Bernd Leno

At the time I thought it was odd we were signing Chelsea’s back up keeper instead of looking for our own Courtois. He’s not good enough for our direct competitor but good enough for us?

The Cech signing and summer window underlined Wenger’s flawed approach. I hope we get alot more aggressive with acquiring youth talent

I said he was a shit signing

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Who the f-ck cares? A reasonable (and on paper good signing) at the time that didn’t work out. End of. Kindergarten opens again tomorrow @Trion

Agreed. Nothing but a stop gap really.

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He’s been our number one for three seasons - that’s what an awful long time for a stop gap

Hasnt stopped enough gaps.

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I don’t get how Leno cost us £22.5 million and Liverpool apparently bid for Brazil’s goalkeeper Alisson for £62 million. Makes no sense in the market these days.

Sounds about right to me given the difference in their ability. If anything, we slightly overpaid.

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Well Leno is apparently not particularly good, so if that’s true it makes sense really

Is this really a serious post?

Lel…

Yes. I don’t see how he had two decent seasons at his old club and Roma to command such a fee. Whilst Leno although might not be as good as some say is a starter who played for a number of seasons at a known club in Europe.

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Alisson has been playing at a very high level and at his age (25) seems his best years are ahead of him.

Leno was lauded earlier in his career and considered a top tier prospect with the likes of De Gea, potentially we’ve signed a great keeper but that’s being very optimistic as his development has definitely stalled, it isn’t a sure thing like Alisson seems to be.

Interesting take on Leno

In the 2013/2014 season, he even developed the nickname “Elfmeter Killer” literally “penalty killer”, saving six penalties across the campaign.

In hindsight, that summer was when things changed for Leno as Leverkusen appointed Roger Schmidt as their new head coach. That changed how they played, the focus of which was a more gung-ho style of pressing and little emphasis on building up from the back.

The tactic proved effective in spells but the longer that Schmidt stayed, the more apparent a decline became. It’s difficult to recall when Schmidt’s Leverkusen ever really had a Plan B and his reign came crashing down with a 6-2 defeat at Dortmund in March last year. “A step in the right direction,” was how Schmidt bizarrely termed it in the press conference, with Leverkusen involved in an unfamiliar fight against relegation for the rest of the season.

How the time under Schmidt affected Leno could be seen by his comments in November. Under new coach Heiko Herrlich, they were looking a lot more effective without getting the rewards which they would later in the campaign, as they narrowly missed out on Champions League football.

“I am very happy with the way that we try to play football,” said Leno, pulling back for the punchline.

“For three years, we had no build up play. The coach now puts more of an emphasis on build up play and possession – I think that’s very, very important.”

Under Schmidt, Leno had to fend for himself more, both on the pitch and in training. There were times when he rarely had proper goalkeeping training with the goalkeeping coach, according to sources close to the club.

In games, large amounts of space were left behind the Leverkusen backline and Leno struggled to adapt to sweeping duties, with similar mistakes recurring in each Bundesliga season with Schmidt.

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That is the best case scenario… for GK, not crazy about rolling the dice, but in general I do believe that a club like Arsenal does need to look at these types of opportunistic (tbf the price doesn’t feel opportunistic) buys to round things out and hit one them from time to time… we can’t be spending 60 million that often, so we need these 20 million ones to come good every so often.

20m, I don’t know what you guys are expecting… but a 20m keeper, all I am asking is just consistent performance, a starting keeper to do a starting keeper’s job. Error once in a while is acceptable.

Not sure I totally disagree, but didn’t we basically have a few decent options in Cech, Ospina, even Martinez? Nothing spectacular but reasonable options? It seems a bit strange not to truly upgrade (we’ll see - maybe Sven pulled a rabbit on this one) when you already have 3 pretty ok options…

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Yeah, that’s basically what i’m hoping for to the honest. I’m still not enthralled by the signing and i’m not expecting him to ever be a world beater. I mean (depending what happens with Chelsea and Liverpool) it’s more than likely we will have the worst keeper in the top 6 (and the rest…) by a long chalk.

But, hey, glass half full and all that – so i’m hoping we can press refresh on him and at least turn him into a solid somewhat reliable keeper.

If coaching is what he’s been lacking then it’s a good job that we didn’t sign him while Wenger was still in charge!

Make no mistake Cech’s numbers are bad partly because of the lack of defensive structure in place. Would like to know which top 6 team allowed the most shots last season.

Hope Emery deals with this, it’s part of the reason he was hired

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I’m not sure I can believe in a concept like talented but error prone goalkeepers.

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