Well, Achterberg hasnāt been at the club for over 50 years so itās not just him! There are obviously good keepers out there because most of the top teams have at least one. They must come from somewhere! Even just on the law of averages youād think that one of them in the last 50 years might have started out in our youth ranks, particularly when weāre scouring the world for top talent and seem to sign at least two every year for the academy.
Seems a nice bloke but I hated David James in goal for us.
Never forgot the 2 errors v Coventry that cost us a title in 96/97.
How he was no 1 for so long Ill never know. You think Adrian has an error in him David James had so many errors per game it was unreal.
Brad Friedel was great for everyone he played for except us.
I was at the Spurs game where he made his debut and conceded inside 5 minutes with near post header. He was utter garbage for us.
Diego Cavalieri had good potential but I think had a heart problem.
Westeverweld may have won treble but had issues saving shots. Good kicker though.
Itās not just young keepers, itās young defensive players full stop.
A while ago I recalibrated my expectations around young defenders to accept that it was unrealistic to expect a youngster to make that breakthrough. I think around the time that Ilori was jettisoned.
Itās not realistic for a young player - who will make lots of mistakes - to be dropped in to a team expected to win the majority of games. The pressure is too great and the atmosphere is too febrile. Look at the shit Neco got the other week, and he hadnāt even done anything wrong.
I got a bit excited about Hoever, but Iām now back to being resigned that unless they are a generation talent no young defender or keeper is going to break through. The one to Liverpool for the education, but their value to LFC is that weāll flip them for a profit somewhere down the line.
Van den Berg, Koumetia and Williams are great talents. Some of the best young CBs of their generation. I doubt any of them will play a league minute for us.
The recalibration of expectations is a byproduct of us now being so good. Iām a bit sad about the difficulty young players will have breaking through here, but overall Iām made up with the level of the team now.
While we will never stockpile and be a Chelsea, as suchā¦ I see us making more use of the loan market with the young players we acquire, and only the very best of them will have any sort of chance to get in the squad, but I expect us to educate them, improve them, and sell them, mostly at a profit.
A selected list ordered by games per error leading to goal (best to worst). Brackets are their position on the total all-time list (Begovic is top with 27 in 252 appearances)
Van der Sar 5 in 313 appearances (43rd) 62.6 games per error
David āCalamityā James 10 in 572 appearances (23rd) 57.2 games per error
Thibous Courtois 3 in 126 appearances (57th) 42 games per error
Kepa Arrizzabalaga 2 in 71 appearances (68th) 35.5 games per error
Reina 10 in 297 appearances (23rd) 29.7 games per error
De Gea 13 in 316 appearances (14th) 24.3 games per error
Ederson 6 in 112 appearances (37th) 18.7 games per error
Cech 24 in 443 appearances (2nd) 18.4 games per error
Alisson 4 in 70 appearances (51st) 17.5 games per error
Karius 2 in 29 appearances (68th) 14.5 games per error
Adrian 10 in 137 appearances (23rd) 13.7 games per error
Mignolet 18 in 245 appearances (6th) 13.6 games per error
Pickford 14 in 149 appearances (13th) 10.6 games per error
The problem with Italian clubs is they always push for loans rather than purchases. My guess is that LFC said no to the loan offers so Shaqiri stays for now.
In other news Upamecano could be a Red next season. The release clause in his new contract is reportedly only Ā£36.5m and can be triggered as soon as the next summer window.
The interest seemed to bring strong and a deal must have been close as ge was pulled from the Arsenal game. My guess would be the positive Covid result prevented the deal going ahead. No way he could complete the medical and as grim as it sounds also no guarantees on his recovery time due to nature of uncertainty of Covid in each case.
The test was done by the Swiss afterwards. We are really particular about price and have a reputation of not backing down that needs to be maintained. Probably just couldnāt get the interested party to structure their bid right or for the right amounts like we know happened with Wilson too. Nothing more unusual than us being hard arses when selling.
I have no problem with the club knuckling down on the price for Shaq. Heās a good pro and heās going to be useful if he can stay fit.
But a solution should have been found for Harry Wilson. Poor kid. If itās true there was an offer of Ā£12m + 5m on the table, it should have been taken. Heās not going to get anywhere near the Liverpool team, and can now look forward to a year playing U23 football.
Sometimes you have to do the right thing for the player.
We donāt know what the details were. It doesnāt seem on the surface that there was a lot of difference. They apparently offered Ā£13m up front and Ā£4m in add ons but we wanted Ā£20m with at least Ā£15m up front. The clauses they were proposing may have been from the land of the fairies like Lifting cups, playing in Europe, 150 appearances, top scorer etc and we might have thought we would only ever get the 13 which is quite a way off 20. Our clauses might have all been reasonably guaranteed ones as Edwards is supposed to be very good at that side. Instead of looking at the club and asking why werenāt we prepared to accept 3m less maybe we should look at Burnley and ask if they were legitimately prepared to pay all 17m and if so why not 20m?