The keeper dilemma

It has been a source of frustration that in my extended family I have just one relative who is interested in football, a son-in-law who is a season ticket holder at Southampton and is very sensitive about any discussion of the club.

I was therefore pleased and surprised to learn at the weekend that my eldest granddaughter's partner has been training with one of the country's oldest non-league clubs and has joined the squad as a goal keeper.

Keepers have always fascinated me ever since I watched Sam Bartram.  Dean Kiely was another hero.

Yet keepers attract far smaller fees than outfield players in general.   Curbs certainly got a bargain when he signed Kiely from Bury.

Success at the highest level of the game seems to depend on high-quality goalkeeping. And yet that importance is not reflected in what clubs have traditionally been willing to spend on the position.

The comparison with other positions is startling. Spending on forwards and midfielders long ago breached the £100m mark.  In transfer market terms, goalkeepers lag behind. Why?

Historically, one obvious explanation stands above others: attacking players are more fun and fashionable, and it’s easier to measure their worth.   Goalscorers have a clear value, and that is as true now as it was in the late 19th century. Attacking players are also more regularly associated with exciting, game-changing moments, memories that have always justified their value.

That mattered because, for many years, transfer spending depended on convincing club directors of a player’s worth. In Jonathan Wilson’s biography of Brian Clough, he recalls the then-Nottingham Forest head coach facing “murmurings from the board” after spending £270,000 on goalkeeper Peter Shilton in 1977. Clough described a member questioning why so much money was being spent on a player who “would not be involved for 85 minutes of a game”.   Of course, that is less true nowadays with sweeper keepers.

Ian Graham was director of research at Liverpool between 2012 and 2023. He is also the author of the book How to Win the Premier League, published in 2025. He told The New York Times that analysing goalkeepers remains comparatively difficult for most clubs: “The most important thing goalkeepers do — stopping shots — is captured very well by the data, but (as with all football data) it’s easy to analyse it wrongly. The other aspects of play are also much more difficult.

“For instance, traditional data providers are not good at capturing whether a goalkeeper tried to claim a cross or corner. Instead, they often record only when there’s an error or a success. You need tracking data to capture goalkeeper ability properly. For instance, calculating whether they could or should have come out for a cross or corner requires significant modelling beyond what most clubs can do in-house.”

A scout for a Champions League club told the NYT “What’s really strange is that you meet a lot of scouts who say: ‘I don’t really know much about goal keepers’. I do it myself. And with other positions that would never be accepted. Imagine if you said: ‘Oh, I don’t really know much about wingers?’.

Another analyst commented: There’s not as much fluctuation in the position — you don’t need to make a change every second season. If you sign a goalkeeper, sometimes they stay for five, six, seven or eight years. It’s not that it’s easier to find a goalkeeper, but you probably have more time to prepare when you do have to sign one.’

Many clubs encourage stability, particularly around their goalkeepers. While competition and depth are seen as positives in most outfield positions, the same thinking is not often applied to goalkeepers, who benefit from trust and faith and are not subject to the same rotation. Most teams have a designated first choice and do not spend heavily on reserve ‘keepers partly to avoid that unrest.

A scout for a Premier League team made a further point: “How many top goalkeepers are there that you would spend a large fee on? There are fewer than 10 right now, and all of them are starting for top clubs. Gianluigi Donnarumma was available last summer, but that was unusual.

“There’s a supply and demand problem. The best clubs sign goalkeepers and stick with them, so they don’t buy very often. There are not many goalkeepers that are worth that kind of investment, so that’s another factor. And those that are worth it aren’t moving clubs anyway.”

Talent production is a different issue. Many more youngsters grow up wanting to score goals rather than save them. The position also requires a particular size and build, which is another filter.