His contract expires next summer. I guess he thinks, quite rightly, he is good enough for regular games somewhere else. I guess he thinks, quite rightly, he can’t dislodge Alisson in the near future.
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Called up to the Ireland squad for their two upcoming friendlies.
Randolph, Bazunu and Kelleher are the 3 GK’s.
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Won’t be a massive loss if he leaves, in all fairness. I’m still surprised he appears, currently, to be Klopp’s chosen one in the backup role when Jaros has been a better prospect at every level before the first team.
He’s nearly 3 years older though, right? Give Jaros another season and he’ll probably supplant Kelleher.
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And to be fair - he has performed well when he’s been called on.
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Can we make much if we flog him with one year left in his contract? If not, then I’d like to see us bin Adrian and keep Kevin as backup for next season. He then gets to leave for free to the club of his choosing if he doesn’t sign a contract extension.
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There are happiness and morale issues to doing that - but it is a potential scenario might work well enough for both player and club as we have a lot of young talented goalies queued up to come through and the best in the world holding the #1 jersey right now.
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If he wants to be back up Alisson then I’d take that, if not we will need to find a replacement for Adrian, we can’t have that again next season, I’m sorry.
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Considering, speculating actually, that Kelleher wants regular games and don’t want to sign an extension, what do we do?
Do we keep him for year left in his contract, or do we sell him for a small fee.
I really liked the lad. Would be sad to see him go.
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In terms of his game time, I think the club can sit down with him and give him a package that makes it worth staying. He should get the cup games, hopefully a couple of CL dead rubbers, and a reasonable chance, given Alisson’s record, 8-10 league games. Sign a contact extension, get a bump in salary and if he’s still not happy, he can get his move next year. By which point Jaros or Pitaluga might be ready?
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Club should tell him he will play all FA Cup, League Cup, and Dead Rubber CL games in the group. That’s about 15 games in the season. Not too bad for a young backup
I don’t think he’s good enough as a player for us to go making promises to.
I’d just say stay if you want but you’re free to leave. I doubt he gets a move to anyone higher than League One level.
There are a couple of experienced GKs available cheap this summer and we have Jaros, Pitaluga, Grabara and Ojrzynski if we want to develop a youngster.
Kelleher has done ok in some appearances (and really poorly in others) but ultimately he’s not even the “type” of keeper we would ideally want. He’s not quick off his line and he’s not comfortable in possession.
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I thought he was very good in possession actually. Both footed, and was passing very well. Could even see Joey G and Matip I think it was passing back to him plenty. Reckon he could get a championship move if he left tbh
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Really?
When he deputised for Alisson earlier in the season, I thought he was exceptional in that regard.
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He improved, to be fair to him, but he often looks like Bambi on ice when it comes to having the ball at his feet. At no point in his youth career has his footballing ability been a strong suit - it’s his shot stopping that was high quality but you can say that about any of our goalkeeping prospects.
I’ve said it before and I’ll continue to say it - Vitezslav Jaros is a significantly better goalkeeper.
I always thought Grabara was a better keeper.
Disagree. If you were in Adrian’s thread, then yeah.
Bambi? Hyperbole at its finest.
Here is Klopp on selecting Kelleher ahead of Adrian this season:
“I really think Adrian has done a fantastic job for us, he kept a lot of clean sheets, played everywhere,” Klopp said. "But now we needed the natural football playing ability of Caoimhin Kelleher.
"We needed that for the pressing of Ajax, we needed his chips from him into the half-spaces and these kind of things.
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I disagree with Klopp on this one, as I made clear earlier in the thread when I described his faith in Kelleher as surprising.
That doesn’t really pass the eye-test, for me. I thought he was superb with the ball at his feet.
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I think he did surprisingly well, whether that was sustainable or not we may never know now.
I think he’ll be moving on.
It might create a better opportunity though.
We were going to have a goalkeeper come in I think as Adrian was going, but with Kelleher being surprisingly promising I don’t think we could have “rewarded” that promise by bringing a good back up Keeper in ahead of him. It would have been a 3rd choice.
If Kelleher is casting his future into doubt then fine let’s bring in a good 2nd choice Keeper. Kelleher, if he is still here, or Jaros or one of the other young Keepers can then be 3rd choice.
That would make us stronger than what I expected which was Kelleher being 2nd choice (if he has at least a medium term future here) as, at this stage, he’s earned it with an older or more limited Keeper as 3rd choice.