“There is no history of teams winning things without having a great goalkeeper. I’m now 30 years in the job and as I said the other day you learn over the years that the goalkeeper is the most underrated position in football – and maybe the most vital one for winning things.”
That quote from Arsène Wenger came in December of last year, six months after Petr Čech had arrived at Arsenal from Chelsea.
Arsenal’s British core – touted as the way forward for the club in the final years of Arsène Wenger’s tenure and beyond, but a notion that has met much criticism, especially this season. With the Premier League clamping down and requiring clubs to have a certain amount of homegrown players on the books in the first-team, many clubs have been struggling to find British players that are of the standard required for their respective levels. The simple question; are Arsenal’s good enough, and if not, where does the club go from here?
This is not meant to be a doom and gloom piece, rather a survey of what we have, what they have done, where we hope they’ll be down the road and if they aren’t good enough, what course of action should we take…so away we go (and I apologize…this is far longer than I intended it to be).
If you fast forward to 1hr 25m 11s you will hear little Gimli having a chat with Alfie Scully (@alfiewscully) from “We Are The Ocean” (@wearetheocean) where they are talking about their latest single ‘Hey Now’ and his love of Arsenal, here is the video of them preforming live at the BBC’s Live Lounge that Alfie mentioned to Gimli in the interview, hope you like it.
A quick thanks to Shoot Music (@ShootMusic) for their help in arranging this interview, you can get them here Shoot Music.
P.S We have permission from Alfie to play this song at the end of the interview.
Problems using either of the two media players, try these :
Gimli (@GoonerGimli) has hosted 5 podcasts in a day and is near death but he is joined by :
Part 1
Danny
Tyrone @Tyrone_718
Karl @That_London_Guy
Ryan Rundle @RyanRundle1
Part 2
Danny
Kate
Steve @Lordhillwood
Tyrone @Tyrone_718
The Notorious J.E.D. @realjoshdawe
GentleGermanGooner @JojoWaack
Issa @Boss_Gooner
Pete Gooner @thepagooner
Stephen Sinclair @sinners17
Part 3
Akshay A Baliga @aabaliga
Drew @AFCBvB1410
Tom @TCanton94
Kris @AFCfreddie8
Ryan Hennick @ryhennick
Part 4
Danny
French Jon @Nytak_
Liam @LiamPLEdwards
Sim @SimplyEnigmatic
Ellis @EllisMehl
Aaqib @Aaqib_Alyas
Steffan @TheTallBlonde1
Part 5
Danny
Jason
Geoff
Kris
Kate
Raj
Problems using either of the two media players, try these :
Bit of an impromptu series this week as completely unscripted, the guys decided to send in blogs on players returning from injury. Here’s Luke’s blog on Jack Wilshere and check out Jake Arsenal’s (@JakeArsenal1) piece from earlier this week if you haven’t already. – OG
With Jack Wilshere seemingly edging closer and closer to full training and hopefully a return to team contention the question is what impact could he play in the final part of the season?
It’s been a long time since Wilshere burst onto the scene in a season highlighted by an amazing performance vs Pep’s Barcelona (arguably the best club team of all time). At this point we all thought Jack would be a mainstay in the squad, breaking 200+ games and one of our most important players – but injuries have written a different and cruel story so far. Wilshere has only managed 169 games in the years following his debut in 2008 against Blackburn and since his breakthrough season in 2010/2011 it seems our expectations for him have been slowly but surely dismantled piece by piece.