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Arsenal bought Bernd Leno for a lot of money, but they have yet to use him. And he’s not even mad about it. Why can’t they all be like him?
Arsenal‘s goal-keeping situation was a mess last year, with Petr Cech committing more errors than any keeper ever should, and with his most immediate competitor, David Ospina, being an enigma in his own right.
Bernd Leno was the perfect fix to that. He’d had some quality years at Bayer Leverkusen but clearly needed a change in scenery to reach the potential he had been touting for, well, too many years at that point.
That’s why you spend over 20m on a keeper, when you really believe in him and his potential and you want to see how he can fix your own problems between the sticks.
Only Leno hasn’t been given a chance yet. Petr Cech has retained his starting role and, aside from giving all fans at least a handful of conniptions against Manchester City, Cech has been relatively good.
Which means there has been no reason to give Leno his chance. Why fix what isn’t broken, right? And suddenly, Cech isn’t broken anymore, so the fix that we bought isn’t needed. At least not yet.
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And Leno doesn’t care. Well, he does care, but not in a bad way. Leno pointed out that he knows his chance will come, and then added my favorite part, “I’m not crazy.”
Immediately, all I could think was “why can’t they all be like Leno?” Think about it, Leno went from competing for the Champions League in the Bundesliga in a starting role to being benched on a Europa League side. And he’s totally chill about it!
Because he understands the situation that he is in. He is at a club entering a new era, a club that is one of the most successful clubs in history, and he has a chance to learn from Petr Cech, one of the best keepers to ever play the game. That is the situation that he sees, not the ‘benched for a Europa League side’ situation that’s only on the surface.
Leno is going to be the future keeper and he knows it. It’s probably been made clear to him countless times. And he’s totally on board with it, and we should be too. Even I’ve come around from griping about him not starting to just being happy that we have him.
We actually have two No. 1 keepers! When’s the last time that happened?