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Now, I must be honest and say I am chuckling to myself as a write this but our club has been strongly linked with England #1 and Head & Shoulders model Joe Hart in the past few days. A world class goalie in his own right, yet some fans are advising against the move despite it’s 1 in 50 chance of coming to fruition.
With Vito Mannone out for a good 3 months of the season, it’s without doubt finally Jordan Pickford’s chance to shine. A meteoric rise over the last year has seen a clamber for his inclusion in the match 11, despite only playing three Premier League games and twenty plus in The Championship. Many have claimed his superior distribution should be a deciding factor in placing the 21-year-old between the sticks and these claims were validating when a 60 yard pass to Duncan Watmore created the winning goal in the mid-week win over Shrewsbury Town.
In my God’s honest opinion, there’s more chance of Angelina Jolie wanting to take me out to Passion for a pint than we have of signing Joe Hart. However, the amount of fans who have claimed they do not want him has me seriously questioning their mind-set, whilst also giving me concern that maybe we are putting a little too much pressure on England’s future goalkeeper, Jordan Pickford.
Hart had a poor Euro 2016; let’s not beat around the bush. The Bale free kick & the winning goal from Iceland to knock us out of the tournament quiet rightly became scrutinised. Like all good English rags, they attempted to start the destruction of a career that has won two Premier League titles, an FA Cup and League Cup twice. You also don’t get 63 caps for England if you’re shit. Whether or not it’s a poor England team or not, he’s consistently been number 1 for numerous Managers now. Sam Allardyce will no doubt continue to keep faith with him too and that’s a Manager I think we all trust, isn’t it?
Add into this that the Manchester City stopper is 29. Prime goalkeeping age. It’s also reported that we would only be responsible for 30k of his 120k per week wages. Again, I find this hard to be true, but let’s for this articles sake imagine it is. 30k for England’s number one in his prime yet we’d rather take a player who has plenty potential, but really only three Premier League games under his belt? Pull the other one. If he would consider the move, I’d offer him the freedom of the city. Imagine what Pickford could learn from him in a season? We had Steve bloody Harper teaching the boy last year for God’s sake! The benefits are endless.
Again, this entire article is so very hypothetical, if there is even a 1% chance of it coming off, we need to pursue it. The club needs an injection of positivity with the Lamine Kone situation, performances on the pitch and countless injury worries completely eroding any positivity the season may have begun with and the signing of the best goalkeeper in the League would no doubt bring that. Who knows, with signings of that level of quality, Kone might even decide he does indeed quite like this place and take the 70k a week on offer.
In a summer of little good quality ins and too many good quality outs, not too mention the loss of a manager who galvanised the club, it’s actually quite bemusing that so many fans have turned their nose up at the mere mention of Joe Hart being our number one. With claims from certain sections that he’s no better than our young boy from Washington and whilst I admire the fierce defence of a young and supremely talented young goalkeeper in Pickford, I do worry some are wearing red and white tinted spectacles.
Joe Hart for Sunderland? It’ll probably never happen. But the links excite me nonetheless. As John Lennon said, you may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. Am i?
