Tag Archives: She Wore

Arsenal facing goalkeeper crisis

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Arsenal are facing a goalkeeping crisis.

Bernd Leno has been a top signing and has established himself as Arsenal number one ahead of Petr Cech.

At the end of this season Petr Cech’s contract expires. Arsenal have a decision to make whether to offer the veteran stopper a new contract or let him see out his career in France or back in the Czech Republic.

On loan at Napoli is David Ospina. The Colombian’s contract with Arsenal is not due to expire until 2020.

If Arsenal decide to dispense with the services of Cech, it would make sense that Arsenal keep Ospina as number 2 next season.

The huge problem is beyond that. Arsenal do not have a natural number 2 coming through.

Current Arsenal number 3 is Damian Martinez.

The Argentine goal keeper is now 26 and made his Arsenal debut 6 years ago. He will never be good enough to step up to number 2 at Arsenal. To be a number 2 at a top club, you have to be good enough to play 38 Premier League games.

Imagine the scenario; Leno get’s injured in the first game of the season. Out of for entire campaign. A number 2 needs to be able to step up into the role of number 1. Martinez is not that.

Arsenal’s number 2 is currently Cech. Manchester United have Argentine number 1 Sergio Romero. Chelsea with Argentina number 2 Willy Caballero.

Manchester City’s number 2 is Claudio Bravo, who spent 2 years as Barcelona number 1 and was Goalkeeper of the Tournament at the 2017 Confederations Cup.

Simon Mignolet is Liverpool’s number 2. He has played over 200 times for the club, and Tottenham have Michel Vorm who has played over 100 times in the Premier League.

Even Everton have a solid second choice keeper in former Dutch number 1 Maarten Stekelenburg.

In summary, to be a number 2 at a top club you need to be an experienced goal keeper, an international. Martinez is neither of these.

Behind Martinez is Matt Macey. The tall Englishman is now in his mid-20s.

Macey is performing well at Plymouth, but it is doubtful if he would have what it takes to be Arsenal Number 2. I would expect him to replace Martinez as number 3 next season.

So moving into 2019/20, I would expect our 3 goal keepers to be Leno, Cech / Ospina, Martinez / Macey.

The crisis Arsenal are facing is below first team level.

According to the club website, we have one goal keeper in our academy. 23-year-old Macedonian Deyan Iliev. He is another, like Macey and Martinez, who does not have what it takes to make it to the top.

After Iliev, the next goal keeper in line is talented 17-year-old Arthur Okonkwo.

Okonkwo has a bright future, with many who watch the youth teams claiming he is the best young keeping prospect we have had since Wojciech Szczesny. But he is 17. He is still a baby in goal keeping terms.

There is a 6 year age gap between Iliev and Okonkwo and Arsenal need to fill that gap.

Over the last 12 months, Arsenal have released a lot of goal keepers who had previously filled this gap.

Joao Virginia joined Everton this summer. The 19-year-old was rated by many at the club. Arsenal also released Ryan Huddart (21), Hugo Keto (20) and Alex Crean (19). These 4 goal keepers leaving have left a huge gap between Iliev and Okonkwo – and an even bigger talent gap between Cech as Number 2 and Okonkwo at the bottom end.

Last summer Arsenal signed Estonian Karl Jakob Hein. He is just 16 and was signed to fill the gap behind Okonkwo.

Over the summer, what Arsenal need to do is fill the gap between Iliev and Okonkwo.

It is likely that Iliev will leave, alongside either Martinez or Macey. That will mean 8 years between Macey and Okonkwo.

Sven Mislintat’s scouting team, and the youth scouts, will be scouring the UK and Europe for the top 21 year old goal keepers.

Someone (or even 2) that could come in and take the place of Iliev in the U23 team. Someone who within 12 months could be putting pressure on Macey or Martinez to become Arsenal number 3. You would be looking at them being 20-22.

It will be a challenge to find someone.

You will not be able to sign someone currently doing bits in a senior team. It is unlikely they would be happy stepping down from first team football to academy football – unless that are outside the top leagues in Europe.

You could pull a first team goal keeper from Poland or Norway, for example, but you are not going to be able to target someone like Alban Lafont from Fiorentina.

Although Arsenal might completely rip up the structure of the club and target someone like Lafont or Bartłomiej Dragowski (another Fiorentina youngster) and have them fill the duel role of Arsenal U23 keeper, and Arsenal 3rd choice keeper.

Arsenal will address the skills gap in young goal keepers this summer. It will not be a major signing, but it will be someone who can come in at U23 level and push for the first team squad within 12 months.

Keenos

Arsenal should give fans option to donate membership pack to charity

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I seem to have this rant every year. And every year it comes later.

Arsenal Membership Packs finally begun to arrive over the weekend, and they are underwhelming at the least.

A cheap feeling scarf and the club Official Handbook.

It has to be the worst membership pack in the history of membership packs.

The “key selling point” and reason for the delays was that each scarf was bespoke, and would have the members initials embroidered on it.

My initials at DK; the scarves initials are GO. So the club did not even get this right.

I do not care for the membership pack. I do not collect the handbooks, and the merchandise is usually not desired.

I can probably cont on one hand how many have been good.

The one with the 89 bottle opener, and a handful with books (So Paddy got up, Invincibles: Inside Arsenal’s unbeaten 2003-2004 season, We All Live in a Perry Groves World and Football Ambassador: The Autobiography of an Arsenal Legend.)

What the club needs to do is simple.

Let the fans know what will be in the membership pack prior to membership renewal time. When you renew your membership, there should be an option to “donate to charity”.

Then all the scarves, snoods, gloves, pin badges and more can be donated to the likes of Great Ormond Street Hospital and other charities.

I am sure a kid in hospital would love an Arsenal scarf. Receiving one would probably give the child temporary relief to whatever ailment they have.

Instead, I have a scarf, and it will just go in the bin with the rest of the membership pack.

Arsenal can do better. They should do better. Give us an option to donate the membership pack to charity.

Keenos

Tottenham apply to remain at Wembley until end of season

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The latest news in the shambles the is the New Tottenham Stadium Saga, is permission has been sought from Brent Council and local residents for an additional 17 Tottenham games to be played at Wembley Stadium.

This additional 17 games will take the club up until the end of the season.

This is the latest delay to the new stadium, which was supposed to open at the beginning of this season.

Back in March we were aware (through our 9-5 work) that the stadium would not be open before the start of the season. The Tottenham hierarchy would have also been aware of this.

Despite this delay, the club still sold season tickets based on the stadium being open on time.

In June, it was announced that costs were beginning to spiral towards the £1bn mark. The dramatically increased costs explained why Tottenham were hiding the delays and selling season tickets.

They have used the season ticket money – around £80million – as an interest free loan to help finance the stadium. They have only been refunding this money on a game by game basis; at the same time they receive money from selling tickets at Wembley.

By July it was our understanding that the stadium would open 3 months late. October at the earliest we were told.

At this point, the club announced that they had failed to secure stadium naming rights and were giving full refunds to those companies who had purchased an executive box. The writing was on the wall but still Spurs management denied any issues.

By the end of July, trade Unions were urging the Government to investigate the poor working conditions and breaches of both Health & Safety and Working Time Regulations.

Spurs had begun announcing – slowly – that there were delays. The first game had already been moved to Wembley. Having requested that 3 of their first 4 away games were to be at home, it was announced to great fanfare that the first game of the season would be against Liverpool in the middle of September. We knew different.

Middle of August and it was announced by the club that the stadium would not be ready until early October; with games up to and including Cardiff on 6th October to be played at the national stadium. This announcement was a full month after we revealed the news of “October at the earliest”.

A day after the October delay was announced, we discovered that builders had actually had their contracts extended until the end of November. That it was highly likely that Tottenham would not play at their new ground until early 2019. Why would Tottenham announce mid-October when we knew it would be 2019?

Had they announced Early 2019, they would have had to have given huge refunds in August to fans who bought season tickets. Instead they lied and kept the money to assist with cash flow.

It was then announced that Tottenham were due to play all of their Champions League group games at Wembley. Their poor performance in the competition led to an investigation by the Advertising Standards Agency.

October confirmed what we knew in September. That the stadium would not be ready in 2018

Despite this being confirmed by many industry sources, Tottenham did not announce this decision until late-October. Another delayed announcement meaning that they kept that season ticket money for another month. This announcement also revealed that Tottenham had increased their loan facility to £637m.

It was at this time speculation circulated that the ground would not be open this season. With 3 test events, a January opening was highly unlikely.

https://twitter.com/KeenosAFC/status/1042424952610283520

And now we have the news that Tottenham have applied to Brent Council to remain at the stadium until the end of the season. This will probably be announced by the club mid-December; based on previous experience of news being known a month before the club announce it.

The way Tottenham have treated their fans is an utter disgrace.

They have delayed announcements and hidden behind Health & Safety to retain season ticket money.

Whilst there have been issues with the fire safety installation, the project timescale was optimistic. It was based on their being no delays, no issues.

As someone within the construction industry, projects like these always have issues, always have delays. Crossrail has been delayed until August 2018 (it was scheduled to open December 2018. The completion of the Shard was also delayed. And both of these major projects did not have the aggressively short timescale of the Tottenham stadium.

When the Olympic stadium was being built, the aim was for an early 2012 completion. This gave LOCOG 8 months breathing space. It opened in March 2012; 6 months before the Olympics started.

The Tottenham Stadium was always an ambitious difficult project. Some UK construction firsts when building. When Tottenham announced that the ground was to be completed in 1 season – 15 months between the end of the 2016/17 season and beginning of the 2018/19, most industry insiders thought this was impossible.

Most felt it was at least a 2 year project. 24 months. That 15 months was impossible.

It is now a case of waiting and watching to see when Spurs announce that they will not be playing at their new ground this season.

Keenos