Dean Gerken - youth goalkeeper coach

[Rebounder]

1 hour ago, And Its Smith said:

Absolutely. I remember seeing an advert for our under 23s manager position a few years ago and it was £35k per year.  That is a very important role!

In the world of football it's nothing, but a very comfortable wage generally.

[underhanded]

A friend of mine is now the academy goalkeeper coach at a lg1 club, earning about the same as he did as a PE teacher at a secondary school (27k). For years before this he was working evenings and weekends for Fulham as a part-time academy GK coach - being offered full time positions at 24k a year that he continually turned down.

24k a year to work full time in London - that's just above the living wage. Plus the Fulham academy has been churning out 'assets' for years - hardly fair pay in that context

[And Its Smith]

Ben Roberts is regarded as one of the very best in the business. Would be interested to know how much he is on as a goalkeeper coach of a top premier league club. Wide held view is he has improved many keepers over the last 5-6 years at Brighton, Charlton and Yeovil and now gets to improve Mendy and Kepa at Chelsea.

One thing that bugs me with punditry is when former players who never played in goal give a view on a keepers performance. Almost always getting it wrong. There aren’t many ex keeper pundits out there but the ones that are always talk sense as they know what they are talking about, with it being such a specialist position.  A lot of pundits will call a shot unsaveable when it isn’t (usually missing a lack of keeper foot movement or a keeper not far enough off his line) and blame a keeper when they’ve had no chance.