Arsene Wenger-Mark Schwarzer saga; Failure to sign the keeper might spell doomsday for Arsenal?
Arsene Wenger has time and again admitted that he often reads what the fans and supporters say about him and his team on public forums and blogs. But, if the Frenchman had bothered with a similar reading after 5 pm BST on September 1, it would surely have been a very unpleasant one.
Never before in Arsenal’s history have the fans been so disillusioned with their most successful manager in recent history but, after five years of constant failures, one broken promise after another and also a campaign that seems to be heading nowhere, only because of the stubbornness of one, even the most loyal and diehard fans are fed up with him.
Wenger’s public pursuit and no purchase of Mark Schwarzer turned out to be totally farcical and has made the keeper’s position at his present club, Fulham, very uncomfortable and left him in a limbo. Mark is 37 years old and his signature would have been of pivotal importance to the club as his experience would have come in very handy for the upcoming young keeper Wojciech Szczesny.
Schwarzer is a good shot stopper who is confident with corners too and the fact that he had just put in a transfer request earlier in the month made him a hot favorite to be signed by Arsenal. The Gunners desperately needed a change after a dismal season by Almunia and an even more catastrophic time in goal by Fabianski.
With limited funds, Pepe Reina was always out of the question, so Schwarzer was the perfect choice but Wenger’s latest habit of leaving the deals until the last minute (Andrei Arshavin and William Gallas) to bag a bargain has cost the man this time. Wenger’s failure to sign a goalkeeper in the summer could well prove to be a telling factor in Arsenal’s title challenge falling short once again.
The North London club initially started with a 3 million pound offer but it was turned down. Arsenal knocked on the door again after the arrival of Mark Hughes but Fulham again rejected. It kept going on and on until last week when it was reported that both the clubs have reached an agreement. Then, Fulham tried to sign Given as a replacement and the deal was very close but Given somehow decided to grace the City’s bench. The Schwarzer deal could still have gone through had David Stockdale not gotten injured at Blackpool.
But the question every head on the planet is asking is why Wenger did left it so late? If there was money to spend and he had his man, then why not dig a little deeper in your kittey and fetch out 500k more and give poor Fulham a chance to buy a replacement. Instead, Arsenal fans, which pay the most in the Premier League to watch their team play, are left with a set of keepers that they do not have faith in just because of the fact that their club couldn’t pay a little extra to sign Mark Scwarzer.
A team simply cannot win the league without a top class keeper and Arsenal certainly don’t have one. Over the transfer window, all of Arsenal’s rivals spent and spent well but they could not. Buying Laurent Koscielny for £8m, Squillaci for £3m and Chamakh on a free transfer cannot be called a very good summer transfer wise when you consider the audacious yet successful bid by Spurs to land Rafael Van Der Vaart for 8 million pounds.
There are now appearing some chinks in the Arsenal’s armor and also there is huge unrest among the fans over the bungled attempt to sign a quality keeper. This discontent will grow even louder if Arsenal fail to land a single piece of silverware this season.
Tags: