Why is Lee Grant a Manchester United Player?

A curious trend has recently been occurring at top Premier League clubs: the enlistment of ageing and unspectacular goalkeepers as reserve options. Lee Grant and Rob Green have, somewhat spectacularly for themselves, managed to land moves to Manchester United and Chelsea respectively. Looking a little further back than this Summer, you could include Willy Caballero at Chelsea (again) and Alex Manninger at Liverpool on that list. It’s becoming a common and slightly baffling phenomenon.

From the keeper’s perspective, the pros are obvious and barely need stating. A comfy pay packet to see out their last couple of years towards retirement and while they may not be playing any games, they will get the chance to train and play all week with some of the best players in the world.

It’s looking pretty rosy for Lee Grant and Co., especially when you consider the potentially demoralising effects of slowly losing your place to a younger keeper. Say Grant had gone to a Championship club, it’s inevitable that his manager would have been looking to soon replace him with a more youthful option. At United, he need not have any such insecurities. He knows he will be third choice, helping expel any sense of anxiety that might come from attempting to defend a first team place. The positives for the goalkeeper’s are easy enough to see, but what about the benefits for the club itself?

They’re a little trickier to pinpoint, but there are potential pluses. Said keeper’s have, at at some point, had ‘big game experience’. Be it play-off finals, important cup games or promotion and relegation deciders, they have all played some matches of relative importance. This is seen as an attractive prospect should a goalkeeping crisis befall the club. Manager’s often struggle to put faith in a potentially more talented, but massively less experienced player. There’s a great feeling, rightly or wrongly, of tentativeness around entrusting an 18 year old with only youth game experience in competitive first team football. Lee Grant is not as talented as young Joel Casto Pereira, but the experience he has - all be it at a lower level - at least casts the illusion that he is less likely to make an error.

So is this killing off opportunities for young goalkeepers? Not necessarily. It increases the likelihood that they will be loaned out to somewhere where they will play regular first team football. The success of Jordan Pickford after his various loan spells certainly shines that angle in a positive light. There are, however, cases in which the use of the loan market becomes a tad silly. Young players may perform excellently at their loan clubs, but are still treated with heightened and overbearing caution when it comes to making the first team at their parent club.

It’s difficult to decide whether this policy some clubs have a adopted is a good or bad one. At the very least, it is something of a humorous one. Andy Lonergan to Manchester City, anybody?

(Photo: GiveMeSport)