18 Jun 2018 17:26:04
Hello everyone! This is my first ever post, after innumerable visits to the site.

Over the last month, I've noticed a couple of popular opinions on here:

1) a team can't win anything without a good goalkeeper.

2) Keylor Navas is not a good goalkeeper.

However, both of these statements can't be true. Navas has won three Champions Leagues, three World Club Championships, and La Liga as well. Does this mean that he's actually a better player than he's given credit for? Or, rather, that it's possible to win trophies without a top class keeper in the side.? As far as I can tell, it has to be one or the other!


1.) 18 Jun 2018
18 Jun 2018 17:26:47
Keylor Navas is class. He is loved by the Madrid fans and he makes ridiculous saves he should never make. He flaps a few times but every single goalkeeper in the world does.


2.) 18 Jun 2018
18 Jun 2018 17:30:11
You can only get away with a bad keeper if you have plenty of luck, a decent defence, midfield and attack. All the goals will mean diddly squat if you score 1 more than let in.


3.) 18 Jun 2018
18 Jun 2018 17:33:50
Good post storm. I think it's a bit of both. You CAN win things without a world class keeper. We won the treble with Westerveld (I believe) smicheal for Leicester etc and navas is not as bad as he's made out. He can't be can he, to continue to play no1 for the world lads best club team.


4.) 18 Jun 2018
18 Jun 2018 18:09:32
I think the most important thing is that the GK (as with all of the players) fits your system.

If you play with a defensive back 4 who sit back, and have a CDM in front, then i would say that the quality of your GK is slightly less important. Look at Leicester with Kante sweeping up in front of the defence. Schmeichel is OK, but not a brilliant keeper and that worked finefor Leicester.

If you play quick, as we do, with players pushing up and breaking fast, I would argue that that fast release and distribution are most important.

If you play in a lower table team that's going to be on the back foot a lot, shot stopping will be key as there will be a lot more shots on goal than in other teams.

I'm assuming here that all keepers have a basic level of skill across the board, but I'm focusing on the areas they would need to excel in given the types of set ups teams could play.

That's why Alisson was such a good fit (albeit that ship has most likely sailed) as he seems to have great distribution and fast release. That's also why I think Reina would still be very good for us. And its why Mignolet just isn't. His distribution is appalling and our GK coaching doesn't seem to have improved it over 5 years.


5.) 18 Jun 2018
18 Jun 2018 18:16:39
Sorry but Navas is a terrible keeper. Madrid have been trying to offload him for years in fact the end of the first season they tried to offload him in exchange for DeGea. Barcelona won loads with Valdes and Bravo between the sticks and it’s fairly well accepted that they’re both shockingly poor keepers. Some of the mistakes he makes, on a regular basis, make Mignolet look good. At 31 he is not going to suddenly improve, he does not speak a word of English, he cannot deal very well with crosses at all, his positioning and reading of the game leave a lot to be desired (the goal he conceded against Napoli being a prime exanple, he was casually stood on the edge of his goal ignoring what was going on, allowing Insigne to almost pass it in from 45 yards! ) and given that he’s barely 6ft, he’s short for a keeper so would be exposed by looking by ball teams, saying that because he’s in a successful Madrid team means he must be top class is nothing more than a logical fallacy as the same conclusion and theory would deem that Phil Neville, Wes Brown, John O’Shea and David May are some the greatest defenders the premier league have ever seen which clearly they are nowhere near. Navas would be an appalling signing and not better than any of our starting options. He’s better than Bogdan but that’s not saying much. If you’d actually seen him play beyond a YouTube highlights reel you’d not want him anywhere near our first team.


6.) 18 Jun 2018
18 Jun 2018 18:35:57
Take a look at Lehman from Arsenal went the whole season unbeaten and nobody ever talked about him being a good keeper. Or Valdes at Barcelona wasn’t a particularly great keeper but when your team has 75% possession most games and many of the best players in the world you don’t have to be the best keeper.


7.) 18 Jun 2018
18 Jun 2018 20:06:37
Ibiza then by that logic we stick with Mignolet. Unless the plan is to bring in someone worse, then by all means let’s waste the thick end of £30m on the clown Navas.


8.) 18 Jun 2018
18 Jun 2018 21:36:01
Great start to the debate, OP. As Zeddicus said, this is like football. It is NOT an exact science. People saying you can't win trophies w/ o a a top GK. That has been royally debunked by those on this thread so we know none that nonsense (cos that is what it is, really) is true.

The thing is that if you do not have a top GK BUT you have a good one, you can build a system around him to fit his strengths, and build a team that will score more goals and defend from the front as a team and dominate possession, something Pep's Barcelona did with the hapless Victor Valdes in goal. This is what LFC is also good at as we do not have a top GK BUT we have a competent one (Ed01's words on Karius) and we are top 5 in Europe for chances and shots conceded in the league. Pep tried that same system in the first season at City w/ Bravo and it did not work cos La Liga is not the PL where teams do not challenge Barcelona or Bayern in open play.

The likes of Navas (more error prone than Karius and who RM wants rid of since 2015), Butland, Pope, Strokhosa and the other "bandaids" are for me, non starters cos they do not fix the issue long term esp. the younger ones cos they will need time to bed in and mistakes WILL happen, like it or not. Then you are back to square one. Allisson is sadly, a non starter so if Karius is the guy Klopp goes with then we need to put a system in place to protect him while he keeps improving or at least, that is the hope, IMO.


9.) 18 Jun 2018
18 Jun 2018 21:50:36
I love posts like this Storm. You literally cannot be wrong!