Wenger already said he won't be making a bid for Shay Given. Schwarzer I'm unsure about. It says a lot about our goalkeeping situation if we are being linked with an average goalkeeper in his final years at the top level of competition. It's a bit of a shame that Wenger appears to be sticking to his guns with Fabianski, he's played more minutes in pre-season in any of our other 'keepers and for that reason I think he'll start on Sunday, which is a game I'm now dreading. If Almunia started then I'd be much more confident of 3 points but with Fabianski in goal and then Song, Diaby, Fabregas, van Persie and others still out we are going to be down to the barebones right from the first game of the season.
Wenger said to us to have faith in Song, he will prove us all wrong and to a certain extent he has, he's improved greatly in the last season and hopefully will carry on improving, but Fabianski isn't young, he's not a kid any more and surely we have more than enough down the back of the sofa for a decent goalkeeper, even an average one would be fine but when it comes down to your goalkeeper not only being the target of fans, but the target of opposition tactics then you need to take a look and see that you're just being ignorant about the issue. Legia Warsaw targeted Fabianski, every corner they had they'd surround him, leading to his frankly comical trip over Vermaelen's legs, from which he fell flat on his face and watched the ball roll in the net. What's even more worrying is that if Fabianski is considered number 1 then Almunia has already came out and said he won't be happy playing second fiddle and would leave the club for regular football. That leaves us with 1 **** keeper and 2 rookies, no matter what people think of Almunia he has to be considered the best option at the moment. He's no Seaman, his mistakes have cost us in the past without doubt, but he is immeasurably more talented than old Flappyhandski.
Siddy aren't going to sell Given to us and I find the whole goalkeeper triangle thing that was reported a few days ago in the paper totally laughable. Friedel to Fulham, Almunia to Aston Villa and Schwarzer to Arsenal, no disrespect to any of those players or teams but why would Friedel move to Fulham? Barring the manager change Fulham are in a far better position than Aston Villa at the moment, plus, there's the hardly small matter of Villa not even having a proper manager, they don't need Friedel when they already have Schwarzer. The whole O' Neill walking out thing I find totally laughable, without going off too much as there's a thread already dedicated to this, but in 4 years he's had 120 million to spend, that's 30 million a summer and now that Lerner / the board have decided there will be no more spending apart from what you sell he's decided to leave. Barry went last year which might have annoyed him, but Man Utd have just lost one of the best players in the world, Fergie didn't have anywhere near the whole 80 million to spend on new players and he didn't have a bitch fit and leave.
Anyway, back to goalkeepers... if Almunia plays we have a good chance, if Fabianski plays then I expect it to be a complete horror show.
