Transfer rumor: David Ospina on loan to Besiktas?

I’m not sure I’d go so far as to call it a “logjam”, because that would imply that all were on more or less equal footing, but Arsenal have a bit of a keeper conundrum at the moment. Until this morning, there were four senior squad keepers on the books - Petr Cech, Bernd Leno, David Ospina, Emiliano Martinez - and Matt Macey, what the kids call One For The Future, was on the outside but threatening to crack that group this season.

Macey, of course, just went out on loan to Plymouth Argyle, which still leaves Arsenal with the four keepers mentioned above. I’m not exactly fluent with all the ins and outs of the rules of the game, but I do believe you can only play one keeper at a time, so, given that a team can only have so many players on its roster, four keepers might be at least one too many.

David Ospina is probably the most intriguing name on this list - a mistake-prone keeper for Arsenal, he generally plays well for Colombia, and I think he’s a better keeper than his Arsenal stint would so far indicate. He might just need some time away from the club, or a permanent move, to kick-start his career and become the keeper that I think he’s capable of becoming.

Such a move has been rumored a while - earlier this summer, it was a maybe-loan to Boca Juniors, and while that, like most rumors, turned out to be nothing, the concept of loaning him somewhere this season has yet to die, with Besiktas reported to be the latest club interested in acquiring Ospina’s services on a temporary basis.

If that report is to be believed, Arsenal have accepted a €1.5M loan fee for Ospina, and now it’s up to Ospina whether he wants to head to Turkey or not. The 29 year old will want to play every game, and with Cech and Leno in front of him, it’s clear that that won’t be the case at Arsenal. A loan would be great because it opens the door to come back to Arsenal next season, after what is presumably Cech’s last year in London, but at that point he’d still be behind Leno on the team sheet, so if this rumor pans out, it may be that we’ve seen the last of Ospina in an Arsenal shirt.