She’s the keeper

Timing is everything in life. In December, I learned that Manu Zinsberger had signed a new contract with the club. I find Zinsberger’s Arsenal story really compelling, not least because she is a player I have changed my mind about on several occasions. When she first arrived, I felt she was a good footballer but an average goalkeeper.

In Jonas Eidevall’s first season, I really detected an improvement in her play which I don’t necessarily think translated into the 2022-23 season. However, since the arrival of Sabrina D’Angelo in January 2023, I felt Zinsberger’s game had gone to another level. D’Angelo was brought in because she is very strong at claiming crosses, long kicking and quickly starting counter-attacks.

In other words, these were qualities where Zinsberger did not excel. Until D’Angelo’s arrival that is. Zinsberger claimed over three times more crosses per 90 in 2023-24 compared to the season before. Her long kicking became much better and she became quicker at releasing the ball to launch counters.

In other words, she quickly understood the qualities of Sabrina D’Angelo and made sure she rose to that challenge and worked hard on those development points. Zinsberger was awarded a new Arsenal contract while D’Angelo has been released at the expiry of hers this summer. It’s the third senior goalkeeper Zinsberger has ‘seen off’ during her time at the club, with Pauline Peyraud-Magnin and Lydia Williams also frustrated in their attempts to take Zinsberger’s spot. (All of whom had similar profiles to D’Angelo too).

I like players that add attributes to their games, who clearly work on weaknesses and accentuating strengths and I really saw that in Zinsberger. I asked to interview her once I became aware that she had extended her contract. Arsenal granted me the interview and I sat down with Manu on a Friday lunchtime in February with a plan to release the interview as a podcast.

She is such a charismatic communicator that I wanted to release the interview in audio form. It went very well, when you sketch out an interview in your mind it doesn’t always go as you think, but this one went pretty well I would say. The problem was that two days later, Zinsberger made a howler in a 2-1 defeat at West Ham. I don’t think Manu has made many mistakes this season, despite some of the harsh commentary around her. But that was a stone cold clanger.

She made the mistake trying to claim a cross and when I asked Jonas Eidevall about it after, he said, ‘The goalkeeper that doesn’t try to do anything doesn’t make mistakes. I want players who are brave.’ The (selfish) issue for me was that the interview was due to go out the next day, when ‘public opinion’ around the player was probably at an all-time low.

We delayed the release for a few days but, really, that was still not sufficient in hindsight. I think public opinion towards Zinsberger did subsequently soften after an excellent performance in the Conti Cup Final in March. That also arrived in the wake of Tom Garry’s story in the Telegraph that Arsenal were interested in Aston Villa and Netherlands goalkeeper Daphne van Domselaar and fans had greater context around the contract renewal.

Zinsberger’s contract renewal drew a mixed response but I think some of that was based on the misunderstanding that a new deal meant Zinsberger would become the de facto number 1 choice in perpetuity. I think as supporters we sometimes think of contracts as ‘rewards’ for past performance as opposed to bets on future performance.

Players don’t get contracts as a thank you for what they have done (with rare exceptions in particular circumstances) they get them because clubs are ‘betting’ on what players will deliver over the course of the next contract. In Arsenal’s case, history shows you they want two established, international goalkeepers. This has really been the case since Siobhan Chamberlain joined the club to compete with Emma Byrne in 2014.

The goalkeeping situation at Arsenal- and other big clubs- should always be viewed as a private battle between two goalkeepers. Zinsberger’s new contract was not a promise of future supremacy, it was an acknowledgment that she had won her private duel with D’Angelo, just as she had won the duels with Peyraud-Magnin and Williams before.

If van Domselaar does arrive this summer as the club hope, then it just means the battle resets for Zinsberger and she welcomes a new challenger in another goalkeeping Royal Rumble. One of the reasons Zinsberger has survived is because of how she responds to competition, by analysing her game and trying to push her levels.

That’s probably why Arsenal felt giving her a new contract was a good ‘bet’ as she contemplates her next challenge. Manu has a new contract, van Domselaar (again, if Arsenal get that deal done) will clearly be at the beginning of a deal and the two will probably spend the next two seasons battling it out and in 2026, one of them will almost certainly leave, defeated.