Wojciech Szczesny vs. David Ospina: Complete Breakdown of Arsenal Keeper Battle

For the second year in a row, Wojciech Szczesny is in a battle for his place.

Last season, the caliber of his performances gradually slipped as he made more and more mistakes. Unlike many of his predecessors, the Pole can effectively command his penalty area and is able to organize the defense, but he unfortunately shares with them the propensity to commit terrible mistakes.

While some of Szczesny's moments of madness can be attributed to inexperience—a 24-year-old goalkeeper still has over a decade left in his career—he has appeared 177 times for Arsenal and should by now be able to make the right choices more consistently.

Luckily for Arsenal, Lukasz Fabianski stepped up in a massive way when called upon to deputize for his compatriot right after recovering from a long-term injury. He started and performed impeccably against Bayern Munich and saved Arsenal's FA Cup hopes during a penalty shootout against Wigan.

Fabianski was simply brilliant toward the end of last season, but his contract ran out after the final game and Arsene Wenger chose Szczesny to be his long-term starter.

Given that Fabianski is five years older and is less proven at the top level, it seems that Wenger made the right choice. But he also did well to buy an experienced and quality player to back Szczesny up, as recent showings indicate.

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Unfortunately, David Ospina picked up an injury at the World Cup that has tanked most of his first season with Arsenal. He made a couple of appearances in the autumn months, but he then aggravated his prior injury and missed weeks of game time.

Coincidentally, though (and much like Fabianski), Szczesny began to falter after Ospina got fit again.

One of the most important justifications for having multiple starting-quality players in a given position is the competition for places it produces, and the competition between Szczesny and Ospina produced a change after Arsenal lost to Southampton earlier this month.

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Szczesny, who had been in rocky form for a few weeks, was absolutely catastrophic against the Saints, augmenting the poor play of the defenders in front of him by making boneheaded and rash decisions that allowed Southampton clearer runs at goal.

Ospina has started all games since bar one; against Brighton in the FA Cup.

The manager cannot justify dropping the Colombian, based on his recent outings. He has had surprisingly little to do in each of the games he's played but inactivity is no reason to bench a goalkeeper. 

Moreover, Ospina has not conceded a single goal in the three games he's played since coming into the starting XI. Correlation does not imply causation, but Wenger has to stick with the current setup for now.

There is little reason to think that Ospina will slip up in the near future. He is two years older than Szczesny and has more experience on the club and international levels. Consistently excellent for Nice in Ligue 1, he was assured and sometimes dominant in the World Cup this past summer, which might have encouraged Wenger to snap him up.

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Szczesny might have more raw talent and might be more capable of producing the occasional moment of brilliance. But even that is dubious. Ospina has very impressive reflexes, and always has an air of composure about him and has hardly made a single mistake in an Arsenal shirt.

Tellingly, he commanded a place in the starting lineup for Nice and Colombia for several years. Fending off competitors at that level for so many years speaks volumes, and indicates that he will not easily be unseated now.

Last season, Wenger did not have much of an incentive to play Fabianski over Szczesny, as long as he believed that they would perform similarly well, since the former was almost certainly gone in the summer when his contract expired.

But Ospina will be at Arsenal for several more years if he sticks to his contract, and he still has a couple of years to go before he enters his prime.

However, Szczesny possesses first-class talent, and he has at times been truly elite. On this evidence, his raw talent is roughly equivalent to David de Gea or Joe Hart, but he likely has several more years to play before he is as polished as those two.

He also seems to be spurred on by competition; that is, he is the sort of player who is naturally cocky (not an entirely negative quality for a goalkeeper to have) and needs to constantly be kept on his toes by someone of a similar caliber.

It will be very interesting to see how this healthy battle for the spot between Arsenal's goalposts plays out over the rest of this season. But, thankfully for Arsenal, this is a competition that will likely continue for many years to come.

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