Brandon Austin Isn't the Answer

Brandon Austin Isn't the Answer But OK as a Number 3

Brandon Austin is a number 3 I feel

This was written before we signed 21-year-old Czech Antonin Kinsky, but I'll leave it unchanged. I hope you can all see the difference in standard between the two keepers.

Brandon Austin was given Man of the Match by Ally McCoist for how he handled his Tottenham Hotspur debut against in-form United.

Yes he deserves plaudits and many will say he did nothing wrong and may even be wondering why we have bought a 21-year-old goalkeeper from the Czech Republic.

As Ange Postecoglou has said, we will only buy players for the medium to long-term. Yes we need to buy now to get us through a few weeks, but anyone bought must be right for next season and beyond.

Antonín Kinský is a highly-regarded prospect who we have been forced into buying earlier than we would normally have done.

Spurs were obviously looking at him for the summer or more probably the following summer, but Fraser Forsters illness has forced our hand.

Austin in his penalty box did well.

My eye, however, didn't see a long-term Premier League goalkeeper in him.

He has the height at 6' 2" in proper money, 1.88m for all you foreign currency lovers (AI couldn't have written this piece!).

However, he still looked small to me.

He is a goalkeeper brought up in a time when you couldn't touch a goalkeeper, now you can again, he looked frail and didn't convince me he could handle it long-term

It is clear that it is the head coaches instructions to get on with the game quickly from goal-kicks, which I disagree with.

If you are going to take a short free-kick quickly, then the players for several passes in advance must be possible. By that I mean they must at least be in the right areas of there field.

Simply taking a quick goal-kick, or free-kick for that matter, simply because the guy near you is free simply puts us under pressure in, often difficult situations, that a group of our lesser players playing together do not have the mental ability of the more established players.

But this is why Postecoglou says these players will benefit from this because they are being asked to think on their feet and make decisions, some of which are going to be wrong.

You could argue for the immediate future its wrong, but for the long-term its right.

Anyway back to Austin.

I didn't like the short quick goal-kicks and his distribution for me was indifferent.

There were plenty of mistakes there.

I thought rolling it out to Archie Gray for their goal was wrong, besides Gray being in the wrong position. 

We had nearly played our way out of that difficulty and would have done had it not been for the handball, which wouldn't have happened if Bergvall hadn't played the ball too far in front of him and lost control.

So a catalogue of errors for their opener.

Burn should have been sent off by the way. 

On a yellow he went through the back of Solankee, a yellow card and handled the ball to prevent a counter-attack, another yellow card as he shouldn't have had his arms out wide to make himself 'unnaturally' bigger.

After 20 minutes they should have been down to 10 men, as should have Chelsea and Fulham, where the referees have cost us 8 points.

Austin quickly threw the ball out from a corner for Kulusevski but the ball went straight to the opposition and we were back under pressure defending.

I was pleased that he played more long balls than our keepers normally do and was trying to pick out players, no real complaint there.

I just though some of the short passing was ill-advised because the next pass was not really available.

Yes experience would help, however we can't send him out on loan because he is club-trained and thus we have to pick him in the UEFA Europa League squad otherwise we would have to leave out a foreign player and not play them at all in the competition.

Club-trained is the role of both Austin and Alfie Whiteman otherwise they would both be playing League One or Championship football or be abroad.

So a good performance but not one that shouted long-term number one.

I have no doubt plenty won't have seen this but that's why you read, you want articles that make you think.

Well, you're going to get them whether you like it or not! LOL

Enjoy your day.

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