It’s perhaps the hardest and most unforgiving position in the sport.
Similar to a kicker in the NFL, you can often have little to nothing to do all game, but if you have that one moment, that one error that costs the team, even if the rest of the team make their errors and mess up their chances, it won’t matter, your mistake will be the only one that people remember.
It’s exactly the same for a goalkeeper. You can do the routine things without much of a care; stopping the occasional long shot, catching an easy cross from a corner, chasing down to clear a long ball over the top. But if you let that one shot go through you, and it costs your team the win, that will be the abiding memory.
For the Riverhounds and head coach Bob Lilley, this season has thrown up a lot of problems, primarily up front which I covered earlier this week. However, it seems as though the man between the sticks has also been something of an issue, because against Hartford this past Saturday night, he turned to his third different goalkeeper of the season with Jacob Randolph starting in net on the road, with Eric Dick now having been benched for the second time this season after Gabriel Perrotta had dislodged him earlier on.
I’ve always had this theory when it comes to goalkeepers. You need to have three. An established number one, a veteran to sit back and help the established one in the last few parts of his game, and a young up-and-comer to learn from both of them.
The problem with the Riverhounds this season, is that with Dick at 29, Perrotta at 25 and Randolph 23, they are all trying to take on that established role. And whilst the argument can be made that competition makes everyone better (‘iron sharpening iron’, ‘a rising tide lifts all boats’ and all those cliches), it’s clear that it’s just not working, perhaps because they are all nervous about losing their spot the second they get it.
That impact is reflected in the stats, with the team’s save percentage ahead of the game in Hartford sitting at just 67.5%, 19th in the whole league, despite only seeing 40 shots on target all season, which ranks joint-third fewest in the USL Championship:
Football Reference
USL Championship GK stats from this season, sorted by save percentage
The impact isn’t just felt in the goalkeeper’s room either. With each goalkeeper comes a change of style, as each one will have their tendencies and preferences, from how often they punch or claim crosses, to how comfortable they are rushing out of goal to sweep up balls over the top. That inconsistency will creep into the backline, and how can you expect them to be strong and stable when they aren’t going to know how to deal with the man behind them as it will keep changing every few weeks?
You want my thoughts? They can’t carry on like this. Whether it was because he didn’t spread the minutes out across preseason well enough to see who was best, or each goalkeeper has just had their moment of bad luck that has cost them their spot when given the chance, or maybe this was the plan all along (I did speak to Lilley in preseason and he said that he wouldn’t know his best team until about the midway point of the year)... but to chop and change the goalkeeper at the rate they have is simply unsustainable.