It’s hard to believe that the recently finished World Cup was Jens Lehmann’s first as the undisputed number one of the German national team and even more so when you consider that the Arsenal man is now well into his veteran years at the age of 36. Of course the fact that his main competition for most of his professional career has been former German captain Oliver Kahn puts something more of an understandable spin on things but with Kahn now seemingly out of contention, Lehmann has set his sights on Euro 2008 as his career swansong.

With only one year left on his contract at Arsenal and having expressed a desire to play for one season in Germany before he retires it may be an early hint to Arsene Wenger to keep his eyes peeled for goalkeeping reinforcements for next season. Lehmann may be many things (completely bonkers being the primary one) be he seems to plot his own course through his career and if he says he’ll be back in Germany for a season before retiring after the European Championships in two years time then Arsene had better believe him. I can’t see too many “will he, won’t he” situations previously favoured by the Arsenal French contingent of Patrick Vieira (before the decision was taken out his hands last summer) and, lately, Thierry Henry.

With Lehmann going then, can Arsenal rely on Wenger’s ability to find them a competent replacement in the timeframe they have? The spectre of Richard Wright, Stuart Taylor and Rami Shabaan still looms large over Wenger’s goalkeeper ability judging history and with only Manuel Almunia and Mart Poom on the Ashburton Grove books, he can’t rely on what is already there. England has found itself in the midst of a goalkeeping slump of late, Spurs’ Paul Robinson being the only young quality keeper getting any deserved first team action and with a dearth of quality keepers all over Europe as well, Wenger may find that getting Thierry Henry to stay this summer was easy in comparison to replacing the enigmatic but effective German number one.

Alex Ferguson took many years to find an adequate replacement to Peter Schmeichel in the form of Edwin Van Der Sar, Arsene Wenger did the same after David Seaman moved on. Now he’s got 12 months to do it all over again. There aren’t many Premiership managers who would envy him the task.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 14th, 2006 at 1:25 pm and is filed under Arsenal. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.