We do have four goalkeepers, it’s just that the main two are crap
It is hard to know where to start. It is hard to know quite how to express the intensity of the disappointment that Arsenal have failed to sign a goalkeeper in this summer transfer window. I actually felt a sense of loss when the window closed, because I knew that it meant that Arsenal’s hopes to win silverware this season were severely, if not fatally, flawed without a quality goalkeeper. For a season that shows so much promise, you could almost mourn its passing.
We all knew the failure was coming. In our hearts we all knew that Arsenal were excruciatingly not going to sign Fulham’s Mark Schwarzer, or anyone else better than what we already have, but while the window existed so too did our wild-eyed innocent hope that Arsenal would somehow or other land a new keeper.
We didn’t know how, we stopped caring who, we didn’t really mind if it happened by accident, we just needed Arsenal to cap a promising squad, to make it credibly challenge for honours this season, by adding a quality goalkeeper. Just someone clearly better and more reliable than our first and second-choice keepers Manuel Almunia and Lukasz Fabianski. Jeez, just typing their names gives you the shivers. The sheer scale of the failure is devastating. What on earth were Arsenal thinking?
Firstly, let’s get the sob story out of the way. If Fulham’s David Stockdale had not got injured maybe we could still have landed Schwarzer. Perhaps the straightforward plan had been to offer a bit more cash for Schwarzer on deadline day, to complete the signing for a reasonable fee. If that had come off, we would possibly all be quite happy right now. That approach may be admirable in some ways, but ultimately it leaves very little leeway.
As soon as Mark Hughes became Fulham boss I expected that his frosty relationship with Arsene Wenger might put paid to any deal. Should you not have alternatives in mind, ready to act? If we did try to sign Thomas Sorensen at end of the January transfer window has he suddenly become crap? Could he not have been a Plan B? A deal for Schwarzer was out of character for Wenger anyway. He likes to sign French, African or French/African players, although so far generally not for goalkeepers. Perhaps an eventual signing will come from this route.
In the here and now, if you bid for someone twice early in the window you must presumably want them quite a lot, so why leave the possibility of a deal open to the last day, months later? Hughes said that Arsenal didn’t bid for Schwarzer on deadline day. That Arsenal did not manage to sign someone other than Schwarzer suggests that there was no plan B. I’m sorry, I like Mark Schwarzer and I think he would have been good for Arsenal but he is not the world’s only goalkeeper.
You’ve got to be honest here in basic ways: it has been clear for a good two seasons that Almunia and Fabianski are not good enough for Arsenal, so why are they still here and why haven’t we replaced them? What kind of scouting network do we have that we cannot find a decent first-choice goalkeeper in world football? What kind of goalkeeper coaching do we do that neither of our first two frontline keepers looks capable of handling aerial threats?
As I said in my blog of August 12th, ’If Arsenal sign a goalkeeper we challenge for honours: it’s that simple’, a goalkeeper for a football team is like a plug for a bath: have a dodgy plug and the water will leak out. Dodgy goalkeepers leak goals. There is no way around this, there is no hiding from it. We cannot challenge for anything this season with a leaky goalkeeper. A quality keeper signing was crucial, to stop conceding sloppy goals, to halt the putrid way we have let recent title challenges crumble through horrific keeper errors.
Watching on as other clubs, other muppety inferior clubs, land player after player on deadline day is humiliating. It is enough to bring on diarrhoea. I feel sad, because even this early in the season we could have just pierced our aspirations, before we’ve barely started. I also find it curious that we have kept all four of Almunia, Fabianski, Vito Mannone and Wojciech Szczesny. Wasn’t one supposed to go out on loan? How are we going to offer all of them enough of a game, at the available levels? Peculiar. Do they all still remain in genuine competition for the number one slot, as in pre season, or are we back to a hierarchy of seniority? Mannone and Szczesny deserve more exposure.
Frankly though there is nothing we can do now about a new goalkeeper till the next transfer window and we can all guess what we expect from that. In the meantime, by and large, we do have a very good squad and at least we have added a couple of defenders. That is almost equally as vital as the new keeper. There is no doubt about it, defensive injuries and frailties thwarted us last season, not just the goalkeepers. Our inadequacies have not solely been down to the keepers to be fair and in some ways the goalies have taken the flak off the defenders, so now we should still be stronger for their addition, albeit without a stronger keeper.
Not only do you have to question the failure to sign a quality keeper, you also have to question how Almunia has been handled. He has been, rightly or wrongly, our first-choice keeper for several years. At times he has played badly enough to be dropped for Fabianski, who has then fared even worse and this pre season Almunia has suffered the indignity of his three fellow keepers being given supposedly equal chance to replace him, while constant speculation has reigned over Schwarzer's impending arrival.
As I said in Gooner 206, why not just be straight with Almunia and Fabianski in May, that they were free to find other clubs? Crucially, though, that needs other clubs to want to sign them. If Almunia was offered in part-exchange for Hugo Lloris on deadline day it didn't come off and what faith can Almunia now feel his boss has in him? What has been the eventual outcome to this bungling? It is clear that Wenger is not happy with our first and second-choice keepers, yet we are left lumbered with them and have destabilised the pair of them. We'll have to hope that the whole episode is somehow strangely motivational for them.
So what do we do now? We are Arsenal supporters, we support what we have got. We have to hope like crazy that our attacking intent can outweigh our defensive stress fractures. If we score at least two goals in every game we can override the damage caused by our flaws, but that’s not easy. We have four known keepers, you would like to hope that one of them would be good enough to play for our first team. Until the next transfer window of dubious promise, cling to that hope.
Source: Simon Rose, The Online Gooner on 1 Sep 10
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