. He’s just the latest In a long line, as you already pointed out, getting blamed when the team doesn’t perform well and concedes goals, and god forbid if he ever makes a mistake. He is certainly not the reason for any of our struggles and Goalkeeper is certainly not one of the areas where we need help. Familiarity breeds contempt but we should not let that influence our thinking.
If we did need a goalkeeper I would support investing in an up and coming talent instead of a player whose value will only decline.
The Almunia thing seems strange until you ask: que Bono? AW was not the sentimental type when it came to moving on from his players after their best was behind them, but he did struggle to admit his mistakes. Almunia was certainly a big mistake from a sporting point of view and is perhaps a microcosm of Arsenal’s identity crisis at that point.
I’m sure he was a hard working, pleasant individual who was well liked. He was on a reasonable salary and showed up every day to do his job the best he could. He probably did well in training. That must’ve bought him a lot of good will and a long leash, and that was just fine with upper management. Everybody wins: Almunia is happy, Wenger is happy, the board is happy. The only issue was on the pitch, where Almunia’s limitations were painfully evident against top competition. But, the team kept making the Top 4, which was the real target, and the good times rolled on, and there was always next year. The team was young and full of promise. Spending a bunch of money to replace Almunia with someone marginally better didn’t make sense, and the truly elite keepers were well out of reach, so inertia prevailed.
Until there was Woj. Now it made sense to replace the wobbly veteran! Rookie contract and all that. Szczesny must have known he was better than anyone else Arsenal had at the time but lacked the maturity to deal with all the cards he suddenly held, and decided to ignore all the stupid rules. He dared Wenger not to pick him and I’m sure much to his surprise, the old fox was not bluffing. Everybody lost on that one. Arsenal moved a valued asset at a cut rate with the whole sordid affair going public and weakening their hand, Szczesny moved down a few notches to take a job at a place he didn’t pick away from everyone he knew, and Wenger lost his best GK, probably Arsenal’s best homegrown prospect at that position in ages. Disaster. I would love to hear Wenger talk about that now because it must rank as one of his greatest regrets.
Great post, doc.
You mention Wenger’s long-suffering patience with his players. Yet that wasn’t enough to save Szcz, who many Gooners, including me, continue to rate.
What happened there will be an endless source of speculation. Szczesny may write his own version of that one day and maybe there will be another player’s memoir that shines a more neutral light on the story.
WS did say what happend. Last year he gave a life blog cast with Andrew over at Arseblog. I’m sure you can find it in the archieves
Every time I’m ready to chuck Timo Werner into the ‘Roberto Soldado Pile’– he scores. Then again, he’s had more goals chalked-off for offside than he’s got in the books. Hope remains.
I think fans need to get over the idea that every time a striker has a good chance they should score. Timo Werner is a top forward, he misses chances. Auba missed a lot of chances. Henry missed a lot of chances. I would kill to have Werner at Arsenal.
Watching Chelsea makes me fear for arsenal and how much longer we could be down the table with Mikel in charge.i don’t see great defenders playing for Chelsea yet their organisation is so good.yes theres Kante but with the same players Chelsea got thrashed under another coach.isnt it damning on arteta.
I’ve been behind Arteta since AW announced his resignation. Months before TBH.
Will forge a deal with you. If KSE infuses Arteta’s bankroll with £300M this Summer, AND– Arsenal sit mid-table next May?
I’ll submit and enlist in the ranks of the fearful.
Not sure I follow. Lampard couldn’t organize the defense but Tuchel can, so Arteta is a bad coach?
Arteta defence is a simple passive chequerboard. Needs a lot of shouting to stay within the coordinates. Hail Arteta
i think he’s talking about the lack of experience that lampard (and arteta) have compared to tuchel. chelsea should never had been in the kind of trouble they were in when lampard was sacked. the problem was never the players but a young manager who lacked the experience to right the ship. their champions league qualification convinced chelsea to give him money last summer but that success was illusory.
why you would give arteta £300 million and arsenal have been so mediocre under his management?
Bit of cheek there. Chelsea spent £300M on talent (post-transfer ban). Frank Lampard failed to get it right with amount of investment. I’m inferring that Arteta would likely be getting better results than he has– with same £300M to work with.
Lots of things about this;
1. Chelsea invested in what I thought were the best players available at the time, significantly improving the attack.
2. Lampard’s problem was how wildy disorganized they were, however, which is a different issue.
3. Lampard’s other problem is that he just wanted Chelsea to buy him more attacking players, specifically Aubameyang.
4. His other problem is that he fell out with several players
Now let’s say you gave Arteta 300m. If it was last summer, I don’t think we could have got Timo Werner and Kai Havertz. But if we could have, yes, the squad would be fighting for top four in my opinion.
But if Arsenal just spent 300m, no I really don’t think we’d be challenging, because Arsenal are such a mess organizationally. Timo and Kai aren’t picking Arsenal over Chelsea for example, which means we just would have spent extra to land 2nd tier guys.
I also think that Arteta is a bit like Tuchel but Tuchel has failed in several places. He’s been through the wars. He’s a much more experienced coach. Look what he’s done with Hudson-Odoi and Abraham: benched them but in a very smart way, and since Chelsea are so much better organized and winning nearly every match, no one even notices. This are big-name (ok. Big-hope?) ENGLISH players he’s benching. The way he’s gone about this is perfect.
And finally… Chelsea have only spent £170m in the last three seasons (net spend) or £222m in gross spend. Arsenal have spent £220m net and £290m gross.
So, I actually don’t think Arsenal would be better having spent 300m, because we have.
This is because the problem at Arsenal is systemic.
Disorganized thoughts after a major loss:
That was a crushing defeat but you could see it coming. Arsenal just weren’t “at it” from the first whistle, too passive in both phases. This was obviously the Unai revenge game, and this is his competition. It was also the Coquelin revenge game, but that mattered much less. It was also a solid veteran team that were just better on the night. There was very little cohesion or energy in attack with only Pepe truly match fit and in form. The movement was terrible and when it was there it was not rewarded. They outnumbered us in midfield. The defending was fine. Most often they had to defend from transitions further up when we played into their traps. A consummate Unai performance.