by SCIAG »
04 Nov 2024 22:03
Clyde1998 WestYorksRoyal People on Twitter calling for the return of Andresson is ludicrous. His loan at Carlisle last season was a horror show, and he's now on loan in the Icelandic 2nd division, which is presumably part time given their population is approximately the same size as Berkshire. I suspect Button is the least bad option.
Of the bad decisions in the past decade, how highly does losing Sal Bibbo rank? While the academy continues to be essential for our first team, all we seem to be getting in the GK department is youngsters who are demonstrably not first team ready. Who knows how different CBC and Andresson could look with a better coaching set up. Southwood is the closest we've come to a good home grown keeper, and we let him go too. Tbh I'm not convinced he's a good L1 keeper either, but probably better than Button, CBC and Andresson.
Probably huge. Have we produced a good goalkeeper since he's left? Prior to him leaving, we almost had too many decent goalkeepers coming through.
That said, have we been allowing our 'high potential' young keepers an opportunity to go out on loan in the past decade? I feel we've been content at leaving them in the U21s too long and letting them plateau. The same is true for some outfield players, albeit they could at least get opportunities in the first team from the bench.
Bibbo was a full-time staff member 2006-2015 (previously was only part time!). In that period we had three academy goalkeepers make first team appearances: Ben Hamer, Mikkel Andersen, and of course Alex McCarthy. Hamer and McCarthy both went on to make Premier League appearances, Andersen played European football (albeit from the Danish league, which he was on course to do before we signed him anyway). Bibbo also deserves huge credit for Adam Federici.
Since 2015, the same period of time, we've again had three academy goalkeepers make first team appearances: Southwood, CBC, and Tom Norcott. Southwood, safe to say, is a League One standard goalkeeper after being expected to be something better. CBC has stalled in his development and again doesn't look like he'll reach the expected heights. We could add Lewis Ward, an England youth international who is now bench warming in League Two, as well as Jokull of course. Slightly worrying that we've had three England youth internationals who looked good at 18 but hadn't progressed by the time they were 21.