Quote Originally Posted by wba13 View Post
I personally think some of you should look in the mirror, people in the business who know more about football than any one of us sore Sam as a top keeper. You lot look at him and see Villa. He Got us to the premiership he played for England and now he’s left.
To be honest I’m glad he’s now left because now some of you won’t have him to scapegoat. So you’ll probably go back to Livermore another international you love scapegoating.
Think of me what you want but I only do what a good supporter of any club will do that is SUPPORT.
As for Bruce not my choice but will get behind him until he’s had a transfer window to put other managers mistakes right.
Yes we support, but not blindly. We also have the right to give our opinions on players.

I have nothing against Johnstone, and wish him well for the future. But in my opinion he was a bang average goalkeeper, who was very lucky to play for England, because of a dearth of other top English GK options.

He had some good qualities, I actually thought his distribution and his shot stopping was okay, at times. As others have alluded to, the command of his area was very poor.

The main issue for me was his general demeanour, for a senior pro in the squad, just didn't look right. I lost count of the number of times we were chasing a goal and it seemed to take an eternity for him to take a goal kick. He was too casual, because he thought he was better with the ball at his feet than he actually was - the mistake vs Huddersfield epitomised it, and I felt that type of goal had been coming. He took a lot of unnecessary risk in games, when the ball was passed back to him.

Its been very rare where I think he has made game changing saves, even in the prem when many thought he had a good season I don't remember him actually gaining or saving us many points. His shots faced to goals conceded ratio this season must be awful.

I remember when we signed him and thought we had made a really shrewd signing. Overall, I thought his time with us was disappointing. I'd rather see one of our young GKs given a chance next season, I might be eating humble pie for saying this, but I don't see them being any worse than Johnstone.