Cech retired from Czech today. No big surprise. P.s. There's a nice interview of Petr on the Arsenal podcast this week. He talks a lot about his youth development.
Now my next question is: When will Arsenal and Puma make the away and third (the away Photo Blue GK strip and the third Green GK strip respectively) GK kits available in short-sleeved form like they did the home black GK strip I picked up earlier?
Resurrecting this dormant thread... There's been a lot of debate about Cech vs Leno. Especially since Emery seems to want his keeper to play football with his feet. Which has led to some real gaffs on Petr's part in the opening games. On Monday's BBC 5Live podcast they had Ben Foster on, who seems a nice, smart chap. Anyway he said he felt bad for Cech whose entire illustrious career has been to play a different way, and now is being asked to learn this "modern" skillset. This is how I've been feeling too. He's still got many more strengths that far outweigh his inability to play like a CB. So how long to do you try this apparently risky experiment with Cech? Why not just play to his strengths? Obviously that puts a dilemma on the shoulders of our coach. Does he change his tactics based on his player's skillset? (he wouldn't be the first... in fact Foster's current coach is doing this for him) Or does he "rush" Leno into the first team because he's known to have better foot skills? (no idea if he's as good as Cech at the other aspects of his job) And if this footballing philosophy is so important, why hasn't Leno featured already? If I were the boss, I think I know what I'd do, but thankfully I am not! It's an interesting tension we have at the GK position this year. I just hope Emery manages it well.
The problem that coaches are trying to resolve is the low pass completion of long passes from deep. A large percentage of long kicks just end up coming back at you. Against Cardiff we had the following for long forward passes from deep, cech was 8/19 ; Sokratis was 1/3; mustafi 2/6; bellarin 0/1; Monreal 1/3; so 22 times we just gave the ball away by going long — not good. I know cech has had a few notable missed passes, but it hasn’t been that costly yet. To me, it looks like the Emery tactic is to actually invite pressure in the back to open up space up field and make the opposition run more. A few times I’ve noticed mustafi just hold the ball until he was pressed. So there is more to it then just playing out from the back which we did under Wenger.
So today he calls time on his career. Barring injury, he'll have 4 more months and a few chances at some meaningful matches. He's been a great keeper, a super classy guy, and he deserves a proper send off. Maybe not my all time favorite Arsenal keeper, but I've always liked him a lot and valued him highly. Well done Petr, and good luck with whatever you do.
Seems like he might do better as a first team GK coach. But I can't imagine happening next year with us, given the history with Leno & Emi. I also wonder if he might not have what it takes to be one of the rare goalies who can become a head coach.
You were spot on with our prediction 4 months ago. After tonight's swan song in Baku, supposedly he's off to be Technical Director, DoF, or something like that for Chelsea. It's understandable he chose them, given the deeper history he had there. But I'm a little sad that we didn't have a place for him at Arsenal (or couldn't lure him), and so we lose the asset that is Petr Cech: mentor, coach, scout, etc. He's a class act, so all you can do is wish him good luck in his future endeavors. And I'm so glad that he was given the start tonight. I think he deserved it for several reasons. One of which was his quality, which he showed by making several key saves. He was a relative bright spot in the collective fail that was the Baku Final.
Just sucks that was the final scene in his long and illustrious career. He deserved better. The team let him down and he deserved better. He might have done better on the Giroud goal, but he also kept us in the game.
I agree that his teammates kind of let him down. I don't really agree about the Giroud goal. That was a fantastic header that only top-class strikers can pull off. And I don't think many (or any) keepers, including Leno, are saving that.