Monday 11 May 2015 16:02, UK
Former Arsenal goalkeeper Lukasz Fabianski returns to Arsenal for Monday Night Football having enjoyed a superb season with Swansea, writes Adam Bate.
For Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United, it was Viv Anderson. For Arsene Wenger at Arsenal, after giving the green light to bring in Remi Garde and Patrick Vieira, it was Nicolas Anelka. They say you never forget your first signing. So when Garry Monk opted to bring Lukasz Fabianski to Swansea in the summer, it was a surprise to some. This was a goalkeeper who Wenger had called “top level” with “massive potential” but had also endured difficulties following a series of high-profiles errors and the subsequent ‘Flappyhandski’ jibes that wouldn’t go away.
Curiously, Monk appeared to regard the player’s lows at Arsenal just as instructive as those words of praise from his former boss. It was the desire to achieve his potential that struck a chord with the Swansea boss. “I want good players, but I always want players who want to prove a point,” said Monk upon the Pole’s arrival. “Fab has come here with something to prove, and that is something we will look for with every player we bring in.” In Fabianski’s case, it’s been a huge success.
As he nears the end of his first season with the Swans, the 30-year-old has already made more Premier League appearances than he mustered in seven seasons at Arsenal and is in line for various player of the year awards. Monk’s men are set for their best league finish in over 30 years and the second best in the club’s history, with Fabianski’s 12 clean sheets a significant part of that success. He’s back as Poland No.1 having made his first start in almost two years in March and has even been linked with a move to Roma.
“He’s right up there with anyone in the Premier League,” said Monk, quoted in the South Wales Evening Post in November. “Lukasz is one of those players who just goes about his business every day, he works incredibly hard with the other keepers and he is enjoying his football here. He just needed someone to show some faith in him, someone to give him a chance to feel like a No. 1 keeper. He has been given that chance here and he has taken it with both hands.”
Monk can be forgiven the pun. Fabianski’s handling has been hugely impressive. He has made the most catches in the Premier League by a distance and that’s not just his preference for the lost art of clutching onto the ball as Fabianski also ranks among the top goalkeepers in terms of number of punches too. It’s a reflection of the fact that he is a proactive keeper with a desire to relieve the pressure on his defence – a quality Monk has identified as crucial for his team.
“He comes for crosses, he commands his box and he does that very well,” said Monk in December. “That's something I look for in a keeper because I know as a defender that there's nothing better than when you have a keeper who wants to come and punch or catch to help out his defence. At some time this season he will come and drop one and something will come of it, but that's being a keeper. The other 100 times when he comes out, there's no better feeling as a defender.”
Swansea captain Ashley Williams now knows first-hand what it’s like to enjoy that kind of support behind him and it’s clear he regards Fabianski as a little bit different to the goalkeepers he’d previously become accustomed to. “The pleasing thing is that he comes for stuff when we're under pressure and that's something maybe we haven't had that much at Swansea before,” said Williams. “Sometimes when the crosses are flying in he comes and punches or collects and that’s brilliant.”
The inevitable mistakes that Monk had anticipated did arrive eventually. Firstly, in late December, an attempted clearance ricocheted off Liverpool’s Adam Lallana and into his net. More recently, there was a fumble from an Esteban Cambiasso free-kick that allowed Leicester to double their lead with a minute remaining at the King Power Stadium. However, these are the exceptions that prove the rule and the statistics support the view that the Swansea goalkeeper is making a difference this season.
According to Opta, Fabianski has dropped only one catch in the entire campaign. That’s far fewer than the other goalkeepers with plenty of catches to their name. Indeed, only David de Gea and Allan McGregor among the Premier League regulars can boast blemish-free records and the two men have 46 claimed catches between them. Fabianski has made 83 of them. Moreover, current Arsenal No.1 David Ospina, for all his impressive form, has dropped the ball four times in 14 games.
Of course, Ospina’s fine performances do mean that there will be few regrets at the Emirates Stadium on Monday evening when Fabianski returns to the ground for the first time since his switch. While Wenger admitted ahead of the reverse fixture that he didn’t want the keeper to go, Fabianski was at the end of his contract and not guaranteed first-team football. As he himself put it upon signing for Swansea, having signed off with an FA Cup win over Hull in May, it was “an easy decision” to walk away.
I felt I needed to prove something, but not any more.
It’s a further indication that this is a man returning at peace with his move and his own game. Perhaps he doesn’t share his manager’s view that there remains a point to prove. “I think you can clearly see that I am a different goalie to the one I used to be,” he told The Guardian earlier this season. “I felt I needed to prove something, but not any more.” It seems that Lukasz Fabianski is now the goalkeeper that Garry Monk – and Arsene Wenger – always believed he could be.
Watch Arsenal v Swansea live on Sky Sports 1 HD from 7pm on Monday
