The Mail Bag
Howard's Way
Comments (11)
The time has come for our resident "goal-tender" to face some tough love. It's something I've thought about for a while now, the guy needs a kick up the ass.
I do rate him,and acknowledge the contribution he's made to the club. His various comments over the years have shone light on his pride at representing us, and he has undoubtedly been an astute signing, who's profited from being a first choice keeper.
Yet why he apportioned blame to his defenders yesterday is beyond me. The howler rests firmly at his door, and it is this absent ability to command the box that has concerned me for a while. Oh, and the tendency to hopefully twat the ball 70 yards every goal kick grates too.
Where's the competition for him? It exists for every other position. What's the point of hiring some biff to sit on your bench for 9 months, knowing it'd be a miracle if he got a game? I bet Howard works his socks off in training, but I think the lack of a hungry, capable rival unavoidably makes life easier for him, but not for us.
With a Slovakian keeper on the way in the summer, predictably to replace the geriatric Nash, Howard's position at the top seems assured for many years. That's not healthy. I really don't want to watch an ageing, complacent and deteriorating Howard creep towards retirement, unchallenged.
Kevin Hudson, Posted 06/02/2010 at 23:13:41
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Yes he does make the odd howler, like yesterday, and yes he is sometimes iffy from long rangers.
All in all though I think he ticks that box of reliability which is the most important attribute for any keeper, personally I rank him in the top 5 in the division.
The real problems we need to address are tactical ones.
How a team with supposed top 4 ambitions honestly believes it will get anywhere playing a player like Tim Cahill as a forward and smashing long balls to his head is beyond me.
Sure, at some point we could use a world elite goalie. Right now though all that discussion does is deflect from the real issues.
He didn't rush out at all, watch the replay.
His mistake was becoming overly concerned with Kuyt, he took his eye off the ball and before he knew it it was past him and on Kuyt’s head!
Had he been concentrating he could have dealt with the cross with ease.
It was very poor. Neville was also pathetic but we can't say it wasn’t Tim’s fault because it was, it was awful.
However, he totally bottled it yesterday. You could see even before the corner came in he was going to mess it up.
Alex Ferguson does not get rid of "winners" unless he gets offered £80 million and I’m afraid Neville and Howard looked just like rejects yesterday.
Unfortunately, you don’t get league points for what you do off the pitch, and that is where the trouble with Tim lays. The best keepers make match saving stops, command their penalty area and are rarely at fault for goals allowed. I honestly don’t think that you can apply any of the above qualities to "Mr. USA". I’m not suggesting that Howard is a terrible goalie, just that he’s an average one. I’ve seen pretty much every EFC league match for the past 5-6 years (the vast majority on tv, but two live!!!) and I can think of exactly one match where Tim made a game saving stop....a couple of years ago at Wigan in a 2-1 victory (the match where Bramble handed us a goal) when he made a terrific late fingertip save on a goal bound header. He was also very good away at Fiorentina. Other than that, I can’t think of a single occasion when he was the difference maker, but I possess quite a few painful memories of goals that he should have stopped, yesterday’s being the most recent example.
Last season Howard set a club record for clean sheets. Come on. Can any of you out there remember a season when our back four was better? Even the ’84-’85 champions had a bit of a habit of giving away an early goal. The point is that on many afternoons last season Tim Howard had relatively little to do beyond spending 90 minutes bursting blood vessels in his neck screaming at his defence. Lescott, Jags and Joey were simply magnificent, meaning that Howard didn’t have to be.
I could bitch about Howard’s deficiencies for hours but i’ll finish by highlighting what I think is the key point of Kevin’s post: there is NO competition for the keeper’s shirt at GP and that, quite simply, is not healthy.
Come on you Blues.
Mucha wont be here to make up numbers like Nash, Turner, etc. Hes an international, mid 20s and will be wanting to play for certain. Looking forward to his arrival.
Brad Friedel
Shay Given
Pepe Reina
Petr Cech
Howard is a decent goalkeeper and a good shot stopper but off the top of my head there is 5 goalkeepers who command their boxes better than Howard. I lost count of the number of times we tried to put the ball in the box at Anfield and Reina either came out and caught the ball or punched it clear. Howard only really had one test in the game and that was to come and catch / punch a ball that was in his own 6 yard box and instead he stayed rooted to his line.
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1 Posted 07/02/2010 at 16:41:30
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