Four keepers, one shirt: What happens with Brighton goalkeepers in 2021?
Nobody knows when the 2020-21 football season will take place, but when it does Brighton & Hove Albion are facing something of a dilemma in the goalkeepers position.
And for once, it’s a good thing. Long gone are the Withdean days when the Albion managed to rattle through 25 different goalkeepers in 11 seasons; Graham Potter doesn’t face a choice between David Yelldell, Rami Shaaban or Chris May because he’s instead spoilt for choice.
Andy Naylor has reported in The Athletic that Potter is currently planning on keeping Christian Walton at the club next season as part of the first team setup.
That will take the number of senior goalkeepers in the Brighton squad to four. You don’t need to be the lovely Rachel Riley to work out that four into one position doesn’t fit.
So, what happens? If Walton does indeed remain at the Amex for 2020-21, then there will be plenty of questions about how and where he fits in with Potter’s plans, and what it means for the club’s other senior goalkeepers.
Let’s start with the man whose potential return to the Albion is generating such excitement. Since Walton made his Brighton debut in November 2014 away at Tottenham Hotspur in a League Cup Fourth Round tie, he’s played just thrice for the Albion.
In that time, he’s made six appearances for Bury, four for Plymouth Argyle, 33 for Luton, seven for Southend United, 69 for Wigan Athletic and 37 for Blackburn Rovers before coronavirus brought the current campaign to a shuddering halt. 160 career games and only 1.8% of them have been for the club who own him.
People may say Walton is still young, but he’ll turn 25 in November. Yes, goalkeepers don’t peak until later than outfield players, but for some context Ryan was only three months past his 25th birthday when Brighton signed him from Valencia for £5 million in the summer of 2017 and installed him as number one.
Which is probably why Potter feels that the 2020-21 season is when Walton has to shed his role as a loan ranger. Walton’s got enough experience through all four divisions of English football and is of an age where he should expect to be challenging to be a first choice Premier League goalkeeper, if he’s good enough.
The problem Walton has is that he’s got an excellent number one in front of him, despite what those Brighton fans with a bizarre anti-Ryan agenda will try and tell you.
We’ve read some incredible comments on Twitter over the past few days that Walton will easily usurp Ryan. This appears to be a classic case of ‘Brighton player who doesn’t play for Brighton suddenly improves in minds of Brighton fans’ Syndrome.
You know the condition we’re talking about. It elevated Beram Kayal from fourth choice midfielder to the third best player in the world when he was out of the team last season. Tomer Hemed likewise became the answer to our lack of Premier League goals.
Imagine if Walton wasn’t our player, and the press were linking us with the signing of a 24-year-old goalkeeper from mid table Championship club Blackburn to replace Ryan. People would be losing their minds at the idea.
Ryan is one of the better goalkeepers in the Premier League. For a team who relied on keeping clean sheets as much as Brighton did to survive under Chris Hughton, his interventions in his first two seasons were vital in keeping the Albion up and that’s rolled into the Potter era.
This season, he leads the Premier League in one-on-ones saved with a 68% success rate. His overall save rate is 70.1% and he hasn’t finished outside the top three of our WAB Player Rankings in any month.
Those rankings are formulated using supporters’ post game player ratings and are nine times out of 10 a fair reflection of what’s gone on in the 90 minutes.
An additional challenge for Walton is adapting to Potter’s style of football. Walton said in an interview with The Argus in March that he was working hard on improving his ability with the ball at his feet, an area of the game vital for goalkeepers in a system which relies on possession football and playing out from the back.
If Walton does manage to take the number one shirt off Ryan, then we’ve clearly got a very good goalkeeper on our hands. If he doesn’t, then their will be plenty of questions about his future.
A seventh loan spell away from the Amex? Or Walton could decide that he needs the stability that comes with establishing himself as number one at a club for longer than one season and seek a permanent transfer off his own back.
Of course, the situation could yet be simplified if Brighton end the 2019-20 season being relegated, in which case Ryan would surely be one of the players attracting interest from the Premier League and the continent.
He’s too good for the Championship and with the books needing to be balanced, would represent one of our most saleable assets.
Should Ryan depart in the summer, suddenly it makes Potter’s Brighton goalkeepers dilemma much simpler. Walton becomes number one in a league in which he has shown great promise in for Wigan and Blackburn and Button and Steele remain in their current roles as number two and three respectively.
Ah yes, Button and Steele. They’ve almost gone forgotten in amongst all the Ryan versus Walton chat. Should Walton remain at the club, then it would surely lead to the departure of one of at least one of those two.
The smart money would be on Button. He’s 31 years old and while he may be content playing backup to Ryan knowing that he’s just an injury away from a first team call up, he surely wouldn’t be happy slipping to third choice with next to no prospect of any game time.
From the little we’ve seen of Button, he could certainly do a job at Championship level. It seems unlikely that we’ll recoup the £4 million paid to Fulham for his services in the summer of 2018, but he still has a year left on his contract and so the Albion could expect to pick up a modest fee.
As for Steele, he too is under contract until the summer of 2021. Being third choice seems to suit him down to the ground as long as he can drink in The Station Pub in Hove on a Sunday afternoon and doesn’t have to appear in another Sunderland Till I Die style documentary.
Of the two backups, he is the most likely to be unperturbed by another goalkeeper coming in above him in the pecking order.
Whatever happens in the close season – whenever that may be – this could be just the start of several years worth of goalkeeping dilemmas for the Albion management, a sign that are in rude health in such an important position.
22-year-old Robert Sanchez has been earning rave reviews out on loan at League One Rochdale and 18-year-old Carl Rushworth helped Worthing to the top of the Isthmian League Premier Division.
Rushworth is perhaps the most exciting profpect of the lot, an England Under 19 international who apparently had Barcelona weighing up a £4 million bid for his services in February. Barcelona scouts watching a Brighton player at Woodside Road. 2020 really has been weird.
If Sanchez and Rushworth can both two move into first team contention over the coming seasons, then Brighton really will be spoilt for choice when it comes to goalkeepers. A far cry from the days of Andy Petterson falling over his own leg.
