Petr Cech began the season as Arsenal’s number one goalkeeper, but after losing his place to Bernd Leno through injury, the 36 year old hasn’t started a Premier League game since the 2-0 win over Watford in September.
The veteran is expected to get the nod for this evening’s FA Cup third round clash with Blackpool, but with his contract expiring at the end of the season, there’s clearly some doubt as to his future with the club.
A contract extension which would see him deputise for the German for another year isn’t out of the question, but at the moment Unai Emery is not quite sure what’s going to happen, and of course much depends on the intentions of Cech himself.
Asked the question in the build-up to this game, he said, “I don’t know now. This is a question for the club and the player to deal with our necessary things with the goalkeeper.
“But when he played at the start of the season, he did very well. He was very good behaviour, commitment and performance.
‘Then when he had the injury Leno started playing with a big performance also and then he recovered his position on the bench. But I am happy with him.
‘All situations like this, we will speak with the player and with the club but at the moment, I want his focus the same, each training, each match.
“He is going to play Saturday to give us his performance and then we are going to decide also within what is the best for him and for the club.”
Meanwhile, Emi Martinez has been tipped to go out on loan this month, ahead of a permanent move this summer.
The Argentine is now 26 year old, the same age as Leno, but has made fewer than 50 first team appearances during his career compared with the nearly 400 the current number 1 is coming up on.
Unless he fancies as a life as a squad man it’d be in his interests to go somewhere and play regular football.
We should sign him up. I prefer him over Leno but even if he is not a starter anymore his experiences and character are invaluable to the team.
Too bad we are losing Martinez. I thought he was good. But then again, what do I know.
Offer him a player/coach role. Backup keeper, get his coaching badges and some coaching experience. Everyone always speaks of his experience and intelligence, could make a great coach one day.
Is Dennis Suarez really what we want even though we are looking for a midfielder to replace Ramsey…I’m not really happy with this deal…….. But I’m still hoping he can become a coutinho in arsenal…just the way coutinho was underrated in inter Milan and now the rest is history………but anyway Dennis Suarez has been signed and hopefully premier league gets to see another coutinho?????????
Wrong news post, Pal.
If Unai is unsure, it’s simply because he does not have the final say over whether a player stays or leaves. I suspect that he also does not have the final say over whether this or that player is bought or not, although he’ll obviously be consulted. That’s why he regularly refers such questions about personnel to “the club”, and effectively says “nothing to do with me, Guv”. In other words, Raul, Sven and possibly Vinai too are the ones who now make those type of personnel decisions, although you’re unlikely to see them holding weekly press conferences just to… Read more »
It must be quite liberating actually. Imagine if Wenger could have said “I am doing my best with the squad I have but Fabregas/Alexis/Van Persie’s contracts are not my damn problem.”
Not that he would have enjoyed relinquishing that control anyway.
Emery likes using the word ‘performance’. Cech seems like the type of guy Mertesacker would like to coach the youth goalkeepers , but he probably isn’t thinking about retirement from playing just yet.
Blogs, there’s an IOS problem the last couple of days; the site loads okay and I can open all the “News” posts, but not the “Blog.” It’s fine on my Imac.
Have the same problem trying to load the blog on the Windows app.
This is a complete no-brainer: Cech should go at the end of the season. He was a great keeper in his day, but that was a long time ago. The Chavs had the best of his career.
The ideal number two keeper now should be a hungry, up-and-coming precocious talent who would put pressure on the suspect Leno. Cech is yesterday’s man. And anyway Emery wants a ball-playing goalie, to fit in with his play-out-of-the-back philosophy; that was never Cech.
We reportedly offered 63m for James Rodriguez!?? Kroenke finally showing his hand! Be scared Premier League,Be VERY scared ?
Dumb idea if it’s true. That kind of money could get us two decent defenders. James is a decent player but not what we need right now. We must buy some defensive quality. Now.
If we sign him up then we should aim to keep him till retirement and offer him a coaching position much like per…but if he leaves then we could sign up some young talent at lower wages. Positives on both decisions.
I said at the beginning of last year that this (current) season would be Cech’s last with Arsenal – and got royally roasted for it – but he’s not Buffon, age has caught up with him. On top of this, his style of keeping clearly doesn’t mesh with Emery’s preferred approach. He’d probably be better suited in a squad that wasn’t so dependent on their keeper and weren’t so committed to playing out from the back.
Cech still better than Leno!!