Morning all, thankfully we’ll have a press conference this morning and we can start looking forward to this weekend’s game against Stoke – as much as you can look forward to a game against Stoke – simply so something other than Wojciech Szczesny’s dad is the main story of the day.
You know things are slow when he’s shooting his mouth off, and his comments, made without apparently even speaking to his son, won’t really have done him much good. They probably won’t do much harm either but it’s bound to make things a little bit awkward in the dressing room when your father is slagging off your teammates.
It’s not the first time he’s put Wojciech in a difficult position either. Back in March 2013 when he’d been dropped for Lukasz Fabianski because of his poor form (a measure which subsequently improved him as a player), his father went off on one about Arsene Wenger in the Polish press leading to Szczesny Jr to release a statement via the official website distancing himself from those comments. While this most recent diatribe probably doesn’t merit that kind of response, it’s still not particularly helpful.
Nevertheless, when you take the personal out of it, the points made about the defence and the defending are not entirely without reason. Here’s a piece I wrote for ESPN about why I think Szczesny should retain his place for Stoke on Sunday. Yes, he’s a bit cocky and self-confident, but I don’t quite understand why so many people think he’s such a bad goalkeeper.
The fact is our defensive shortcomings have been exposed countless times this campaign. We’ve played most of the season without a senior right back, one of our central defenders has suffered a loss of form but been forced to play through it simply because we have nobody else because our other central defender’s Achilles tendons are like ragged elastic bands, and the first one has been playing alongside a young guy still learning his trade or a left-back being played out of position or the right-back who was injured for most of the season and has never played in the centre of defence.
On top of that add the complete lack of a reliable deep-lying midfielder for most of the season and it’s no wonder we’ve been rickety back there. Szczesny was poor at Southampton, no doubt about it, and there have been a couple of moments of small drama since August, but it’s not as if he’s making howler after howler week after week.
To my mind he’s still the best keeper we have. I don’t think anyone’s seen enough from the almost always injured Ospina to suggest he’s better than him right now. In time, perhaps that might be the case, but as it stands one substitute appearance, a Capital One Cup game (which we lost) and an easy day out against Hull isn’t sufficient to make that call, in my opinion.
What I would like to see from Szczesny, now that we’ve hopefully solved some of the defensive issues, is a big second half to the season. Dominating his area like he did against West Ham, making big saves (and he has done that plenty this season, it’s just not as easy to remember when it’s a save that stops you going 3-0 down as one that keeps the scores level), and fulfilling the obvious potential that’s there.
Too often Arsenal have been a training ground for good young players who have gone on elsewhere to be their best. I think if we were to let Szczesny go, there’d be no shortage of suitors from around Europe and it’s one we’d regret. Some of that is obviously down to the player and how much he wants to make it with us, but anyone can see he’s got a real affinity for the club having been here for so long and grown up with so many of the current first team.
But some of it is also down to the club to coach him as well as he can be coached, and to provide him and the team the right competition. Maybe Ospina can do that, time will tell, but on the basis of the Southampton game Szczesny merits criticism, not jettisoning.
In other news, this is a good read from Zonal Marking for FourFourTwo about Arsenal’s defensive issues and the importance of Mikel Arteta to the team. Even if there’s a widespeard acceptance that this is an area that we can improve on (Arteta is not getting any younger) the captain has been a big miss in my opinion.
And while I tend to stay away from non-Arsenal stuff in general, surely Gordon Taylor’s position as Chief Executive of the PFA is now untenable after making a comparison between the case of Ched Evans, a convicted rapist, and the Hillsborough disaster? He might try and excuse it as clumsy but to suggest there’s any link or similarity between the case of 96 people killed at a football match and a self-entitled, noxious boor of a footballer who raped a woman is, frankly, appalling and he should either resign or be sacked.
Right, time for this week’s Arsecast and on this week’s show, as well as the usual waffle from me, including my new year’s resolutions, I’m joined by Robbie, the man behind (and in front of) Arsenal Fan TV. We talk about how and why it got started, what goes into a typical day’s work, how he tries to reflect what’s going on after each game, and I put him on the spot about what he expects from the crucial transfer window this January.
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Right, that’s that. We’ll have team news and all the bits from the press conference over on Arseblog News throughout the morning and the rest of the day.
The Gent should be here later assuming he’s made it through the festive period, and there’ll be more from me tomorrow.
