Arsenal: Wojciech Szczesny can prove that the system works

Arsenal should be welcoming back Wojciech Szczesny to the first team next season, which makes him the perfect proof for how things are supposed to work.

All Wojciech Szczesny has ever wanted is to succeed at Arsenal. He’s said it so many times, his goal is to be the No. 1 keeper at the Emirates. And he had it for awhile, it was in his grasp, but on that fateful New Years day of 2015, he was ousted as the first-team keeper because of a performance against Southampton where the Gunner defense looked pathetic.

Whether or not it was right to pin so much on Szczesny is moot at this point, because it has passed, but what followed that decision is what I would like to draw attention too.

So much of what makes Arsenal so frustrating is what I call the team of no consequences. For so many years, four or five, to be exact, all of the regular players had no immediate pressure on their position, so they had no real sense of urgency to improve. I don’t place too much of that blame on the players.

I place it on Arsene Wenger and the financial system the club was in. If you want to blame the players, that’s fine, the result is the same. Guys like Olivier Giroud and Theo Walcott were the premium examples of the bunch. More recently, Alex Iwobi, Francis Coquelin, even Mesut Ozil were part of this glaring problem. They had free reign to their position without any fear that anything they did would cause any sort of negative ramifications.

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You know it’s bad when Giroud is getting excited about the potential signing of Karim Benzema, acknowledging that it would make the club better.

Consequences have a way of making people step their game up.

In the past month or so, Wenger has started to dole out consequences. Walcott, Iwobi, Coquelin, Giroud, all of these guys that seemed like our reluctant XI have been pushed to the side.

Now let’s circle back around to Wojciech Szczesny. The Polish shot stopper was ousted completely in 2015, receiving the heaviest consequence that I’ve ever seen. He hasn’t been a part of the club since then. Even though he won a share of the golden gloves in the previous year.

That summer, Wenger ignored what quality he might have had in Szczesny and Ospina and signed a proven, elite keeper in Petr Cech. Not wanting Szczesny to waste, he sent him to Roma, a top side in Serie A.

Fast forward to today. Szczesny has to be one of the most confident keepers in the league. He has proudly led Roma to second place in Serie A and in the process, quietly made himself one of the most statistically superior keepers in the world of football.

Now he is ready to come back to Arsenal, two and a half years after that big consequence was doled out, and fight for his spot. He believes he is the best he has ever been and the stats are there to back him up.

This is how it should work. If a player proves himself ineffective, you shove him to the side until he is ready to fight for his spot again. Not everyone is going to have the same timelines as Szczesny. He’s a keeper, there is only one of them. But you wait and see how Iwobi responds come next year.

Or, if a new striker is bought (when a new striker is bought) you wait and see how Giroud and Welbeck react.

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This isn’t rocket science and Szczesny is going to prove that. I would not be shocked to see him upset Cech at some point next year. If Wenger keeps this trend of quick and serious consequences going, then Szczesny will have that chance and he will not let it slip away this time.

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