by Alan Partridge »
30 Oct 2008 17:45
There is no way Almunia can be expecting him to shoot from 43 yards, so his positioning I would say wasn't that bad, that's the only thing he could have been slightly criticised for. It was a brilliant bit of play by Bentley, he caught it as sweet as he could and took everyone by surprise. backpedalling and jumping to dive is probably the hardest thing because you aren't going to get as high as you can because you are already falling almost. Also going with your strongest hand (Almunia's right) is a typically natural thing for a keeper to do and far easy than readjusting your body again to get your weaker hand up there and attempt to push it over. Whenever I am trying to make a tip over save to my left i will almost certainly 9/10 go with my right hand. You get more elevation of your strongest leg (the right, and more power out of your strongest hand, not rocket science) The problem for Almunia was he just couldn't get back that extra yard or two in time, or get the spring off the ground as he is running backwards.
In short it was brilliant from Bentley and not even close to a goalkeeping error. The one he was at fault for was Bent's goal. As for Gomez, that guy is a walking book of keeper cock ups. Anyone can make saves, judgement and positioning, you get those 2 right more times than wrong and you are a decent keeper. Gomez fails in these fundamental parts of the game.