‘one of Robins' only recruitment errors thus far and we need a senior keeper in pronto’
We’re in a league with an abundance of ‘senior keepers’, yet our GK has been judged by fellow football managers, not statistics, to be the best in the league.
He’s made 3 howlers which he has directly led to a goal being scored (4 with Luton, but JCH lost his marker, so it’s not 100% down to Burge, but a 50/50). In a 46 game season, that’s a mistake every 10-15 games. Over that many games, you’re bound to make a few mistakes. As I’ve noted, even Cambridge fans were moaning about their GK, also rated in the Top 3 GKs, saying ‘Forde out’, ‘he’s been shit for 4 straight games now’. Yet, us Cov fans on here speak positively of him. I’m sure there have been opposition fans who’ve come away from playing us highly rating Burge — he seems to make a lot of v good saves.
With all due respect, signing a GK is literally one of our lowest priorities. I think we’d need 4-5 players and then a top-end L1 to lower level Champ GK becoming available to us to even consider signing a GK.
Also, we’ve had the best defence in the league for most of the games this season. The goalkeeper and his defence is a unit. Burge and the defence has done very well over the course of the season. Take his ‘world class’ (term branded about way too often for my liking) save v Newport, kept us in a game we’re ended up drawing. To Yeovil, which his mistake was followed up by a catalogue of mistakes elsewhere. From abject defending to missing clear cut chances — can hardly lay the blame for that loss on him or other people’s mistakes.
One last point, I think Burge, Haynes and Willis (to a lesser extent) are tainted with the failures of past Cov teams. People seemingly had rose tinted glasses for McDonald, suggesting we could even sell Willis! Over the season, however, it has become increasingly clear he is our undisputed best CB. Stokes hasn’t been the same for a long time, but Haynes takes a lot of undue stock imo. The most recent example is Monday, he was the only defender not to be directly culperable for a goal (no achievement because he played badly anyway). Yet, by the way a few people harked on, you’d have thought he was responsible for most of the goals.