ENGLISH PREMIER LEAGUE: Fulham 0 Arsenal 5: VITO MANNONE has the name of a mobster, the face of a pugilist and, on the evidence of this man-of-the-match performance, the reflexes of a serious goalkeeper. The Arsenal third-choice's fourth appearance of the season was first-class and Manuel Almunia's chest infection means he will start tomorrow night as well, against Olympiakos in the Champions League.
After a start to the season where the big signings Thomas Vermaelen and Andrey Arshavin have been Arsenal’s outstanding performers, the club’s reputation as the league’s leading nursery of precocity needed this show-stopper from a 21-year-old Italian.
A pair of nervy performances, in the victories over Standard Liege and Wigan Athletic, were exorcised here by six saves of the highest order as an off-colour Arsenal frustrated Roy Hodgson’s side, whose tally of four league goals to date is the second worst in the Premier League after pointless Portsmouth.
“That’s the best game I have ever played,” the Italian said. “When I have played in the past it wasn’t so important. In the first team you have to show what you can do and I think I did that.
“For me my favourite save was the double save in the first half when I went to my right. It gave me a lot of confidence,” he said of his 15th-minute denial of Andrew Johnson and Clint Dempsey. “It hit me in the face so it has made me a little bit uglier. I want to improve my confidence. It’s better to have lots of saves to do than to have nothing to do for 80 minutes and then make one save.”
That confidence took quite a buffeting during a loan spell at Barnsley three years ago. Mannone’s miserable Oakwell experience was ended by injury after four games and since then he has been developing quietly in the shadow of Almunia and Lukasz Fabianski.
Arsene Wenger suggested the Italian’s travails in Yorkshire altered club policy on the blooding of its starlets.
“I think he was a bit too young and that’s why I am a bit more cautious now with giving our foreign players out on loan when they are very young, because in England, in the Championship, you are under big pressure,” the Arsenal manager said.
The pressure on Mannone here was accentuated by a lacklustre performance from Arsenal’s stars and it was only after the break, having ghost-walked through the previous 51 minutes, that captain Cesc Fabregas introduced himself, playing a perfectly weighted through pass for Robin van Persie, who killed the ball with his left before rolling it beyond Mark Schwarzer with his right.
That may have been the match-winner but it was Mannone, spotted by an Arsenal scout playing for Atalanta aged 16, who accepted the plaudits of his team-mates at full-time. (-Guardian Service)
