Karius - Has there been a wurst goal keeper?

[davud graham]

Why bother getting getting into the champions league if you're not going to play the best team available. I don't give two shits if Karius isn't happy at being number two and wants some games he isn't good enough to justify the risk.

 

[Kay Age El]

FFS do something about the thread title - it's making my eyes bleed

I simply read the word 'worst' as 'wurst' and it becomes a bit more edible..

 

[Silver Sean]

Bewildering decision to rotate keepers. We always hear how players want to play in the CL, imagine being the keeper who played in the league campaign to get into it and then being told you won't play in it.
Add the fact that he is absolute dogshit, and it's maddening.

 

[Silver Sean]

Probably our best ever back up keeper was Steve Ogrizovic, who only played for us three or four times in five years but went on to be really impressive elsewhere.

But another part of the problem we and all other clubs have now is that the back up keeper doesn't play in the reserves. Karius should have been playing week in, week out for the reserves, with Achterberg holding long and thorough analyses after each performance, going through every single aspect of the game and his performance. That's how he'd improve, if he can improve - hard work in low profile games, not coming on to be booed and groaned at from the first minute in major first team games. No outfield player would get a chance in the first team simply because he hasn't played for a bit - he'd have to do what, say, Ings is doing, playing in the ressies, getting match fit and striving to impress. If you're a keeper and you currently have problems with your kicking and general distribution, or your punching, positioning, whatever the hell it is, then you need real and competitive match situations to really work on that and build up confidence. These days we just bung the player into the first team, confidence at basement level, and hope that he gets an easy couple of games to get settled. It'll be more through luck than judgement if that ever works. I'd suggest a solution but I don't see one.

I want to the shop and bought 40 Silk Cut for Oggy once. True story.

 

[mark1975]

OK, so why was he so shit when he joined then?

Probably the same reasons most of our defensive players are. Because they're a combination of not good enough players, playing in a system that exposes their flaws all too easily.

As for for the "whole saga being based on negatives" point, that one of the posts above alludes to, that's probably because there have been few positives to focus on. The only positive stance anyone has been able to take from this, is that the arrival of Karius seemed to give Mignolet a kick up the arse and a jolt in good form. Karius himself has proved to be nothing more than one of those buys that just hasn't worked out. There have been barely any positives to attribute to him. Shot stopping? Near non-existent. The assurance and confidence we clearly needed after Mignolet's more than occasional jitters? No sign of that either. I'm not sure what we were meant to focus on, we had a problem between the sticks and people looked for the obvious potential solutions.

As for the cries for Mignolet to come back in after Karius' disastrous start, much of that was based on the fact that Mignolet was in good form when he unfairly got dropped, and as such, people wanted to see if he could carry that on.

He's largely been in good form since, which I'd wager would improve again with better defenders infront of him.

The crux of the issue though, and something some posters seem all too keen to rush to find excuses for (or divert focus from), is that Klavan and Karius have been diabolical buys. You win some you lose some. Matip has been decent and Robertson looks good so far.