Experienced third choice keeper, necessary?

Nick7

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It is almost impossible to be third choice keeper and the u23s keeper. Majority of u23s matches are Friday nights and first team Saturday mornings. Players can’t be in two locations at once. They’d also have to miss half of first team training to be with the u23s.
yep. simple really.
 

Dancfc

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I think a lot of time the experienced "third" choice is actually fourth choice.

For example the season we signed Rob Green he never made the bench, when Kepa wasn't around (for domestic cup games) it was young Bulka on the bench. I think Green was there to travel with the team so Bulka could still play youth games.

In layman's terms, if Kepa or Caballero pulled up in the warm up Green would have been the sub on the night but if one of them were striken long term Bulka would have been the immediate back up to whichever one was still healthy.
 

flappyjay

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United Academy and I were discussing wether having an experienced third goalkeeper on the squad is necessary or not.

My opinion is that the scenario of having the first and second choice GKs injured and needing third keeper is so unlikely that we should get rid of Grant and just use the U23 GK if needed.

Just to add to the context, Grant has played a grand total of 2 games since his arrival and none of them had been because needed but mostly just to give him some minutes and make him feel part of the team.

United Academy on the other hand, says that by having the U23 as third choice you are stalling the players progress and that player should be loaned instead of playing in the U23.

So whats your opinion? Is it necessary to have an experienced goal keeper or not?

If the mods can add a survey that be great.
We got Grant because all our academy keepers were too good to stay at the club as third choice. It allowed Joel Pereira and Dean Henderson to go on full season loans instead of 6 month loans. To answer your question, an academy lad should be enough as third choice
 

Vidyoyo

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Things like this seem to misunderstand that football is essentially a job. If a player's job is to be a third choice keeper who keeps his head above water and doesn't complain about a lack of minutes then he's doing his job just fine.

Unsure if it's your point but the academy is there to blood young keepers in a less pressured environment. Them going on loan when they're ready is better than being third choice and, as you've rightfully pointed out, never playing.
 

sullydnl

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I think a lot of time the experienced "third" choice is actually fourth choice.

For example the season we signed Rob Green he never made the bench, when Kepa wasn't around (for domestic cup games) it was young Bulka on the bench. I think Green was there to travel with the team so Bulka could still play youth games.

In layman's terms, if Kepa or Caballero pulled up in the warm up Green would have been the sub on the night but if one of them were striken long term Bulka would have been the immediate back up to whichever one was still healthy.
Yep.

It's arguably better to think of the third choice goalkeeper as being behind the u23 goalkeeper in the pecking order rather than ahead of him. His job in the first team is to fill a role that would be a waste of time for the U23 goalkeeper as it involves so little chance of actually playing.
 

devilish

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Unless they are child prodigies like DDG and Buffon were then keepers need time to mature. Get them to OT too soon and you'll ruin them just as we did with Foster and Carroll. Therefore we're better off loaning kids so they get as much experience as possible rather then have them rot in the reserves just in case we might need them.
 

Cliche Guevara

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I know this is essentially a spat between two (or even one) posters, but I’m not really picking up what the problem is with having an experienced third choice goalkeeper.

What difference does it make who doesn’t play games?
 

Based Adnan

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I think in many cases they're basically goalkeeping coaches who can play if required. Hilario towards the end at Chelsea is a good example of this.

As for Grant, Ole has spoken multiple times about his positive impact in the dressing room. That is something an experienced pro has over someone who is only beginning to make his way into the game. Multiple times Ole has praised Grant for stuff like staying behind after training to help Rashford and co with their finishing constantly. This mentality can rub off on the rest of the squad - especially one as young as ours.

I'd much rather an experienced 3rd GK for the off field stuff like that. Having said that though I would rather see Kovar play over Grant should it come to it.
 

Mark Pawelek

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United Academy and I were discussing wether having an experienced third goalkeeper on the squad is necessary or not.

My opinion is that the scenario of having the first and second choice GKs injured and needing third keeper is so unlikely that we should get rid of Grant and just use the U23 GK if needed.

Just to add to the context, Grant has played a grand total of 2 games since his arrival and none of them had been because needed but mostly just to give him some minutes and make him feel part of the team.

United Academy on the other hand, says that by having the U23 as third choice you are stalling the players progress and that player should be loaned instead of playing in the U23.

So whats your opinion? Is it necessary to have an experienced goal keeper or not?

If the mods can add a survey that be great.
Agree, clubs don't absolutely need a 3rd experienced goalie. In support of your argument: rules for loan recalls are different for goalies; far more relaxed. So we could recall a loanee if 1st and 2nd choice goalies are out injured. Against: If either 1st or 2nd choice goalie is injured, it leaves us only 1 fit player away from a semi-crisis.

Having agreed, I think for the time being we should continue with 3 experienced goalies - because the average age of United's current squad is ridiculously low. We already have lots of U21 players taking up squad places. We don't have a pressing need to release a squad place. I wouldn't be surprised to see Kieran O'Hara as 3rd choice goalie next season.
 

Dirty Schwein

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I think they need to introduce a law where third choice GKs can be sent on loan but can also be instantly recalled if the first two keepers are injured.

That way clubs can but good/potentially good GKs and let them play/gain experience without having them sit on the bench as most likely scenario the first two GKs won't get injured at the same time.
 

Nikelesh Reddy

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United Academy and I were discussing wether having an experienced third goalkeeper on the squad is necessary or not.

My opinion is that the scenario of having the first and second choice GKs injured and needing third keeper is so unlikely that we should get rid of Grant and just use the U23 GK if needed.

Just to add to the context, Grant has played a grand total of 2 games since his arrival and none of them had been because needed but mostly just to give him some minutes and make him feel part of the team.

United Academy on the other hand, says that by having the U23 as third choice you are stalling the players progress and that player should be loaned instead of playing in the U23.

So whats your opinion? Is it necessary to have an experienced goal keeper or not?

If the mods can add a survey that be great.
Absolutely necessary.If Lee Grants happy with his role then we should be glad to have someone like him in the squad.And anyway If there’s a really talented young GK in the academy,then he shouldn’t be twiddling his thumbs as our 3rd choice keeper.He should do what Henderson’s done...Find a good club and play week in,week out....
 

hmchan

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Absolutely unnecessary. We had been using the U23 as our 3rd choice for some times (e.g. Amos) and I saw no problem with that. It's very rare that two keepers are injured at the same time and it isn't worth to prepare an experienced 3rd choice just for such a rare situation. I know Grant is professional and his wage demand is not high, but I would rather spend that budget on a youngster.
 

0le

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Maybe they should be player-coaches instead.
 

Andycoleno9

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People don't understand role of third gk i guess. Third keeper must be someone who is happy with the role of not playing games and being only involved in trainings and sometimes being on the bench. People forget that 3rd choice gk is fully involved in everything in first team as every other player except playing games (but he is sometimes on the bench so again involved on some way).
Young keeper needs games. If you use u23 gk in first team as 3rd gk, you stall his development completely.
 
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I think they need to introduce a law where third choice GKs can be sent on loan but can also be instantly recalled if the first two keepers are injured.

That way clubs can but good/potentially good GKs and let them play/gain experience without having them sit on the bench as most likely scenario the first two GKs won't get injured at the same time.
so a L1 or a L2 team suddenly have their first team keeper taken away from them. These are teams on really tight budgets so often won’t be able to have a decent backup. If you implemented this rule, no club would take the loanee in the first place, rendering it pointless.
 

ricky-romeo

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I think United youth coaches has set a rule of at least 100 first team games before 20/21/22 for our youth goalkeepers, meaning they have to go out on loan ,which is actually a very good idea in terms of developing young goalies.

Lee Grant is happy to stay and train as our 3rd choice. I dont see any problem and he is not blocking the development of any of our young GKs. They have to go out and play elsewhere for the sake of their future.
 

hmchan

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People don't understand role of third gk i guess. Third keeper must be someone who is happy with the role of not playing games and being only involved in trainings and sometimes being on the bench. People forget that 3rd choice gk is fully involved in everything in first team as every other player except playing games (but he is sometimes on the bench so again involved on some way).
Young keeper needs games. If you use u23 gk in first team as 3rd gk, you stall his development completely.
It isn't necessary to work that way, however. You can have a young keeper with the youth team most of the time and call him up to the first team only when needed. Ben Amos, Sam Johnstone, Joel Pereira, Dean Henderson etc all experienced that stage in their career, and I don't see any problem with their development.

If a young keeper needs to play for the youth team, so will he; if he needs to be loaned out, so will he. There must be another keeper in the youth team to become our 3rd choice. No one is asking him to stick around without playing games, and in this way his development would not be stalled, simple as that.
 

davidmichael

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We’ve got De Gea, Romero, Henderson, Grant, Bishop and Pereira. Obviously Henderson will be loaned out to Sheffield United again and Pereira may well be off permanently but surely then you’d go with Bishop as third choice ? What was the point in signing him otherwise ?
 

hmchan

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We’ve got De Gea, Romero, Henderson, Grant, Bishop and Pereira. Obviously Henderson will be loaned out to Sheffield United again and Pereira may well be off permanently but surely then you’d go with Bishop as third choice ? What was the point in signing him otherwise ?
There's also Matej Kovar ahead of Nathan Bishop. Difficult to understand what's the point of piling up so many keepers.
 

rcoobc

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What's the emergency goalkeeper loan rules again?
 

dalriada

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Not sure why we collect keepers, either.
Since about 2007-08, we seem to have usually had three in the first team, often because of "overlaps", when a new keeper is brought in clearly to succeed someone else - this happened when Foster came back from loan and we ended up with Edwin, Ben and Tomasz Kuszczak. Eventually, Kuszczak was fed up being third (occasionally fourth, behind Ben Amos) and left.
At other times, we've just worked with two - after Kuszczak left, effectively Amos and Sam Johnstone doubled up as first team backups and second team main keepers. Almost everyone I know who saw Amos play thought he was awful.

The reality is, we've rarely needed a third keeper, so the risk is low if you don't have one, as there's usually a second team keeper who's good enough to step up for the odd game. In theory, of course, you could be caught out if both the main keepers became unavailable for an important match.

From what I've seen of Grant, he's no better than the second team keepers who could step up, but if the view is he performs a useful role (coaching, etc) and he doesn't cost that much, it probably doesn't matter in the big scheme. I was a bit baffled why we brought him in at the time, though.
Beyond the "main" three, I don't know why we need six second team and four Under-18 keepers (according to the current player listing). I can see why nowadays you may want to have the youth teams separate as development squads, but inevitably some of them are out most of the time on loan until we release them, as we haven't brought any through to the first team in recent times. It's great to have a promising player like Henderson on the books, but what do we do with him, other than some people suggesting he provides De Gea with a reason to up his game? He will probably be happy to be on "loan" again at Sheffield for a season when football restarts, but beyond that he will probably move on anyway unless De Gea leaves.
 

Teja

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Needed because if your first choice GK has a long injury lay off (ala Lloris this season), you still need to name two keepers to the match day squad. Complicated by the fact that the back up keeper might be shit and you'd need to rotate with 3rd choice in case of blunders or exceptionally poor form.

So yes, an insurance policy but definitely one that's good to have.
 

lex talionis

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People don't understand role of third gk i guess. Third keeper must be someone who is happy with the role of not playing games and being only involved in trainings and sometimes being on the bench. People forget that 3rd choice gk is fully involved in everything in first team as every other player except playing games (but he is sometimes on the bench so again involved on some way).
Young keeper needs games. If you use u23 gk in first team as 3rd gk, you stall his development completely.

This. Full stop.
 

hmchan

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Needed because if your first choice GK has a long injury lay off (ala Lloris this season), you still need to name two keepers to the match day squad. Complicated by the fact that the back up keeper might be shit and you'd need to rotate with 3rd choice in case of blunders or exceptionally poor form.

So yes, an insurance policy but definitely one that's good to have.
Yet, Michel Vorm has only played 1 game this season. It's rare for a keeper to suffer from a long term injury, and it's even rarer that the backup keeper is so bad that you end up using the 3rd choice. de Gea has no significat injury history, and Romero is reliable enough for me.

Yes you can always have an insurance policy but it seems unnecessary. It's like having 6 strikers in a team but it's worth to note that keeper can't play in other positions.
 

cyril C

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I think in many cases they're basically goalkeeping coaches who can play if required. Hilario towards the end at Chelsea is a good example of this.

As for Grant, Ole has spoken multiple times about his positive impact in the dressing room. That is something an experienced pro has over someone who is only beginning to make his way into the game. Multiple times Ole has praised Grant for stuff like staying behind after training to help Rashford and co with their finishing constantly. This mentality can rub off on the rest of the squad - especially one as young as ours.

I'd much rather an experienced 3rd GK for the off field stuff like that. Having said that though I would rather see Kovar play over Grant should it come to it.
Yes, what is wrong with this approach.

At 1 stage we had 3 goal keeper coaches, 1 specially for DDG, 1 head, 1 for the rest. Can we do with 1 instead, plus 1 3rd choice keeper who can help on various training. I suppose a 3rd choice keeper will be more expensive than a keeper coach but at least they are useful and fully utilised.