Bob Wilson defends Wojciech Szczesny

Wojciech deserves to be the Arsenal No1 at this time. What niggles me about this recent criticism after the Southampton game is that if people go back four days to the West Ham game, his performance was so good he won us the three points.

If you are looking for incidents to blame him, put the first goal at Southampton against him, fine, but don’t start arguing with me about the second goal because it was not his fault.

Any goalkeeper will tell you, lying on the floor with the opposition closing in on you, you make contact and you have no chance to get any leverage on it. It could go anywhere as a result of a situation not of his making.

He did not have his best game but most ex-keepers would say the last thing you want to do with your No1 goalie is give him a rest. If I was goalkeeping coach there now and Arsene was asking me, I would say, ‘don’t drop him’.

Every goalkeeper makes mistakes. I spend a lot of time with David Seaman and all anybody asks him was, ‘what happened with Ronaldinho and Nayim?’

The people in the know should recognise who is the best goalkeeper there. Ospina looked pretty good at the World Cup and he looked fine in the Hull game. He made a couple of really good catches and made one save low down. But that is all he had to do. It wasn’t a serious test.

[Off the field incidents] shouldn’t affect you but sometimes it does because you aren’t in the best place. He seems to be a very confident, phlegmatic boy. A problem has cropped up here and he has to remain totally focused.

The only time I can give a similar example was after we had won the Double, I got carried off in the semi-final of the 1972 FA Cup and was out for six or seven months. I came back the following season and we lost 5-0 at Derby. Every newspaper said, ‘this is the end of Bob Wilson’. My kids came back from school crying because the other kids had said, ‘your Dad is useless’.

The next game was Tottenham away. We won, I had a blinder and my place in the team was assured. You must never believe you are anything less than good enough and always think you are better than the guy challenging you. Wojciech needs to keep his confidence high.