Wojciech Szczesny could be on Arsenal’s substitutes’ bench long enough for serious pause for thought. That was the inference as Arsène Wenger considered his goalkeeping options before Arsenal’s trip to Manchester City on Sunday and pondered whether selecting David Ospina over Szczesny, as he did last weekend, represented a wake-up call for his Polish keeper.
“He has played many games and sometimes when you have a little breather it helps you to refocus and get yourself together,” Wenger said. “Just before Southampton he had a very good game at West Ham and was man of the match. I think he is a great goalkeeper and will have a great career but he goes a little bit ... I took Jens Lehmann out like that.”
It was considerably more contentious when Wenger dropped Lehmann during the 2004-05 season. Manuel Almunia was not considered a genuine rival for the position, notably by an infuriated Lehmann. The situation is slightly more blurred now as, in Ospina, the Colombian international who arrived last summer, it is a closer call to be first choice.
Joe Hart can empathise with Szczesny’s predicament, having been dropped last season for a spell allowing Costel Pantilimon to play. Earlier this season Manuel Pellegrini preferred Willy Caballero for a few games. Hart said it was “hard to see any positives” about rotating goalkeepers. Wenger says a goalkeeper can never be completely safe in his position nowadays. “Because you and I know well that every game lost is a crisis in the club,” he said. “What has changed is that the players are much more stressed and pressured than 10 or 15 years ago as everything is analysed.
“Every moment is analysed of every event on television. Just after the game the players open the television and hear ‘Why did he move on the right and not on the left?’. That was not the case before. It is the price to pay for the popularity of the sport. We have the good sides and have to take the bad sides as well.”
While Wenger feels relatively spoiled for choice in goal, that is not the case in defence and the Arsenal manager says that, if they are unable to strengthen in that department this month, it would be “too risky”. He is on the search for defensive reinforcements but not yet close to a deal. “Of course we have made inquiries and then you have a second handicap of who wants to sell their best players, especially a central defender, in the middle of the season,” he said. “They say: ’OK, come back in June or July and maybe yes.’”
January bids have not yet been welcomed. “We haven’t found anyone,” he adds. “I am not the only one working on the case. It’s not a supermarket where you go in and buy a defender. It’s a market that is very restricted. For players who can strengthen the best 10 teams in Europe, you don’t find many and it’s the same for everybody.”
Arsenal bought StatDNA, a data analytics company, in 2012 to assist with scouting and identification of talent. Wenger still believes a human assessment is most critical, though, before making decisions on players.
“What is still the most important is the eye,” Wenger said. “Because you can have, for example, very good numbers defensively but be suspect to one big mistake per game, or every five games. The numbers will not detect that. The priority is the attitude of the player. Does he read the game well? Because the numbers over 15 games could be very good but in the big games? That’s where the players will be judged.”
Arsenal shipped six goals in the corresponding fixture last season. They are desperate to be judged better this time.