‘Mertesacker Has The Agility Of A Rhinoceros’ – Wojciech Szczesny’s Dad Defends Arsenal Keeper, Points Finger Of Blame At ‘Disastrous’ Defence

Chris Wright

8th, January 2015

6 Comments

By Chris Wright

Britain Soccer Premier League

Having been temporarily dropped from first-team duties and stung with a £20,000 fine for smoking in the showers after Arsenal’s 2-0 defeat against Southampton on New Year’s Day, it’s fair to say that Wojciech Szczesny is having a fairly rough old time of it at the moment.

Szczesny has come under criticism of late after slipping back into a few of his old bad habits: principally a tendency to keep goal like a sugar-crazed 10-year-old let loose on the Panda Pops.

However, the Arsenal ‘keeper has found himself a staunch ally in the wholly likely guise of his father, Maciej, himself a former Poland international stopper.

Whereas he’s willing to admit his son has dropped a few minor clangers of late, Maciej has instead blamed Arsenal’s defensive woes on the “disastrous” back four stationed just in front of his son – singling out Per Mertesacker for the lion’s share of the criticism as is, you may have noticed, very much the done thing.

Szczesny Senior, 49, told Polish newspaper Przegladu Sportowego:

“Wojciech made a mistake for the first (Southampton) goal, coming too far from the goal, but please look at the Arsenal defence – how these guys are playing is a disaster, but for some reason, nobody pays any attention to it.

“Laurent Koscielny should immediately have run to protect Wojciech, and Per Mertesacker should have stood in the goal.

“Unfortunately they did not do that and gave him zero support, and in that situation Mertesacker showed the agility of a rhinoceros.”

He continued:

“Wojciech is often paying for (the mistakes being made). He needs someone who will critically analyse every game with him, but also remain positive.

“Someone should support him, but the coaching staff at Arsenal are not doing that – meanwhile, the entire defence this season is an embarrassment.”

We suspect you wouldn’t have to look very far to find an Arsenal fan who agrees with that particular sentiment.

Hey, here’s a thought: Maybe they’re all a bit pap?

(Via Independent)

Posted in Arsenal, Newsnow, Southampton

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6 Comments

  1. Mike says:

    Arsenal goalkeepers have faced less shots than any goalkeeper bar one this season. The Arsenal defence has restricted the opposition to less shots per game than Chelsea, Man City or Man Utd. I don’t dislike Szczesny but for his father (or anyone else) to say “the entire defence this season is an embarrassment” is clearly very, very misguided. Whilst it is undeniable that Arsenal have conceded some silly goals this season, the job of a defence overall is to deny the opposition goalscoring opportunities and Arsenal has done this better than 18 other Premiership clubs. And don’t forget we’ve rarely played with our first choice back five at all this season.

  2. Meldeathor says:

    Just a small linguistic correction as a Polish speaker, the paper’s name is Przeglad Sportowy (there’s actually a diacritic ‘a’ in przeglad, but for the sake of English keyboard setup let’s leave it with a normal ‘a’), the form used above is just a declension of this name (yes, Polish is known for having 7 declensions of nouns).

  3. Kingsland101 says:

    @Mike

    psssh, stats. You managed to restrict Saints to about 7 or 8 shots, but realistically Saints should have scored 4 or 5 at least what with the nature of the chances. JWP should have had a hat trick!

    Saints had about 15 shots against Chelsea the game before, but maybe should have scored only twice in comparison as most were from outside the area or a narrow angle. Same with Utd and City (although Saints should really have beaten Utd).

    • Mike says:

      If you prefer opinion to facts that’s up to you mate. in which case it seemed clear to me that Saints were lucky not to be 3-0 down by half-time.

      Don’t argue without evidence it makes you about as useful as the media………….

  4. Bear says:

    “principally a tendency to keep goal like a sugar-crazed 10-year-old let loose on the Panda Pops” – never has a more true statement been made about Szczesny. Just perfect.

    I won’t even tackle the counterfactuals above.

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