May the force be with you, Luk!

As I said yesterday, Andrei's latest controversial interview has upset more than a few Gooners. It seems though that the only controversial thing about these comments is the way they have been taken out of context and used to, ever so slightly, misrepresent the Russian. I'm not going to reproduce the full transcript of the interview here, but someone has in the comments section under Jonathan Chong's article on the subject. Read it and perhaps you will find that what he said wasn't so disrepectful to our football club, he merely responded in the affirmative to a question explicitly asking him whether he would play for Barcelona if he could.

And how many people would say no to a similar question, right now?

To be honest, everyone's entitled to their own opinion and if you think Shavva's out of order for saying what he said, then I'm not here to try and change your mind. But Andrei is as an Arsenal player, so I will stick up for him. And myself, too. When I mentioned Nick Bendtner as one of the players Andrei might not be sorry to leave behind, I did so purely because he is a young striker still learning the game. Having spent most of the season sticking up for a player I believe has a lot to offer and lot more to come at Arsenal, I'm not about to turn my back on young Bendtner. But it is obvious that there are many Arsenal fans who don't feel the same. If that is the feeling in the stands, it doesn't seem like much of a leap (although my girlfriend will tell you I'm very quick to jump to conclusions, usually wrong ones) to assume that perhaps Bendtner might not be everyone's cup of tea at the training ground.

before we get too divisive, let's get onto a subject we can all agree on; yes, you've guessed it, we're talking goalkeepers and how much we'd like a new one! Lukasz Fabianski has been in a year long nightmare that has included... well, a list of the errors he's made would take probably a year to write up, so let's just say that he hasn't performed to the best of his ability in pretty much any of the games he's featured in for the the first team for a year. Rightly or wrongly, he's been written off and ridiculed by sections of the media, the Arsenal online community as a whole and, bearing in mind the boss' reluctance to throw him in despite the continued uselessness of the Spanish waiter, apparently the boss too. The man himself is not shying away from the errors he's made this season, but points out the demands made on him as someone who has sat on the bench for long stages this season and has then been expected to perform at the drop of a hat.

"Every supporter has the right to give their opinion. I'm not stupid and I realise that incidents like the one at Wigan make other things appear less significant and that these are the things people remember. This season has been difficult for me. I've only been playing every few weeks or so and it's hard for any player who isn't playing regularly. Two games a week is much better for anyone, of course. This is the life of a keeper, though - some love it, some hate it but you just have to be strong with it. One day you can be the hero and the next people say you are the worst around. You just have to manage yourself in a good way and keep believing in yourself, keep working and fighting."

Perhaps it is not unreasonable to expect him to, as the Arseblogger points out, be ready to deal with that. After all, he knows what is expected of him, but it strikes me that a young goalkeeper, sitting on a bench watching that clown who wears our number one jersey is not going to learn very much about proper goalkeeping. I said this last week, actually. And I see in Fabianski an athletic shot stopper, who is positive in the penalty area and happy to come and catch crosses that Almunia would happily watch sail over his head, or flap into his own goal. I'm not saying Fabianski is ready to be Arsenal number one, because he clearly isn't but, as he himself recognises, he needs games and perhaps he needs them away from the glare of the Grove.

I admit that it seems as though he's getting on (he's been here a while now) but at the end of the day 25 is quite young for a goalkeeper and it's even younger for one who has made just 32 appearances in three years with the club- half of which came last season. I guess it comes down to whether you believe he's got talent worth persisting with. I do, but I still hope that one of the transfer targets Arsène is already working on happens to be a goalkeeper who is going to come in and lift the level here.

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