Keeping us safe | OneFootball

Who is the most important player on a football pitch?

Is it the defender who stops the attacks? Well everyone has to defend.

Is it the forward who scores the goals? Well anyone can score.

Is it the midfielder who makes the runs from box to box? Well all players have to get around the pitch these days.

For me, the most important position is the keeper. If you have a great keeper your team are halfway there.

It’s the first name on the team sheet and it’s the difference between winning and losing in a lot of cases.

Look at all the great teams – they all had a great keeper who kept them in games and made crucial saves. Shilton, Clemence, Southall, Seaman and of course who can forget, Schmeichel, the man who singlehandedly stopped our assault on the title in 1995/96 He was amazing. He organised their defence, commanded his area, caught the ball and remember those throws he had to launch attacks.

Newcastle United have had Pav, Hislop, Given and Harper. Some top keepers there and maybe Shay Given is the best we have had in my memory (1973 onwards).

So fast forward to now and we have Nick Pope in goal.

When he arrived he was one of the players to take us forward. He was an international and a bargain at £10m. In his first season he was amazing and was one of the main reasons we finished fourth. He was a huge miss in the cup final. With him in goal we might have won, he was that influential, but we still ended up in the Champions League and all was rosy.

The next season was a bit of a disaster as Nick Pope injured his shoulder diving for a ball against Manyoo. Btw – if Schar hadn’t cleared that shot it would have gone in as Pope wasn’t getting it – have a look at the camera behind the goal.

Anyway, the erratic Dubravka replaced Pope and we started haemorrhaging goals at an alarming rate. It is clear there is a gulf between Nick Pope and his number two.

However… and there always is a “however”, the Nick Pope we have now is not the same keeper we had two seasons ago. Keepers often peak around his current age but this isn’t happening for Nick Pope.

From a modern keeper we need the following things: decent with feet, able to catch crosses, decent shot stopper and good distribution. Unfortunately, I give Pope one out of those four. He is a nightmare with the ball at his feet. Other teams know this and smell blood when he has it. This is not something we want to encourage TBH if we are wanting to play out from the back.

With crosses, the keeper needs to command his area and catch the ball. This takes the pressure off the defence and can be demoralising for the opponents when they are chasing the game. In Sunday’s game for example, there were three corners for Chelsea in quick succession as Pope had for some inexplicable reason decided to punch two catchable balls. When he finally caught the last cross the cheer from the away support was immense – down to relief mostly.

Saving shots is the one thing I’d give Nick Pope. I think he makes some great saves but I’m a bit concerned about him diving to his left as he’s shown a reluctance to do this in a couple of games that have cost us – Spurs and Fulham.

The final point is distribution. Pope is poor at this. Against Chelsea with 96 minutes on the clock he just had to hoof a ball rolling to him towards their 18 yard box and yet it ends up being kicked to the other side of the pitch on the halfway line.

That isn’t good enough.

So here we are. Nice guy Eddie and equally nice guy Nick might have to have a conversation soon IMO.

Vlachodimos looked ok in the two games I’ve seen him.