Paul Robinson heaped praise on West Ham goalkeeper Lukasz Fabianski for the way he has improved in recent years.
The Sky Sports pundit admitted that he didn’t rate the Hammers shot-stopper when he was at Arsenal but claimed he was now a lot better as he has improved as he has gotten older.
Robinson stated that he feels Fabianski isn’t one of the top goalkeepers in the Premier League, but pointed out that he is very consistent and only prone to the odd mistake.
“When he was at Arsenal I didn’t rate him but I think he developed as he’s got older and he’s done very, very well,” Robinson told Football Insider.
“You look at him and he’s not a top goalkeeper, there’s brackets; you look at Alisson, Ederson, De Gea, there’s a bracket of top, top goalkeepers and then there’s the bracket of the ones who are not so good.
“He’s somewhere around the middle for me. He’s been very consistent, he makes the odd mistake but he’s having a very good season. He’s a lot better goalkeeper now than when he was at Arsenal years ago.”
OPINION
Fabianski has improved in recent seasons and West Ham are benefitting from his talents. While the experienced keeper is currently out injured, ahead of being stuck on the sidelines the 34-year-old was in top form and a key member of Manuel Pellegrini’s side. Fabianski made 20 saves across the first seven league games of the season and even managed to rack up three clean sheets (Source: Premier League). It’s also worth noting in his seven league outings, the veteran shot-stopper only conceded eight goals, which is just over one per game, and that seems ridiculously impressive when you consider five of them came in the opening day defeat to Manchester City. The 34-year-old may not have had the same success at Arsenal, as he was nicknamed ‘Flapianski’ (Source: Daily Mail) which seems insulting to say the least, but it’s worth noting that he was much younger and normally a player does tend to improve with experience. This is especially the case with goalkeepers as decision making is a big part of a shot-stopper’s game and you are only going to improve in that department by trial and error.
