Goalkeepers 'being asked to do a job most not equipped for'

Oddly, I used to like to play in goals during training when I was a player. I was OK, but at 5ft 6in (1.67m) tall it was never going to be my alternative position in the professional game. I knew I was not big enough or good enough for that specialist position.

I say this so that keepers do not get riled with me when I say that, 99.9% of them, are not good enough to be top-level outfield professionals. The problem is that they are continually asked to be just that now.

Burnley v Brighton underlined this perfectly. It is a fast growing list of keepers who are being closed down and then losing goals, simply because they are not good enough footballers. Brighton’s Bart Verbruggen joined Burnley's Arijanet Muric against Everton and Sheffield United’s Ivo Grbic against Liverpool, an error I mentioned just last week.

The reason why Verbruggen did not just come out and pick up the ball up in his box, is because he is being asked to think like an outfield player, but the gap between being not bad and being a top pro is an almighty chasm.

Muric then had a howler that an 11-year-old outfield player would be embarrassed by. With this second aberration in two weeks, Burnley’s chances of staying in the Premier League all but crashed and burned.

This is not a stinging rebuke to him or any goalkeeper. They are being asked to do a job most are not equipped for, and so goals will continue to be pointlessly lost and will probably get even more frequent.

Pat Nevin was writing for the BBC Football Extra newsletter