The Hard Times of Manuel Almunia

By JAMES CURTIS Catching-up with a good friend yesterday was a reminder of the most common words spoken between Gunners fans. “I know, I know, I know,” followed every grumble down the phone. Every fault of Arsenal had been pondered, inspected and then logged. It was a hardship to listen to what we both already knew, so it was easier just to cut one another off mid-sentence by saying: I KNOW. After putting the phone down, I pictured Wojciech Szczesny arriving to training with Arsene Wenger the day after any one of Manuel Almunia’s howlers. The Pole only needed to give a knowing stare before Wenger prematurely butted in with his own: “I know, I know, I know.” 

After the West Brom defeat Wenger was able to rest the fingers pointing at Almunia by saying Arsenal win and lose as a team. It’s fair to say others were poor on the day. Still, a keeper will always take heavy blame because he doesn’t have his work cut out in the way an outfield player does. It’s not to say it’s a harder job, but you might grant more room for excuse with outfield players whose involvement in a match consists of much more than the man in goal. Their mistakes can get lost in the mêlée. A keeper’s consistency though is far more important to him. Arsenal do have keepers with talent, but sadly, showing it is about as regular as Wayne Rooney turning down sex in a red light district.   

In Almunia and Lukas Fabianski you’ve got a choice in consistency between a Malaysian police officer refusing a bribe, or drug cartels in Mexico taking a day off from murder. We’ve come to accept Almunia’s growing portfolio of errors and more pages will be added.  Yet the sticking anger in the Spaniard’s inability to save a harmless shot at the weekend boils down to the fact it looked like he had lost all concern. The lazy way his body took position and the woozy way he slumped into submission was of a man on the brink of accepting his own inadequacy. All he wanted was for somebody from Delhi to strap a lead around his neck and give him a job as a langur monkey scaring off smaller simians at the Commonwealth Games. 

These are hard times for Almunia and they only follow previous hard times. An elbow injury is inopportune and the seesaw has tipped once again whereby Fabianski stares down on Arsenal’s Number One. Some will say Almunia was lost at sea last summer but by his reaction against West Brom it is only now that he has become finally stranded. Surely! Wenger’s attempts to drag his favourite keeper back to shore by giving him the captain’s armband in the absence of Cesc Fabregas had good intentions. It was a move of loyalty that should have invigorated Almunia; instead, it looks to have added his demise.  

Who knows what Almunia is like in the dressing room? If he is the influence Wenger looks for in a captain it certainly doesn’t transfer to anything imposing on the pitch. This is where I begin to feel sorry for Almunia, who has been given a role which requires high expectations, ones that he has never carried out. While his colleagues were playing so poorly in-front of him, Almunia might have repaid his manager with a captain’s performance and saved the day like a leader. It’s difficult to recall a game where he has been Arsenal’s man of the match by making up for mistakes before him. Wenger’s devotion has backfired. He is the drunken man mistakenly declaring to his girlfriend for the first time that he loves her. Now he has to say it until he thinks of a way out. Perhaps then, Almunia’s latest injury is not so inopportune, for both Wenger and Almunia. 

Following his penalty save against Partizan Belgrade on Tuesday, Arsenal fans witnessed the reactions of Fabianksi. They were of a guy letting out some confined resentment at knowing he wasn’t deserving of anything bigger than second-string. I saw something in him. Facially and physically he came across much older, although that could have been the deception of seeing him in a kit close to the one David Seaman wore saving that penalty against Sampdoria. People remarked on a fine performance, but as I say, he has always been gifted. Can he get to the level of a free-whoring Wayne Rooney though? Could he wipe out a Mexican mayor as habitually as the cartels? Something tells me he can. I know what you’re thinking. I know, I know, I know … 

THE ARSENAL

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JimC

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