He is a member of the Arsenal squad that has made a positive contribution at many vital moments of the season? Yes he has, but as with all players who are not flavour of the month or year
I have been meaning to talk about our goalkeeping situation and more to the point Manuel Almunia since we conceded that late goal in St Andrews.
Manuel Almunia has been receiving plenty of flack for his parry into the net and I do indeed understand the frustration of being in that type of position late in a game and then surrendering the lead when all that is required is to dig deep and just hold on. We have been here before as Gooners.
My first reaction to the goal was like many, an Almunia blunder has cost us the game but I have gone back to the incident, as difficult as it was. I have had another look since Saturday afternoon.
Kevin Phillips did not take a touch, steady himself and fire at Almunia. That would have given our keeper the required time to adjust himself and make his chosen method of saving the ball, instead the ball was rebounded off the striker by Bacary Sagna from close range. Unless Manuel Almunia has a super computer of a brain then it is very difficult to blame his reactions. He couldn’t have worked out where, how high or how far he wanted to parry the ball, his first instinct would have been the first for any goalkeeper, stop the ball that is heading towards me from going past my hands.
Is Manuel Almunia a great goalkeeper? I think you know the answer to that already. But at the same time is he a member of the Arsenal squad that has made a positive contribution at many vital moments of the season? Yes he has, but as with all players who are not flavour of the month or year, these contributions are appreciated for five minutes and then wiped away without any trace of existence.
It was only last weekend that Manuel Almunia flew across to his left to deny an Alessandro Diamanti penalty, a penalty that would have seen a ten man Arsenal pegged back to 1-1.
At the Emirates, Everton surged forward in search of the final blow that would have killed off Arsenal and Almunia came hurtling off his line to prevent James Vaughan from wrapping up the points before Rosicky struck at the death.
Almunia’s fingertips prevented Ryan Babel from grabbing a late equaliser at the Emirates.
Those key moments are lost forever in the minds of some whilst the likes of Arshavin are allowed the luxury of the good and the bad. Had Arshavin turned in Bendtner’s great run and pass then we would not be talking about this right now. Denilson gets hammered for failing to see Rooney’s run on his blind side yet Arshavin can lose the ball, shrug his shoulders and he is still ‘a player who can win the match with a moment of brilliance’
Not that I am berating the class of our pint sized number 23, it is just a good example of supporters picking and choosing which players get to play in the playground whilst the others are sat unfairly on the naughty step.
This is not to say that Manuel Almunia hasn’t been inconsistent in patches this season, largely due to a difficult period in his personal life early in the season. He has come through that and has looked much more solid in recent weeks. Handling well, smothering shots fired at him and distributing the ball well.
If Arsene feels that Almunia is on the decline then he may be thinking of another goalkeeper in the summer. That does not necessarily mean that he will be looking to the transfer window. Arsene has two young goalkeepers both waiting for a chance for the first team.
Lukasz Fabianski has had good and bad moments in between the sticks, combining the brilliant with the embarrassing in the matter of minutes so unless he can iron out those bad moments in a few months then it is unlikely that Wenger would throw him into the deep end just yet. One young man is receiving praise from all around and is already being earmarked as a future number one is Wojciech Szczesny who is performing miracles on loan at Brentford. Next season could come a little too soon for the 19 year old, especially with Arsene usually preferring to give more senior players a chance first.
If Arsene thinks we need an established goalkeeper from outside the club who is available and within a decent price range then he will go for him but at the end of March there is not much point in talking of new goalkeepers as nothing can be done until after the season, for now we need to support our player and talk of booing him (like I read in another blog) is just beyond insane and ludicrously self defeating. A sure way to hand Barcelona the tie.
Speaking of which some interesting injury news has been doing the rounds via Twitter and now the news feeds. William Gallas has been training with the first team and could be included in the team tomorrow, we shall see what happens there. Abou Diaby also trained which is great news but our captain missed training and Wenger has said that there is a chance that he might not feature. Cesc will have a late fitness test which is quite scary. You know that Cesc would be super up for this game against his former club and the side will miss a lot if he was to sit out the first leg.
I suppose we will know more tomorrow. The countdown begins, are you excited? I am.
Back again tomorrow.
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