Arsenal: Petr Cech set-back pushes forward the inevitable

Arsenal will be without Petr Cech for even longer than they initially thought, but all this really does is move forward a plan that should have already been in motion.

The news recently broke that Arsenal will have an unintentional shake-up at keeper, with Petr Cech’s original injury assessment looking to be a bit undercooked. It now sounds like it is going to be facing up to a month out of action, which is a shame, given the performance he put forth against Everton, but these things will tend to happen.

And as they have happened, the best thing we can do is put a positive spin on it, which is easy enough to do. Petr Cech’s clock was ticking. He wasn’t getting any younger and many worried if his drop in form was related to his increasing age.

That’s why Bernd Leno was purchased in the first place, to be a first team keeper with the youth to carry the position for years down the road. He really should never have been a back-up, he should have been given first dibs at the position, to either win it or lose it for the long-haul.

But that has come and passed, and now Leno has first dibs at the position in the wake of Cech’s injury, meaning that the positive we can take from this significant injury lay off is just that the plan that should have already been in motion is now 100% in motion, without anything to hold it back. Which, again, needed to happen in the first place.

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Unai Emery is helping the team get younger. Players like Guendouzi, Torreira, Holding and Iwobi are all stepping up to put pressure on the veteran guys already in positions, with many of them already earning starting roles, or deserving of them.

Leno fits into that category as well and, by extension, Emi Martinez, who has been third-string for far too many years. Martinez now falls into the No. 2 role, though it remains to be seen how much he will be used during the span of Cech’s absence.

Whatever the case, this was all going to happen at some point anyway. So it’s only right that we are getting a jumpstart on the changes right now, even if they don’t exactly stick right away. Maybe things don’t work out and Cech has to come back into the fray (which I doubt), or maybe he is thrown back in anyway.

The point is, we are getting the taste of this future plan now, which is going to give us a great idea of what to expect when this plan inevitably takes center stage in the end.