Love to say I told you so, so when we signed him I said on here we'd need another keeper for the bench as Covolan is prone to early departures. We haven't got another keeper, so we now need to sign one. I think that is the reason Port Vale are loaning him out. They paid money for him I think, but he let them down with similar behaviour. He is a decent keeper - a step up on what Stone Loach is now - WHEN HE STAYS ON THE PITCH. But he's Brazilian with a temperament similar to their leader. And if I and lots of others knew about Covolan why didn't Cookie? This was an accident waiting to happen.
Above all else a goalie has to be reliable and available every week. If he's erratic he'll make a struggling team struggle even more. Ask Everton. Despite Pickford's sometime brilliant saves they look permanently unsettled and likely to concede. On Saturday had he not tried to play the hero and pretend he could keep in a ball, which was already a yard over the line, the errant Godfrey wouldn't have broken his leg. You never saw Gordon Banks do that kind of garbage. Do simple things perfectly and once in a while make the best save anyone has ever seen, because you were calm enough to read it, see it and do it all in one move. I had talent, but temperament is massively more important.
I agree it is a huge risk to play without cover for your keeper when a substitute could be available. We've lost vital games in the past with a keeper reduced to total immobility through injury and a Division One play-off with an emergency keeper signed, despite not having played a competitive game for two years, who let one in from the halfway line. You'd think a club which has produced the two greatest English goalies, Banks and Sam Hardy, might just learn the lesson that SGB's wife is probably teaching him with a rolling pin. (That's always made me laugh, the idea of wives hitting their husband with a rolling pin. There is something inherently funny about a rolling pin.) If she says it's Pete Seeger it's easier just to hide the album cover.
Above all else a goalie has to be reliable and available every week. If he's erratic he'll make a struggling team struggle even more. Ask Everton. Despite Pickford's sometime brilliant saves they look permanently unsettled and likely to concede. On Saturday had he not tried to play the hero and pretend he could keep in a ball, which was already a yard over the line, the errant Godfrey wouldn't have broken his leg. You never saw Gordon Banks do that kind of garbage. Do simple things perfectly and once in a while make the best save anyone has ever seen, because you were calm enough to read it, see it and do it all in one move. I had talent, but temperament is massively more important.
I agree it is a huge risk to play without cover for your keeper when a substitute could be available. We've lost vital games in the past with a keeper reduced to total immobility through injury and a Division One play-off with an emergency keeper signed, despite not having played a competitive game for two years, who let one in from the halfway line. You'd think a club which has produced the two greatest English goalies, Banks and Sam Hardy, might just learn the lesson that SGB's wife is probably teaching him with a rolling pin. (That's always made me laugh, the idea of wives hitting their husband with a rolling pin. There is something inherently funny about a rolling pin.) If she says it's Pete Seeger it's easier just to hide the album cover.