Revolution
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There was a thread on this site a couple on months back where people were naming their top 5 United keepers. I’m too lazy to dig out the thread, but I recall someone chose Phil Kite as one of his top 5. Someone else queried this, and it did seem an odd choice to me, but thinking about it again: if you’ve supported United for 20 or so years, and you’re asked to name your top 5 keepers, it’s not so easy filling out the roster, because the era has been dominated by the Big 3 of Tracey, Kelly and Kenny, and hardly anyone else has had a look in.
To show what I mean, in the last 20 complete seasons (ie from last year back to 1989-90) United played 892 league matches. The following keepers started those games:
Simon Tracey: 322 starts (+ 3 sub appearances)
Paddy Kenny: 276 starts
Alan Kelly: 213 starts (again, with 3 sub appearances)
Everyone else: 81 starts
We can count ourselves incredibly fortunate to have gone through a 20 year period with 90% of our games featuring one of these 3 great keepers.
Sadly, with Paddy’s problems keeping him out of the side for most (if not all) of this year, this is the first time since our Division 3 promotion that one of the aforementioned Big 3 did not start the season as our first choice. Plus, the arrival of Mark Bunn has seen a phenomenon emerge that we haven’t seen at the Lane in a long time, probably since the Andy Leaning days, namely a first choice keeper who isn’t very good. It feels like the end of an era - though I for one hope Paddy returns.
Anyway, let’s have a look at the cast of characters who played in the other 81 games, and then I’ll rank ‘em. As an incentive to read on, I promise the phrase “Blackwell out” doesn’t appear anywhere below…
Phil Kite (11 games, 1990-1 and 1991-2)
Phil was a bit unfortunate because both his spells in the first team came when Tracey got injured at the start of a season, and as most of you will remember United weren’t very good at the start of a season in those days. Indeed, although he was solid enough (though nowhere near as good as Tracey) Phil only finished on the winning side on a few occasions. He was also unlucky at the end of 1992 when he was already injured when Tracey got hurt during the run in. Luckily, Bassett saw something in Mel Rees…Phil got loaned around a lot towards the end of his United career.
Mel Rees (8 games, 1991-2)
Here are the scores from the 8 games Mel Rees played in for us:
United 2 Liverpool 0
Villa 1 United 1
United 2 Oldham 0
Everton 0 United 2
United 2 Spurs 0
United 1 Arsenal 1
Notts County 1 United 3
United 2 Leeds 3
I don’t think we’ve been a better side in my time as a Blade. Thanks Mel, and RIP.
Mervyn Day (1 game, 1991-2)
Talk about after the Lord Mayor’s show. With the league title won by Leeds, and Rees and Tracey injured, we got dispensation to borrow Mervyn to keep goal in United’s one remaining fixture at Wimbledon. We got stuffed 3-0, and Mervyn, who looked about 50 at this point, was dreadful, costing us 2 of the goals. He did, however, have the pleasure of saving a John Fashanu penalty. You may recall that Fashanu used to wait until the keeper committed and then roll the ball in the opposite direction. Merv was too slow to dive early, and easily fell on the ball.
Billy Mercer (4 games, 1994-5 and 1995-6)
The Kelly/Tracey years were lean for other goalkeepers, as you could only get in the side if both were injured. Hence Billy’s 2 year stay with us only saw him feature in a few league games, notably two incredibly nervous performances versus Derby, where we won both but he did not inspire confidence. His last appearance was in the fourth of United’s 5 defeats opening 1995-6, where we threw away a 2-1 lead at home to Palace with 5 minutes left. The 2nd tier was probably a bit too good for him, and he did well lower down (notably at Chesterfield) after moving on.
Andy Goram (7 games, 1998-9)
The Goram era is still memorable to me as thoroughly exhausting as I spent much of it shouting “Goram! Get off your line!”. Jesus, if you think Paddy doesn’t command the area, you should’ve seen this guy…He arrived, with stupid mullet, on a short term deal when Tracey and Kelly were both injured and although he was on the downhill bit of his career and not particularly impressive, United did okay whilst we was with us, only losing once in 7 league matches and winning away (in a deluge at Oxford) for the first time in almost a year. He played football and first class cricket for Scotland despite being born in Bury. Bizarrely enough, the photo on his Cricinfo page is from his time with us. He had the best career by far of anyone on this list.
Aidan Davison (1+1 game, 1999-00)
You might say that Aidan had a difficult start to his Blades career. He came on as a sub to face a penalty at Maine Road after Tracey had been sent off and we were already 1-0 down, and things only got worse, as we were hammered 6-0 in a Heath era horror second only to the Port Vale debacle. His last game was a victory against Palace when Tracey served his suspension, and then he bizarrely found himself elevated to the Premier League, signing for Bradford and making his Premier League debut aged 31.
Frank Talia (6 games, 2000-1)
His real first name is Francesco. Australian import who deputised for Simon Tracey one year and played the last 6 matches of a pretty unmemorable season in pretty unmemorable fashion.
Wilko De Vogt (5+1 games, 2001-2)
The “+1” of course is Wilko’s substitute appearance in the Battle of Bramall Lane…I know this is about league games, but no reference to Wilko is complete without mention of his final United appearance, against Ipswich in the Cup. United were (rather fortuitously) 3-0 up on the hour, before Ipswich ran riot and scored 3 times in 4 minutes, with Wilko disintegrating before our very eyes. He almost conceded a fourth, letting a ball bounce over his head and having to race back to dive on it on the line, before Pesky saved his blushes. Wilko was not the man for a crisis, that’s for sure. Still playing in the Dutch 2nd Division.
Gary Kelly (1 game, 2002-3)
Alan’s big brother and the third good quality keeper from the Kelly family - though the only one not awarded a full cap by Ireland - Gary helped us out by filling in at Watford on the last day of the season as we protected Paddy for the playoffs. He did okay but we lost 0-2 as United mailed in a very poor performance. That was his last league appearance.
Alan and Gary were the first brothers to make league appearances for the Blades without ever playing in the same match. I recall they played against each other when United drew 2-2 with Oldham in December 1996, with a rare mistake from Alan costing us the victory.
Paul Gerrard (18 games, 2003-4 and 2006-7)
There are, of course, two Paul Gerrards. First, there’s the one who deputised very capably for 3 months after Paddy got injured at Palace, helping to keep us in the promotion hunt - we were 2nd when Gerrard’s loan expired. Then there’s the shaky looking 3rd choice who had to play twice in our PL season when Kenny and Bennett were both hurt, playing poorly at Boro and then helping calamity Claude chuck away 2 points against Portsmouth. Sadly, this error - his last act in a United shirt - has served to wipe out earlier more positive memories of him. He’s now Stockport’s reserve keeper and is also on the coaching staff.
Lee Baxter (1 game, 2003-4)
If you have a keeping crisis and are faced with choosing between a lower league journeyman with international experience and someone you’ve never seen play, it turns out that it’s probably not a good idea to pick the guy you’ve never seen play.
Does Baxter have any serious rival as United’s worst player in the modern era? He’s now a goalkeeping coach, which is just frightening.
Alan Fettis (2+1 games, 2003-4)
The aforementioned lower league journeyman with international experience, Fettis came on at half time against Burnley as damage control, keeping a clean sheet. He played twice more and then gave way when Kenny returned from his long layoff on Boxing Day. Fettis is probably best known for playing a couple of games as a forward for Hull during an injury crisis, scoring the winner in one of them.
Ian Bennett (15+1 games, 2004-5 and 2006-7 to 2008-9)
His best days are now behind him, and he needs to stop breaking his thumb and exposing us to the likes of late career Gerrard and Bunn, but he’s done well at times, particularly when deputising for Paddy in his first loan spell with us.
Phil Barnes (1 game, 2004-5)
Barnes is from Handsworth and has a piece of one of his fingers missing, but has overcome these handicaps to carve out a decent lower division career. He was our reserve for a couple of years but only played 1 league game and a handful of cup ties. The league match, a 1-0 win over an awful Rotherham team in 2004-5, was more notable as the only appearance of an infamous Warnock signing, Tommy Johnson, about 10 years past his sell by date. Barnes was last seen helping Grimsby to stay in the league last year, whilst Johnson is no doubt on Palace’s books by now.
As to the rankings...well, I've changed my mind. Most of these guys made too few appearances to be compared to each other in any meaningful way. I'll simply say that it's pretty clear that Mel Rees was the best, and Lee Baxter was the worst, and Mervyn Day is lucky that Lee Baxter's existence keeps him out of worst spot.
I hope that this ramble through recent custodian history has afforded some of you some pleasure. Please now feel free to resume calling for Blackwell's head, correcting other people's spelling, or whatever else it is you like to do.
To show what I mean, in the last 20 complete seasons (ie from last year back to 1989-90) United played 892 league matches. The following keepers started those games:
Simon Tracey: 322 starts (+ 3 sub appearances)
Paddy Kenny: 276 starts
Alan Kelly: 213 starts (again, with 3 sub appearances)
Everyone else: 81 starts
We can count ourselves incredibly fortunate to have gone through a 20 year period with 90% of our games featuring one of these 3 great keepers.
Sadly, with Paddy’s problems keeping him out of the side for most (if not all) of this year, this is the first time since our Division 3 promotion that one of the aforementioned Big 3 did not start the season as our first choice. Plus, the arrival of Mark Bunn has seen a phenomenon emerge that we haven’t seen at the Lane in a long time, probably since the Andy Leaning days, namely a first choice keeper who isn’t very good. It feels like the end of an era - though I for one hope Paddy returns.
Anyway, let’s have a look at the cast of characters who played in the other 81 games, and then I’ll rank ‘em. As an incentive to read on, I promise the phrase “Blackwell out” doesn’t appear anywhere below…
Phil Kite (11 games, 1990-1 and 1991-2)
Phil was a bit unfortunate because both his spells in the first team came when Tracey got injured at the start of a season, and as most of you will remember United weren’t very good at the start of a season in those days. Indeed, although he was solid enough (though nowhere near as good as Tracey) Phil only finished on the winning side on a few occasions. He was also unlucky at the end of 1992 when he was already injured when Tracey got hurt during the run in. Luckily, Bassett saw something in Mel Rees…Phil got loaned around a lot towards the end of his United career.
Mel Rees (8 games, 1991-2)
Here are the scores from the 8 games Mel Rees played in for us:
United 2 Liverpool 0
Villa 1 United 1
United 2 Oldham 0
Everton 0 United 2
United 2 Spurs 0
United 1 Arsenal 1
Notts County 1 United 3
United 2 Leeds 3
I don’t think we’ve been a better side in my time as a Blade. Thanks Mel, and RIP.
Mervyn Day (1 game, 1991-2)
Talk about after the Lord Mayor’s show. With the league title won by Leeds, and Rees and Tracey injured, we got dispensation to borrow Mervyn to keep goal in United’s one remaining fixture at Wimbledon. We got stuffed 3-0, and Mervyn, who looked about 50 at this point, was dreadful, costing us 2 of the goals. He did, however, have the pleasure of saving a John Fashanu penalty. You may recall that Fashanu used to wait until the keeper committed and then roll the ball in the opposite direction. Merv was too slow to dive early, and easily fell on the ball.
Billy Mercer (4 games, 1994-5 and 1995-6)
The Kelly/Tracey years were lean for other goalkeepers, as you could only get in the side if both were injured. Hence Billy’s 2 year stay with us only saw him feature in a few league games, notably two incredibly nervous performances versus Derby, where we won both but he did not inspire confidence. His last appearance was in the fourth of United’s 5 defeats opening 1995-6, where we threw away a 2-1 lead at home to Palace with 5 minutes left. The 2nd tier was probably a bit too good for him, and he did well lower down (notably at Chesterfield) after moving on.
Andy Goram (7 games, 1998-9)
The Goram era is still memorable to me as thoroughly exhausting as I spent much of it shouting “Goram! Get off your line!”. Jesus, if you think Paddy doesn’t command the area, you should’ve seen this guy…He arrived, with stupid mullet, on a short term deal when Tracey and Kelly were both injured and although he was on the downhill bit of his career and not particularly impressive, United did okay whilst we was with us, only losing once in 7 league matches and winning away (in a deluge at Oxford) for the first time in almost a year. He played football and first class cricket for Scotland despite being born in Bury. Bizarrely enough, the photo on his Cricinfo page is from his time with us. He had the best career by far of anyone on this list.
Aidan Davison (1+1 game, 1999-00)
You might say that Aidan had a difficult start to his Blades career. He came on as a sub to face a penalty at Maine Road after Tracey had been sent off and we were already 1-0 down, and things only got worse, as we were hammered 6-0 in a Heath era horror second only to the Port Vale debacle. His last game was a victory against Palace when Tracey served his suspension, and then he bizarrely found himself elevated to the Premier League, signing for Bradford and making his Premier League debut aged 31.
Frank Talia (6 games, 2000-1)
His real first name is Francesco. Australian import who deputised for Simon Tracey one year and played the last 6 matches of a pretty unmemorable season in pretty unmemorable fashion.
Wilko De Vogt (5+1 games, 2001-2)
The “+1” of course is Wilko’s substitute appearance in the Battle of Bramall Lane…I know this is about league games, but no reference to Wilko is complete without mention of his final United appearance, against Ipswich in the Cup. United were (rather fortuitously) 3-0 up on the hour, before Ipswich ran riot and scored 3 times in 4 minutes, with Wilko disintegrating before our very eyes. He almost conceded a fourth, letting a ball bounce over his head and having to race back to dive on it on the line, before Pesky saved his blushes. Wilko was not the man for a crisis, that’s for sure. Still playing in the Dutch 2nd Division.
Gary Kelly (1 game, 2002-3)
Alan’s big brother and the third good quality keeper from the Kelly family - though the only one not awarded a full cap by Ireland - Gary helped us out by filling in at Watford on the last day of the season as we protected Paddy for the playoffs. He did okay but we lost 0-2 as United mailed in a very poor performance. That was his last league appearance.
Alan and Gary were the first brothers to make league appearances for the Blades without ever playing in the same match. I recall they played against each other when United drew 2-2 with Oldham in December 1996, with a rare mistake from Alan costing us the victory.
Paul Gerrard (18 games, 2003-4 and 2006-7)
There are, of course, two Paul Gerrards. First, there’s the one who deputised very capably for 3 months after Paddy got injured at Palace, helping to keep us in the promotion hunt - we were 2nd when Gerrard’s loan expired. Then there’s the shaky looking 3rd choice who had to play twice in our PL season when Kenny and Bennett were both hurt, playing poorly at Boro and then helping calamity Claude chuck away 2 points against Portsmouth. Sadly, this error - his last act in a United shirt - has served to wipe out earlier more positive memories of him. He’s now Stockport’s reserve keeper and is also on the coaching staff.
Lee Baxter (1 game, 2003-4)
If you have a keeping crisis and are faced with choosing between a lower league journeyman with international experience and someone you’ve never seen play, it turns out that it’s probably not a good idea to pick the guy you’ve never seen play.
Does Baxter have any serious rival as United’s worst player in the modern era? He’s now a goalkeeping coach, which is just frightening.
Alan Fettis (2+1 games, 2003-4)
The aforementioned lower league journeyman with international experience, Fettis came on at half time against Burnley as damage control, keeping a clean sheet. He played twice more and then gave way when Kenny returned from his long layoff on Boxing Day. Fettis is probably best known for playing a couple of games as a forward for Hull during an injury crisis, scoring the winner in one of them.
Ian Bennett (15+1 games, 2004-5 and 2006-7 to 2008-9)
His best days are now behind him, and he needs to stop breaking his thumb and exposing us to the likes of late career Gerrard and Bunn, but he’s done well at times, particularly when deputising for Paddy in his first loan spell with us.
Phil Barnes (1 game, 2004-5)
Barnes is from Handsworth and has a piece of one of his fingers missing, but has overcome these handicaps to carve out a decent lower division career. He was our reserve for a couple of years but only played 1 league game and a handful of cup ties. The league match, a 1-0 win over an awful Rotherham team in 2004-5, was more notable as the only appearance of an infamous Warnock signing, Tommy Johnson, about 10 years past his sell by date. Barnes was last seen helping Grimsby to stay in the league last year, whilst Johnson is no doubt on Palace’s books by now.
As to the rankings...well, I've changed my mind. Most of these guys made too few appearances to be compared to each other in any meaningful way. I'll simply say that it's pretty clear that Mel Rees was the best, and Lee Baxter was the worst, and Mervyn Day is lucky that Lee Baxter's existence keeps him out of worst spot.
I hope that this ramble through recent custodian history has afforded some of you some pleasure. Please now feel free to resume calling for Blackwell's head, correcting other people's spelling, or whatever else it is you like to do.
