Starter for ten: Which Premier League player has made the fewest appearances over the longest period of time? Give up? The answer is Stuart Taylor, the goalkeeper once of Arsenal and now of Manchester City. Over a 14-year period Taylor has played 86 games (just 30 in the Premier League) for a host of clubs.
It isn't that Stuart Taylor is a poor goalkeeper; he wouldn't have been contracted to three Premier League clubs since 1997 if he wasn't rated. His opportunities, though, have been restricted courtesy of, among others, David Seaman, Brad Friedel and the current England No1, Joe Hart. Naturally there will be some that question a perennial No2's desire to play, but the fact is that the role remains a necessary requirement of any squad.
The reason I mention Taylor is that in many ways his career is a microcosm for the problem English goalkeeping has faced over the last 10 years, whereby opportunities to break through have become fewer and the talent pool has dried up. The end result could be seen in Bulgaria at a recent England international, where Frank Fielding and David Stockdale, who are both playing in the Championship, were the back-up options for Hart.
I sincerely hope the experience gained by Fielding and Stockdale benefits them enormously because there is precious little chance of them getting any in the Premier League. Look at last weekend, when 20 Premier League clubs fielded just four English goalkeepers between them. One was England's No1, two have retired from the international scene and the other, John Ruddy, has just been promoted to the top flight with Norwich.
What a difference in Spain. The national team currently have a choice of Víctor Valdés, Iker Casillas and Pepe Reina, and out of the 20 teams that kicked off La Liga last weekend, 15 had Spanish goalkeepers. It would have been 16 but Manchester United took David de Gea from Atlético Madrid in the summer and the Spanish club replaced him with a young goalkeeper on loan from Chelsea, who happens to be Belgian rather than English.
Peter Shilton, England's most capped player, suggested last year that English goalkeepers are not coached on the technical aspects of their profession as well as their foreign counterparts.
One foreign Premier League goalkeeper disputed that was the case when I spoke to him this week, and told me that the young English keepers were as good if not better technically, saying their handling skills are often superior because they are more comfortable catching balls that others would punch.
Yet if you look back through the Premier League years, the top English clubs of their time have barely produced a goalkeeper of note between them, with Ian Walker at Tottenham Hotspur, and Paul Robinson and Scott Carson at Leeds United the only real success stories.
When you then consider that Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester City, Manchester United and Liverpool all currently have first-choice goalkeepers in their 20s who could, quite feasibly play for another decade, and look at how tough it is to bring someone through who can only fill one position on the pitch, you could be forgiven for coming to the conclusion that it is simply not in the interests of top Premier League clubs to invest time into trying to identify and develop one of their own.
Yet when I put that to a coach at one of those five clubs this week, he insisted that was not the case. "We are constantly looking but our remit has changed in recent years," he said. "We aren't looking for something near to the finished article any more. Initially, we are looking for somebody that has the physical attributes to be a top keeper rather than the technical ones, which you hope can be developed over time. Height has become more and more important. The first question anyone asks about a goalkeeper is 'How tall is he?' Six foot is no longer tall enough."
I'm no expert in genetics, but I do know that the landscape for outfield players is very different. Despite the class of Cesc Fábregas and Samir Nasri, Arsenal were able to find a position for Jack Wilshere while Tom Cleverley and Danny Welbeck have forced their way through at Manchester United. All three players were aided by loan spells at other Premier League sides that accelerated their development and proved they could handle the top flight coupled with players around them that were able to sweep away any little mistakes. But what would happen if any of the elite clubs produced a top-class English keeper? Would another Premier League manager give them a chance without knowing they could play at that level?
Hart appears to have got it right by learning the ropes at Shrewsbury Town, where he got the experience at a young age that is so critical to any player's development, before joining City. He was brought through under Sven-Goran Eriksson and had a taste of the Premier League before the successful loan spell at Birmingham that convinced Roberto Mancini to pick him ahead of Shay Given.
For the record, I've never regarded English goalkeepers as a soft touch on the pitch, I've also found them to be calmer off the field than their foreign counterparts, who in some cases (and I've room-shared with a few) are the sort that you half expect to see on the six o'clock news for non-football-related reasons. English keepers of the last 20 years have tended to be very capable, without winning too many plaudits en masse, but at least the future looks a little more promising.
Hopefully Fielding and Stockdale will go on to prove that they belong in the same company as Hart. Behind them, I'm reliably told there are some exciting youngsters to watch out for, including Bryan Gunn's son, Angus, who has recently joined Manchester City from Norwich, and Sam Johnstone, a fellow England youth international who is learning the ropes at Manchester United. We can only hope that if they do become the answer to a quiz question 14 years from now, it is because they were used for more than a cheap start to a blog article.
Gavin Wilson
MINDSi SPORTS PERFORMANCE
www.MindsiOnline.com
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