Three goalkeepers Newcastle United should consider as Wilson kicks off defining summer rebuild
There are summers that tick along and summers that define what a football club is going to be, and where the project is going. Newcastle United are firmly the second category this summer.
Newcastle United are fresh from coming off a domestic season that, quite frankly, was simply not good enough. Flat, frustrating, and well short of where a squad assembled at considerable expense ought to be finishing. And before the dust has even settled on the season, the squad rebuild is already starting to happen around us in real time. At the time of writing, Anthony Gordon is on his way to Barcelona for a medical, a sale north of £69m that the club, for all their public reluctance, will ultimately welcome to ease the summer’s accounts. Kieran Trippier and Emil Krafth are gone. Others, such as Tino Livramento, Sandro Tonali and Harvey Barnes, may yet follow them through the exit before the window shuts. Layer on top a World Cup summer that will scatter half our targets across North America and cram every negotiation into the awkward weeks around a tournament, and you have the backdrop to Ross Wilson’s first summer window as our Sporting Director. A pivotal one for the future of PIF’s Newcastle United project.
No pressure, then.
Amid all of that upheaval, there is one position we simply cannot afford to fudge, and that is between the posts. Nick Pope’s performances this season have been nothing short of calamitous. None of this is to deny what he has given the club, at his best he is a fine shot-stopper and brave coming off his line, but shot-stopping alone stopped being the whole job years ago, and Pope has long since past his best. The modern number one is the first pass of an attack as much as the last line of defence, and that is precisely where Pope has always come up short. His distribution, the calm short passing a possession side lives on, has never been his game, and at 34 the sport is drifting away from his profile rather than back towards it. The eye test this season told its own story, with several basic mistakes leading to goals, as well as complete howlers that now come to define a once fine goalkeeper in sharp decline. Aaron Ramsdale, brought in on loan to offer an alternative, has done nothing remotely near enough to suggest that turning the move permanent would be money well spent.
So we arrive at the most important summer in years without a goalkeeper we can build around, and that is not a problem to wallpaper over with the word “competition.” It is a problem to solve.
What do we actually need? A keeper good enough to start in August, not in two seasons. One genuinely comfortable with the ball at his feet, because modern football demands it. One available at a fee that fits within our financial position ideally, as Wilson himself has hinted, from outside the overheated Premier League market. And one we can realistically get “over the line” with the World Cup compressing the whole window.
Which is exactly why the Ewen Jaouen links should be kept in proportion. The 20-year-old Reims goalkeeper is a genuinely intriguing prospect, a 6ft 6in shot-stopper learning his trade in Ligue 2, and provided it is for a sensible fee he, and not the baffling £17m being quoted, could be a shrewd addition to develop and to push for minutes down the line. But let’s be clear-eyed: a 20-year-old from the French second tier is a keeper you sign behind an established number one, not as one. As the answer to the Pope problem, he is nowhere near enough. File him under “useful squad piece,” not “the solution.”
Here, then, are the three keepers who genuinely could be the solution, running from the safe bet to the smart bet to the bold bet.
The safe bet: Marco Carnesecchi
If we want to take the risk out of the position altogether, Carnesecchi is the man. Across Europe’s top seven leagues this season, no goalkeeper realistically available to us grades out as more complete. He sits in the 95th percentile for shot-stopping once you account for the quality of the chances he faces, not merely a flattering save rate, but genuine, points-winning saves. He is an 88th-percentile short passer, which is to say exactly the build-up goalkeeper Howe’s system has been crying out for, and there is no glaring weakness anywhere else in his game. At 25, off the back of a full season as Atalanta’s number one in Serie A and the Champions League, he is that rare signing who is both ready right now and built for the next decade.
The catch, inevitably, is money. While Atalanta have recently been a Champions League club, they too are fresh off a disappointing season where they finished 7th – which was still enough to qualify for the Europa Conference League, but they do not have to sell. He is an impressive young goalkeeper with Champions League experience and one would expect Atalanta to price him to match this profile, which, with a financial tightrope and a World Cup inflating fees across the board, could well make him the hardest of the three to actually land. He is the ideal signing. He may also be the one that gets away. But if you asked me to name the best, most realistic goalkeeper across Europe’s top leagues that could take the number 1 jersey for the better part of the next decade, this would be the one.
The smart bet: Anatoliy Trubin
If Carnesecchi is the dream, Trubin is the deal that ought to actually get done, the one our own recruitment logic should lead us straight to. He is 24, he plays for Benfica, and Benfica are about as reliable a selling club as exists in European football: a place where every good player has a price and a route to a bigger league. That is Wilson’s “value outside the Premier League” philosophy made flesh.
And the stats stack up. Trubin is an 84th-percentile shot-stopper, and, crucially, a 93rd-percentile short passer. Elite, in other words, precisely the skill Pope lacks and we need. He is not the finished article: his long distribution (37th percentile) is ordinary, and he is not a keeper who flies off his line to sweep behind a high line (23rd percentile). So you are buying a composed, play-from-the-back goalkeeper rather than a do-everything one. For a side that wants to dominate the ball and build with patience, that is a trade well worth making. Young enough to sell on at a profit if it ever came to it, good enough to start immediately, and gettable at a sane price, if I had to put my own money on the signing that makes the most sense for where this club actually is, it would be him.
The bold bet: Robin Risser
And then there is the one we are reportedly chasing hardest. Robin Risser is the name the club is said to view as the genuine long-term heir to the gloves, a 21-year-old who has spent this season as a regular in Ligue 1 with Lens, valued at around £20m and watched by half of Europe. He was pivotal in an historical season for RC Lens, as this famous football mad club with a strong working class fan-base former industrial hinterlands in the north-east finished second in Ligue 1 and won the Coupe de France for the first time in its history. He will be playing Champions League football next season, and may wish to get this experience under his belt. He is the bet on a ceiling rather than a guarantee: potentially the best of the three in three years’ time, with all the uncertainty that “potentially” drags along with it.
That’s the risk, and as a fan I’d be lying if it didn’t make me a touch nervous. Asking a 21-year-old to be the undisputed number one of a club with ambitions to return to Europe in a season we cannot afford to get wrong, with no senior keeper of real quality behind him is an awful lot to put on a young man’s shoulders. Risser makes most sense as the spine of a two or three-year plan, and, tellingly, he is exactly the signing a development prospect like Jaouen would complement rather than crowd. Get the structure right and he could be ours for a decade. Throw him in cold and undercooked, and we risk stunting the very talent we paid for.
The bottom line
Three keepers, three different bets, one non-negotiable truth: this is the summer we stop pretending the goalkeeping situation is fine. Pope is no longer the answer, Ramsdale was never going to be it, and a 20-year-old from Ligue 2 cannot be asked to carry the load. Whether Wilson opts for the certainty of Carnesecchi, the sense of Trubin or the upside of Risser, the priority has to be identical, a number one we can build the next era around.
With outgoings aplenty, we are about to learn what kind of club Ross Wilson intends to build and, as it so often should, this process should start with who we trust in goal. Get this one right and a daunting summer suddenly feels survivable. Get it wrong, and no amount of spending further up the pitch will cover for it.
