Spherical Planet
Well-known member
It's a global pandemic amongst goalies, mate.You have a lot more knowledge about playing goalkeeper than anyone else on the Noise, SP. I'm interested in what your thoughts on the reasons why all of our recent goalkeepers have not dominated the box as you'd imagine a GK of their size should do?
Is it the way our GK coach Woods insists on them playing? Or do we target buying goalies who play this way? Is it the way modern football has gone and goalies prefer to remain rooted to their goalline when defending? Or a combination/none of these reasons?
I'd say Boruc was our last keeper that would dominate his box. Fraser Forster was a beast of a player but relied mainly on his short stopping ability when defending set pieces. Craig Gordon was the same and so is Hart. It drives me mad seeing so many crosses into our 6 yard box that our goalies are not even challenging for. I'd rather have a keeper clean house and clear the ball rather than stand on the line relying on their reflexes to save any header/shot.
Now we have enjoyed a lot of success and some brilliant goalies in recent years, but is that because of - or despite - using this style of goalkeeping to defend set-pieces around our goalmouth?
I really can't think of one top keeper who dominates his box anymore. I have a few theories on the subject though:
1. The modern balls are like 'floaters' nowadays and I think a lot of keepers don't trust the flight patterns.
2. I think the modern players are too muscular and lose a little bit of their natural agility because of heavy muscle mass. Interesting that you mention the Holy Goalie because I doubt that hours spent in the gym were pretty high up on his list of priorities. The boy had a tendency to carry an extra pound or three, but you can't argue with his agility.
3. I think you're spot on when you suggest that the current trend might be for keepers to leave that type of job to their big centre-halves and that also seems to be the case across the globe.
I think it's important to note that it's not always the case that the goalie has to claim every ball coming into his 6-yard box, but with the extra latitude given to keepers, they should be doing more to stop a clean contact for an incoming header.
The recent semi against Aberdeen was a case in point. Wee Johnstone gave up too much space for the crosses to get in, but both those crosses had to travel 30-35 yards to land on heads....that should have been plenty of wriggle room for big Joe to get his bearings to at least prevent a clean contact.