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Arsenal’s Wojciech Szczesny Wrongfully Benched Against Stoke City
By Josh Sippie
With the awful match against Southampton, the smoking fine and his father’s comment’s all in the rear view mirror, I think we all thought that Wojciech Szczesny would be returning to the starting XI against Stoke City.
Seeing as how he’s our first choice keeper, he won the golden gloves last year, and he’s a world class talent, not to mention that Wenger “accepted his apology,” it only makes sense that he would return to the lineup today.
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But not so, as Wenger clearly had even more of a message to send to the still-developing Pole, who found himself ousted from the starting XI by the very-capable David Ospina for his Premier League debut.
I could not disagree with this move more. If there is one thing that we know about Szczesny it’s that he is an absolutely fierce competitor. Much like Arsenal, he is at his best when he’s facing adversity and this is the most adversity he’s faced in his life.
He had a bad game. It happens.
He smoked a cigarette. And paid the fine.
His dad called Per Mertesacker a rhinoceros. Well, that’s not really his fault.
Sounds like Szczesny is all caught up on making amends. But Wenger didn’t think so. Now, the media circus gets to continue to swarm around the Polish keeper and this debacle (which I am affectionately referring to as the “Smoking Rhinoceros Debacle,” for obvious reasons).
The quickest way to put this already-overblown situation to bed is to get Szczesny out there and watch him dominate again. But we’ll just have to keep waiting for that, because Wenger had a bigger message to send, apparently.
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