Dave Prentice: It's tough for Liverpool and Everton goalkeepers to match greats of clubs' pasts
Simon Mignolet and Tim Howard are good goalkeepers, but Clemence, Southall and Grobbelaar were great
Ray Clemence makes a flying save in 1975
Neville Southall made many magical saves throughout his 20 year goalkeeping career – but one stood out above all others.
It was in London, in front of Fleet Street’s number one hacks, in an April showdown with Spurs labelled a title shoot-out.
It was a save so spectacular it helped him win the Football Writers’ vote as their Player of the Year – yet Big Nev, in typical self-deprecating fashion, shrugged afterwards: “He put it straight at me.”
Hmm. After a fashion. Mark Falco did direct the ball towards the Everton goalkeeper, but straight over his head, with bullet-like velocity, giving him a split-second’s reaction time.
No-one expected Southall to get to the fierce header. But he did. As he did so often with so many seemingly goalbound shots.
Everton won 2-1 – and the momentum of the 1985 title race was firmly with them.
Neville Southall and Kevin Ratcliffe acknowledge the applause of the fans following their 2-0 victory over QPR at Goodison Park which clinched their first League Championship title since 1970 That’s the difference between good goalkeepers like, for example, Simon Mignolet and Tim Howard – and great goalkeepers like Neville Southall and Bruce Grobbelaar.
Great goalkeepers make the saves no-one expects them to, the stops which drop jaws, shake heads and win points.
Merely good goalkeepers don’t
That thought went through my head when Gary Neville, very harshly, pointed the finger at Simon Mignolet for failing to tip Phil Jagielka’s 58mph, top corner bound drive over the Kop crossbar on Saturday argument.
Neville’s argument was impressive.
He had spotted that Mignolet’s starting position for shots was a very low crouch – which was why he struggled to get up to that shot from Jagielka, ands also one from Aaron Ramsey last season and one from Alvaro Negredo at the Etihad.
It was plausible – although it didn’t cater for the fact that while a low starting position may prevent Mignolet from reaching a number of top corner strikes, it might also help him get down to more bottom corner bound efforts.
And while Neville picked out efforts over Mignolet’s head from Jagielka, Ramsey and Negredo – he could just as easily have picked out a stunning tip onto the crossbar from Morgan Schneiderlin this season – Liverpool won 2-1, or an equally incredible save from Jay Rodriguez at St Mary’s in last season’s title run in when the Reds led 1-0.
Mignolet does make jaw-dropping saves. Just not enough of them to be considered ‘great’.
But that’s theories for you. There’s always a counter theory.
There’s little doubt, however, that the goalkeeper is still the most important individual position on the pitch – and in this country we have always under-rated their role.
It goes back to schoolyards when the worst player almost always ended up between the coats on the floor.
Liverpool goalkeeper Bruce Grobbelaar saves a penalty from Graeme SharpThey think differently abroad – and it’s a theory I’ve aired on these pages before.
The millennium was still in its infancy when Juventus splashed out £32m for a goalkeeper.
More than a decade on, the British transfer record for a keeper is still only 20m – and that’s Euros not pounds.
David de Gea’s transfer to Manchester United is still the only time English football has broken even the £10m barrier for a number one, although Hugo Lloris’s fee could rise to £12.3m – and looks worth every penny.
Cutting back on keepers is clearly a false economy.
Critics scoffed in 1977 when Brian Clough paid a then world record transfer fee for Peter Shilton – and paid him a British record breaking salary.
Clough was ahead of his time, and within two years Shilton had a League title medal and two European Cup winners’ medals in his safe grasp.
Everton had long been linked with Shilton. But even the Mersey Millionaires baulked at paying such a huge fee. They spent £150,000 instead on the promising, but unproven George Wood, and finished third behind Forest and a Liverpool team buttressed by the formidable Ray Clemence, snapped up cheaply from Scunthorpe.
The Toffees scored more goals than anybody else that season. But Liverpool leaked 11 goals fewer, Forest an astonishing 21 goals less.
The problem with goalkeepers has always been in quantifying their worth.
When Blackburn paid a British record £3.6m for Alan Shearer in the summer of 1992, they were able to justify that exorbitant outlay by pointing to 112 goals in 138 games.
It is impossible to say exactly how many goals a good keeper can save his side. But Tim Flowers was probably just as influential on that Blackburn side which won the title.
It was impossible to work out how many goals the £32.6m Gianluigi Buffon saved Juventus in 2001, but they clinched the Serie A title by a point, then cantered to another title the following season.
The Serie A runners-up? An Inter Milan side with £18m Toldo between the posts.
The role of goalkeeper is the most specialised – and the most crucial to any football team.
Everton and Liverpool either got lucky – or benefited from inspired scouting – with their bargain buy acquisitions of Southall and Grobbelaar.
Southall was, quite simply, the best I’ve seen. Between 1985 and 1990 he was world class.
Grobbelaar was labelled a “clown” because of his occasional eccentricities – and errors.
But that overlooked the qualities of a goalkeeper who regularly produced miraculous, point-winning stops that no other goalkeeper was capable of.
Our current custodians aren’t doing that – as Jamie Carragher and Gary Neville pointed out on Monday night.
Before Saturday Tim Howard – a keeper who had a shots to saves ratio of 75.2 per cent last season, had seen his ratio slip to a worrying 38.1 per cent this term (his Wolfsburg heroics clearly not included in a Premier League only statistic).
Mignolet’s shots/saves ratio is a healthier 57.9% but still down on last season’s total of 68.2%.
Both are decent, solid, occasionally inspired shot-stoppers.
But they’re nothing like the greats we’ve been used to in these parts.
The likes of Clemence, Grobbelaar, Southall and the ridiculously under-rated Nigel Martyn – goalkeepers who made miraculous saves as a matter of routine.
Source: Echo / David Prentice
