by After last night’s 2-1 Champions League defeat by Porto, Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger has declared that he will no longer field lucky competition winners in goal during Europe’s premier club competition.
Lucky supporter Lukasz Fabianski was drawn from a hat shortly before kick-off and left the terraces to take his position behind the Arsenal back four for last night’s last first leg knock-out match.
Unfortunately, Fabianski was at fault for both Porto goals, despite a last minute briefing from the management on the rules of association football.
After the match, a despondent Wenger told reporters, “We like to keep the fans involved, obviously, but you saw tonight the consequence of having an amateur between the posts.”
“He told us he’d played in goal for his school a couple of times, so we gave him the gloves instead of putting him up front. But frankly, that claim seems quite preposterous when you look at his performance.”
Regret
Wenger expressed his regret over his previous backing of the controversial ‘fans in the team’ initiative.
“I will admit to originally being a fan of the ‘Play For Arsenal’ lottery, but I am starting to think we should have played an actual goalkeeper this evening.”
“It’s not just on the pitch that it has caused issues – as I was giving the team talk he went round getting everyone’s autograph.”
“We have to remember, first and foremost we are a global sports brand, and as such we must make significant progress in competitions such as this one.”
A leading Arsenal fan told us, “I can just imagine the taunting we’re going to get off the Man United fans at work, I’m getting absolutely sick of hearing them sing, ‘Our global brand recognition is bigger than yours’.”
“I like Wenger, but unless he starts putting professional footballers in goal really soon, he’s going to lose the support of the fans – apart from the one’s he plays, obviously.”
