Martin Dúbravka

[Dr.Spaceman]

Given was often rooted to his line tbh. He wasn't that great at distributing the ball either.

[Tsunami]

Should have put a man on the post for Mata’s goal. From where it was any shot that beat the wall was likely to go in; still shaking my head at Diame for conceding the free kick.

[Pilko]

I had an irrational hatred of Given's complete lack of penalty saving skills. We conceded enough of the fuckers and I can only remember like 2 pen saves in 9 or 10 years

 

(Baros against Villa at home, Nolan against Bolton at home)

[joeyt]

Saved one v Birmingham (h) and they scored the rebound I think. Remember it because Speed was playing left back

[Guest]

Greening & Ravanelli during the 2001/2 season.

[Pilko]

My memory is canny turd like, knew I'd missed some.

 

Wonder how his % of saved pens stacked up against other keepers of the era? Still willing to say it'd be shite.

[AsprillasShinPad]

I remember as a kid that when setting the wall you would stand far post and set the wall to cover the near side of the goal. Thinking was that it's harder to get the ball up and down to the near side.  I'm sure that keepers set the wall the other way round now or even stand near the centre of the goal. I'm sure there's been a bit of a glut of average free kicks going in because the keeper is nowhere near.

 

Might just be me.

[Guest NobbyOhNobby]

Shay given would 1000% be in my all time toon team

[Heron]

I remember as a kid that when setting the wall you would stand far post and set the wall to cover the near side of the goal. Thinking was that it's harder to get the ball up and down to the near side.  I'm sure that keepers set the wall the other way round now or even stand near the centre of the goal. I'm sure there's been a bit of a glut of average free kicks going in because the keeper is nowhere near.

 

Might just be me.

 

I was always taught, you stand on your near post, arrange your wall and then move to the far post ready for the free kick to be taken. You'd have one man in the wall facing you to organise and he'd move the wall accordingly.

[Guest Howaythetoon]

Goalkeeping has kind of changed or the art of it has since Shay was in goal for us. For me, his job is to stop shots hitting the back of the net and he was truly world-class at that. His kicking was poor and he wasn’t the most commanding, but he inspired confidence because he was so hard to beat and he was an important character in the dressing room. He was for us in goal what Shearer was for us up front. Dubravka looks a decent all-round ‘keeper and has been a very good signing up to now, but comparisons with Shay are daft IMO because Shay was great for us and one of the best ‘keepers of his generation and the Premier League has seen.

 

That performance at home to Liverpool prevented a record Premier League win and defeat statistic for the league and an all-time record defeat for us as he must have pulled off about 4 or more world-class saves and just as many other saves of note.

 

I was pissed off when he left and considered him a traitor because we would have stayed up if he had of stayed IMO, that and because he was the last remaining figurehead at the club from Bobby’s time and someone who was a hero, but in retrospect he is no different to Keegan leaving Ashley’s NUFC. He had had enough and I now don’t blame him or hold any grudge against him. I’ve done the same leaving by now not going to games.

 

Getting back to the new ‘keeper, he doesn’t fill me with confidence when it comes to free kicks.

[Happinesstan]

Remember when Given used to stand way over on one side so the taker had no choice but to aim in the empty side, and Shay would just run over and catch them. I think he'd stopped doing it when he joined us.

[Guest Howaythetoon]

Shay given would 1000% be in my all time toon team

 

Best ‘keeper we’ve ever had in the club’s history. Just a shame we didn’t have the same quality of team as he was or when we did it wasn’t for very long. Typical of NUFC. We’ve had some great players that have been good enough and did the business to win things.

 

We’ve never quite had the right owners or managers and more often than not the two have went hand in hand. When we have had good managers we tend to do well and when we had a board and manager like KK we did very well.

 

It’s not rocket science, if Ashley was to support Rafa 100% and let him build the club there would be no limits to how far we can progress and grow and it doesn’t even need to be financed by sovereign state budgets. Just having the right type of people in key areas for a start can make all the difference.

 

As can having the wrong ones...

 

We have just one man Rafa and he has only a few months left on his contract. When he goes we have no-one.

 

Me, I hope he does go, we go down and we stay down. Until Ashley goes. Fuck the lot of them.

[magorific]

Shay would have saved Mata's and Xhaka's free kicks. He might also have conceded goals to headers that Dubravka has prevented by coming off his line. Swings, roundabouts.

[Infinitely Content]

He's been great, very solid, very vocal, I really like him. Daft to bring Given into it though, he's a club legend.

 

How's it daft? It's my opinion that he's a better all round goalkeeper than Given, as much as I love Given and he's probably still my all-time favourite NUFC player (I even got my hair cut like him when I was like 12/13 - as I thought his receding hairline was just his style  ). I personally don't see the problem with comparing two players of the same position, with the utility of showing how much I rate Dubravka.

 

Given's shot stopping was second-to-none at the time, but Dubravka has the whole package. Feel so confident with him in goal.

 

Mainly because it's 9 months of playing well vs 12 years of being one of the very top goalkeepers in the league.

 

Still a reasonable enough amount of time to make judgements & comparisons on attributes shown in their respective spans of time. Don't think it's daft.

[The College Dropout]

Shay was so consistent as well for such a long period of time.

 

I personally think Krul for maybe 12 / 18 months was better than anything i've seen from our GK but he quickly went the other way.

[Guest firetotheworks]

Krul's fall from grace was borderline Adriano-esque on our own smaller scale tbh. The injuries seemed to just end him.

[Doctor Zaius]

Krul's fall from grace was borderline Adriano-esque on our own smaller scale tbh. The injuries seemed to just end him.

 

Seems to be picking up a bit of form again in the championship

[tmonkey]

Personally thought Shay was a little overrated. Good keeper overall, thought his shot stopping was good as opposed to great, and the main positive with him was his consistently/reliability/confidence over a long period of time. But overall had too many weaknesses in his game, and as harsh as this is I always felt like his size was a disadvantage compared to other (better) keepers, those extra few inches make a big difference.

 

Dubravka looks a better keeper imo, although has a long way to go to be considered in the same calibre or higher as Shay. Plenty of tests yet to come, especially if he makes a big mistake. That's sometimes when you know what a keeper is made of mentally as many start off alright but then it's downhill as soon as the confidence takes a knock and the criticisms/being a laughing stock starts impacting on them, and/or teams start targeting the weaknesses that led to the errors - Given had his big fuck up early on with us iirc, the Dion Dublin sneaking up on him from behind like a leopard incident, but seemed to get mentally stronger and more assured from it.

[Guest firetotheworks]

Best save I've ever seen live was one of Given's like.

 

1-0 home F.A Cup win vs Spurs around 2005. The ball looped up to Defoe who absolutely blasted it right towards the top corner. In my mind, Given appeared from nowhere to save it, completely horizontal, and his entire body above the heads of the other players. It looked impossible, it was a fantastic save, I'm sure Defoe was certain that he'd scored.

[Kanj]

Can't determine if Dúbravka sets himself too far away from the area the wall is protecting or if we're just unfortunately getting fucked by brilliant free kicks.

[Guest firetotheworks]

In the case of Juan Mata, I reckon it's the...latter.

 

His conversion rate is ridiculous. 25% I think.

[Hughesy]

Personally thought Shay was a little overrated. Good keeper overall, thought his shot stopping was good as opposed to great, and the main positive with him was his consistently/reliability/confidence over a long period of time. But overall had too many weaknesses in his game, and as harsh as this is I always felt like his size was a disadvantage compared to other (better) keepers, those extra few inches make a big difference.

 

Dubravka looks a better keeper imo, although has a long way to go to be considered in the same calibre or higher as Shay. Plenty of tests yet to come, especially if he makes a big mistake. That's sometimes when you know what a keeper is made of mentally as many start off alright but then it's downhill as soon as the confidence takes a knock and the criticisms/being a laughing stock starts impacting on them, and/or teams start targeting the weaknesses that led to the errors - Given had his big fuck up early on with us iirc, the Dion Dublin sneaking up on him from behind like a leopard incident, but seemed to get mentally stronger and more assured from it.

 

Agree with this - Given was a very good keeper, but his real strength was his shot-stopping.  His command of the box, coming for crosses etc was pretty average.

 

With Dubravka superior distribution and ability to come off his line, he could become a better keeper than Given in time.

[Dinho lad]

Given was also really athletic and quick off his line (particularly when it came to closing down the attackers in the penalty area) and makes the sort of saves that were pretty much nailed on to go in, therefore saving us countless points over the years.

 

Realistically there weren't better keepers that we would have got during his time here.

[Colos Short and Curlies]

Of course the other thing with Shay was that for a lot of his time here he had Harper breathing down his neck who could come in and stake a claim to be number 1 keeping him on his toes

 

We've not had competition for our number 1 since then which has led to complacency from our custodian(s).

[Yorkie]

Best save I've ever seen live was one of Given's like.

 

1-0 home F.A Cup win vs Spurs around 2005. The ball looped up to Defoe who absolutely blasted it right towards the top corner. In my mind, Given appeared from nowhere to save it, completely horizontal, and his entire body above the heads of the other players. It looked impossible, it was a fantastic save, I'm sure Defoe was certain that he'd scored.

 

And immediately repositioned himself to acrobatically block the rebound. Unreal saves.