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Adam Bogdan

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"Also if Liverpool bring some money in from transfers that could also alter who they go for so it maybe a waiting game for the bigger transfers."

That's given me a headache.
 
At last someone has listened to me. (And don't say 'pardon'!)

Blood Red: Has Adam Bodgan just signed away his first-team career?

Does goalkeeper's move to Liverpool pose question over hisambition?
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Liverpool's Fabio Borini has a shot saved by Bolton's Adam Bogdan

You have to be mad to go in goal, apparently. What must you be, then, to choose a career as a back-up keeper?

Perhaps Adam Bogdan could shed some light on the issue.

The Hungarian this week agreed to swap the Championship for the Premier League, Bolton Wanderers for Liverpool. He will move to Anfield as a free agent on July 1.

In doing so, however, he may also have agreed to forfeit his first-team career for a couple of years.
A little harsh, maybe, but then the life of the understudy is a difficult one to understand. Footballers, we are told, “just want to play”. Are goalkeepers different?

Bogdan turns 28 in September. He should, in theory, be entering his peak years He’s a senior international, with Premier League experience on his CV.

Why, then, is he happy to spend next season playing second fiddle, praying for Simon Mignolet’s form to collapse, or his hamstring to twang?

Bogdan, clearly, will not displace the Belgian as Liverpool’s No 1 any time soon. He may have impressed at Anfield when visiting with Bolton in the FA Cup earlier this year, but don’t let that fool you; he’s been signed to act as Mignolet’s understudy.

Presumably, Liverpool’s thinking is that Bogdan represents a low-cost, low-maintenance squad player. He won’t gobble up huge wages, and he won’t spend his time complaining about a lack of playing time.

Fair enough, some would say. Perhaps those are the qualities needed in a No 2 keeper.

Yet on a wider scale, are these really the kind of characteristics a club like Liverpool should be entertaining?
We deride those outfielders who seem happy to pick up their wages without getting their knees dirty of a weekend.

Jose Enrique and Fabio Borini, among others, have been targets of Liverpool fans’ ire over the past 12 months. Between them, they started 11 matches for the Reds last season and yet they are still, if their Instagram accounts are to be believed at least, living the life.

Both will, if the club has their way, be moved on this summer. Both will, you would imagine, go on to become a regular elsewhere, posting pictures of victories and triumphs as well as table tennis and nice evening meals.

And yet with goalkeepers, something is different. There are plenty who seem to have spent their entire career in the shadows.

Remember Pegguy Arphexad? He of the tracksuit bottoms and the tendency to try to dribble past centre forwards on the edge of his own penalty areas?

He made his debut in 1990, retired in 2005, and in between do you know how many competitive games he played? Less than a hundred.

Richard Wright, by contrast, had racked up the games as a youngster making his way in the game. Tipped as a future England No 1 when at Ipswich, by the time he left Everton, aged 29, in 2007, he’d made more than 300 league appearances.

And in the eight years since? 68. He’s still contracted to Manchester City, and has been for three years. He hasn’t, though, managed a single minute of competitive action at the Etihad. He’s known within the game as a “training goalie.”

Stuart Taylor is another. He was an England U21 international, good enough to win a Premier League winners’ medal with Arsenal in 2002. But career league appearances? 75. He’s still only 34 years of age
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What changes in a goalkeeper’s mindset, to allow them to accept, or at least risk, a life in the background?
Some back-up keepers, of course, take their chance. Boaz Myhill at West Brom, for example, shone when brought in due to Ben Foster’s injury.

David Ospina displaced Wojiech Szczesny at Arsenal, as did Costel Pantilimon with Vito Mannone at Sunderland.
Others, though, are left to tread water, to watch key years of their career drift by, while they content themselves with a few cup matches or a brief stint in the team when injuries or suspension strikes. Willy Caballero, Joel Robles, Alex McCarthy; all could be first choice somewhere, if they took the chance.

Surely these players – the likes of Arphexad. Wright, Taylor or Bogdan – did not grow up hoping to one day warm the bench for a big club? Surely their ambitions, their hopes, their dreams, were the same as most other footballers; to work, to play, to succeed?

It would be dangerous to suggest that these players have chosen the simple life in their careers, but that is certainly an assumption that is easy to make.

Bogdan, of course, may go on to prove everybody wrong at Anfield.

More likely, though, is that he settles nicely into the groove Brad Jones left in the dugout. Harsh, but true.

Strange ones, goalkeepers.
 
Maybe we should all do what Barca do and let one keeper play in the cups and the other in the league.
 
From The Bolton News:
[article=http://www.theboltonnews.co.uk/sport/wanderers/13330200._/?]AFTER Adam Bogdan ‘s departure to Liverpool was confirmed yesterday, Chief Football Writer Marc Iles looks back on the longest-serving player’s eight years at Wanderers

LIVERPOOL fans might question if Adam Bogdan has the star quality their club demands but I say who wants a superstar in goal?

Honest, down to earth and, more importantly, immensely talented as a goalkeeper, I’m sorry to see the big Hungarian go after watching him grow up at Wanderers.

This is a young man who stepped into the giant boots of Jussi Jasskelainen and succeeded, shrugging off bad experiences that would have made lesser men shrink into their shell.

There are plenty more famous names the Reds could have gone for – and I’m sure Neil Lennon wouldn’t have complained if they did – but as they say in these parts, they’ve got a good’un in Bogdan.

My first meeting with Shaggy, as he is almost universally known, was in the blazing hot sun of Athens, his normally pale skin glowing with sunburn on a training pitch just outside the Greek capital.

Gary Megson, who shares a similarly striking hair tone, had fashioned himself a baseball cap-towel combo that made him look a little like a French Legionnaire. Poor old Adam had no such luck, forced to go through a ferocious session with Fred Barber alongside Ali Al-Habsi and Jaaskelainen.

Each day the young keeper had to be virtually carried off the pitch with heatstroke but it was pretty clear, even back then, he was a tough cookie.

Barber had spotted his talents in one of his famed goalkeeping schools, convincing then Wanderers boss Sammy Lee to bring him from Vasas, where he was playing in the second division.

Like Jaaskelainen before him, he arrived in English football as a very raw talent, kicking being his main issue. Fred soon ironed that out of him and by September 2009 he was ready to be loaned out for some professional experience.

Crewe Alexandra were the club to take Bogdan on, and it was at Gresty Road we would see another of his endearing qualities emerge. A 3-2 defeat against Bury was later described by the man himself as a “nightmare” – and that quote had to be tidied up for a family newspaper.

He was sent back by Alex after just one game. That experience might just have knocked the stuffing out of a lesser man – but not so Bogdan, who doubled his efforts with the Whites and made his first-team bow at Southampton just under two years later in the League Cup.

Every Wanderers fan will know the tale of the “Wotsit” chants directed at their flame-haired keeper by the home fans that day and the fact he went back to Euxton to find a pack of the cheesy snacks in his locker – put there, we came to learn, by the kit lady.

Again, weaker characters might have balked at the tormenting at St Mary’s. Instead, Bogdan enjoyed a breakthrough season, replacing the great Jaaskelainen after he was sent off against Birmingham in the Premier League and then featuring several more times in the cup competitions.

The following season, the torch was officially passed on. Although the Big Finn was bearing down on Eddie Hopkinson’s all-time appearance record, his expiring contract and advancing years forced Owen Coyle’s hand.

Jaaskelainen was clearly West Ham-bound by January, Al-Habsi pulling up trees at Wigan. But Bogdan did himself no harm even as the club slid out of the top flight.

There were moments when he was forced to grow up fast, not least at Chelsea when his back four left him completely marooned in a 5-1 defeat.

His resilience again shone through after a high-profile howler at Everton, when Tim Howard’s wind-assisted clearance sailed over his head at Goodison Park. People tend to forget Wanderers won that game, Gary Cahill’s last for the club.

“Goalkeepers need mental strength and faith in their own ability,” Coyle said at the time. “And Adam will go on to be a great goalkeeper.”

There weren’t many genuine contenders for player of the season that May but Bogdan took a bittersweet award to mark his transition to the club’s number one.

It was in the Championship, though, that he really became a man.

There has been such a turnover of players in the last few years that perspective has been hard to find from within the dressing room. Bogdan, along with Tim Ream, became spokesmen, even though neither is particularly comfortable with all the attention.

Footballers often get a bad rap for resorting to cliché, or having little of interest to say but Adam was always very different.

While unsure of his English at first, Bogdan improved dramatically with the media and his Eastern European dialect was frequently betrayed with slang.

“The fans usually root for us at home,” he once said. “Hang on, that sounds too American. Pretend I said something better.”

I also recall Ian Herbert – a fine journalist for The Independent – coming away impressed after interviewing him on a hockey pitch at the ESSA Academy. I later found out they’d been talking about Communism and Middle Eastern politics, oh, and Wotsits.

Dougie Freedman always regarded Adam Bogdan as his first choice, even though Andy Lonergan always made a compelling case for inclusion when he got the chance.

One wonders what damage was done when the Scot very publicly “shelved” contract talks with Bogdan at the start of last season, fearing the speculation was harming his form.

From there, I always got a sense he was shopping around for a Premier League offer, the only slight concession being when I interviewed him after his heroic performance against Liverpool in the FA Cup earlier this year.

Huddled in one of Anfield’s rabbit warren of corridors, Bogdan let his guard down just enough to suggest he was thinking about staying on.

But having sampled the atmosphere on Merseyside, I cannot blame him for chasing his dream. At 27, he has time to be patient and wait for his opportunity, and I think he has the mental attributes to be ready when it arrives.

I prefer to remember the penalty saves from Wayne Rooney and Jordi Gomez, that bright orange kit, or his clunky early interviews where he’d often forget what he was saying halfway through making a point.

Good luck Shaggy – you deserve it.[/article]
 
Let's not start taking the piss out of this deal too early. For all that we know, the 3 million quid that we get for him off a bottom half Ligue 1 club in a couple of years might be used to pay Karl Henry's wages when we sign him on a Bosman.
 
Let's not start taking the piss out of this deal too early. For all that we know, the 3 million quid that we get for him off a bottom half Ligue 1 club in a couple of years might be used to pay Karl Henry's wages when we sign him on a Bosman.
Karl Henry is on a bosman now

Typical fucking Rodgers, not prioritising right
 
If signing a keeper for the number 2 slot shows a lack of ambition on his part, so we shouldn't sign him, how do we ever sign a second choice keeper?
(EDIT on reading above, its a badly formed sentence, but I'm too tired to fix it .... sorry)

I suppose we can put a kid in there, which would be fine until Migs gets injured ....
 
[article=http://www.theboltonnews.co.uk/sport/13342226.Coach_Fred_Barber_worked_hard_to_make_Bogdan_a_number_one_keeper/]FRED Barber believes Adam Bogdan would never have achieved his Premier League dream move to Liverpool had he not laid down the law to him as a young player.

Following in the footsteps of Jussi Jaaskelainen and Ali Al-Habsi, the Hungarian had plenty of rough edges to remove before Wanderers could make him their number-one choice.

After three-and-a-half seasons as top dog, Bogdan moves to Anfield to prove himself all over again – but speaking to The Bolton News, renowned goalkeeping coach Barber revealed he had to put the stops on the youngster going to college twice a week in order to make him concentrate on training.

“We had to get through a lot of hard work with Adam in the early days. It was like trying to train a wild horse,” he said.

“I’d said to Sammy Lee we’d got a goalkeeper with a bit of promise and that he needed to take a look at him. We’d evaluated him, and off the top of my head I think his club in Hungary were asking £200,000.

“But it was only once he’d signed his contract that the hard work started.

“Getting him to do things the way I wanted to do them was tough. If you don’t do it my way, it’s the highway, and Jussi and Ali used to laugh because they’d been through the same sort of thing.

“Sometimes players can come in and think football is the same all over the world; it isn’t.

“Adam came in and said he wanted to go to college in the afternoons. I told him it wasn’t going to happen.

“You’ve got to give everything to football if you’re going to be a top player, you need to forfeit. I think Adam will look back now and maybe realise what we were trying to do.”

“He’d do things like turn up at training with a headband on. He’d say it was to keep his hair out of his eyes but I’d tell him to go and get a flipping haircut.”

Barber makes no apologies for dishing out some tough love – and points to his record in 17 years at Wanderers as proof he was doing something right.

“I think I saved the club a few bob,” he laughed. “Jussi in his prime was worth, what, £6million? They got £4.5m for Ali and then Adam on top of that – plus I’m glad to see the likes of Jay Lynch and Rob Lainton have league experience now, they’re doing well.

“People say times change, football changes, but I’ve always got results with goalkeepers I’ve worked with.

“Jussi would not only train, he’d listen, try to dissect things. Adam was a bit different in that he’d question what you were doing.

“Every once in a while you’d get one of them throw their toys out of the pram, especially when we looked at their kicking, which was something they all had to improve when they first came to the club.

“But they always came round to my way of thinking in the end.”

Barber also revealed some of the goalkeepers who could have joined Jaaskelainen, Al-Habsi and Bogdan at Wanderers.

“I was part-time at Bolton and also working with West Brom when we found Tomasz Kuszczak, and everyone was chasing him,” he said.

“His agent took him down there and Gary Megson got the deal done. A few years later he’s worth millions and going to Manchester United.

“It was the same for Lukasz Fabianski and Wojciech Szczesny, who were only young boys at the time and would have cost £50,000-£100,000 (Fabianski later signed for Arsenal from Legia Warsaw for £2.1m).

“Kelle Roos was another lad we turned up and recommended to Bolton but he ended up at Derby as their number two.”

Barber believes Bogdan will have to be patient next season before he gets a chance at Liverpool, as Brendan Rodgers’ current number one Simon Mignolet looks to have rid himself of the poor form that plagued him in the first half of last season.

“Adam had a great game at Liverpool in the FA Cup and that might have been the one that got him the move,” he said.

“I know he had a few injuries last season but I saw him against Bournemouth on the television at the end of last season and he played well.

“When you’ve spent £9million or £10million on a goalkeeper I suppose you have to be patient and I doubt Adam will be able to go in there and start shouting the odds.

“Mignolet went through a bit of a sticky patch last season but looks like he’s come through it now.”[/article]
 
I don't get the moaning. It's a good solid signing.

Back up goalkeepers make virtually no contribution to a team. Spending any money on them is a luxury.

And the article about him consigning himself to a reserve role is rubbish. Maybe Bogdan has a bit of confidence in himself and knows that while Mignolet is number one, it's hardly unthinkable that he might get dropped again.

All Bogdan has to do is perform when given the chance and he's got the best audition possible for a Premier League number one spot
 
He's the ginger Buffon.
The excitement levels are just a doozy.
Can't wait too see him in purple.
 
I have monaed about our goalkeeper situation at length for many years. I love Pepe Reina but bar him we have had some right dodgy keepers, especially back-up keepers. 5 or 6 years ago I suggested we get Speroni on a freebie as he was out of contract at (the Championship club) Crystal Palace as I thought he'd be ideal back-up to Pepe. Then about 4 years ago I suggested Jasskaleinen as back-up keeper as he too was out of contract................both would have been significantly better than Jones, Itandje et al.

Bogdan is the best goalie signing we've made since Reina; he's free, he'll be on low wages, he's prepared to start as No.2 behind Ming and he's a very good goalie. I remain unconvinced about Ming and wouldn't be the slightest bit surprised if Bogdan replaced him as our No.1 keeper at some stage next season. Whether or not he's quite good enough to be the No.1 No.1 for a team with ambition remains to be seen but this is really a signing with very little downside.
 
Have to share this. Perhaps this is just him having a very bad day, but I have to say this is the most hapless goalkeeping display I've seen.😀

 
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