Gomes: Legend or liability?

They say goalkeepers are mad, and up pops Tottenham’s Heurelho Gomes, to justify our most idle assumptions. He resembles an octopus that has ingested LSD, worries about life in inner city London, and probably belongs in a Samba school.

For David De Gea, he is a vision of loveliness, a timely alibi. Nothing is certain when it comes to Gomes, but Manchester United’s beleaguered new goalkeeper will hope the Brazilian hangs around for the belated start of Tottenham’s Premier League season.

Being picked for tonight’s game at Old Trafford, an immediate test of Tottenham’s ‘big four’ pretensions, would represent a huge gesture of faith in Gomes. It might also be the sort of mistake that triggers Harry Redknapp’s trademark twitch.

Gomes is capable of improbable, elastic saves. He’s also prone to errors that make him the poster boy for those blooper DVDs which while away the time when you are in a drunken stupor at Christmas.

To be honest, I thought we’d seen the last of him in the close season. His erratic form, as Tottenham’s Champions League dream dissolved, made him a liability. The signing of Brad Friedel seemed to be football’s equivalent of a hanging judge, wearing a black cap as he enters the courtroom.

Friedel is 40, has talent to spare, and does not have time to waste. He made a point of stressing he had not left Aston Villa to pick up the money and pick up splinters from the substitutes’ bench.

Shay Given, recruited to replace him at Villa Park, didn’t enjoy doing that at Manchester City. His season in the shade is a terrible warning.

There is nothing worse than being a second string goalkeeper. You’re a member of the same tribe as the man who has your place. You identify with him, train with him, and grow to hate him.

If Friedel – or Tottenham’s apparent third string, Carlo Cudicini- doesn’t get an early opportunity, it threatens to be a long, long season.

http://www.lifesapitch.co.uk

i would liked to have seen cudicini get his chance, he did well at the end of last season when called in. few clean sheets if i remember right. cant do his confidence much good bringing friedel in.

Brad friedel for me max, gomes has had too many chances.

My prediction for tonights game is 3-0 to United, and that is because I think in all honesty that with a very good keeper in goal we might have been able to keep the scoreline down,perhaps even grab a point, with Gomes, I believe he is a liability and I may be wrong, I hope I am, he will gift United a goal. To many games where he blows hot and cold so I would rather he be replaced for tonights game by Friedel or Cudicini, I would rather we were in with a shout than have someone in goal who could contribute to us loosing this game. You watch, he will now be given man of the match.

Friedel Starts tonight.