Arsene Wenger has branded keeper Manuel Almunia ‘world
class’ and compared him to the very best in The Premier
League.
The unheralded Spaniard has kept four successive clean sheets,
prompting the Arsenal manager to liken him to Edwin van der Sar and
Petr Cech.
The 31-year-old came to Arsenal’s rescue on Tuesday night, in
their 1-0 Champions League win over Roma, with a superb finger-tip
stop to deny Marco Motta.
It was Almunia’s 15th clean sheet of the campaign, a statistic
that has not gone unnoticed by his manager.
Wenger said: “He does not get the credit he deserves, but if
these performances last it will happen.
"He is up there with Van der Sar and Cech. You can only keep
clean sheets, you cannot do much better.”
The Arsenal manager admitted the keeper had only suffered one
bad game all season, in the 4-4 draw with Arsenal.
“Almunia has had a good season. I think his one difficult game
was against Tottenham and the fans are less forgiving for a game
like that than any other game.
“I think we have two world class keepers in Almunia and Lukasz
Fabianski.”
