A question for the older fans here

[cottage cheese]

Listened to the game on the radio last night and one of the pundits was going on about hart, saying that he could just be the best goalkeeper that England has ever had.


Now i was born in 88 so only really seen seaman,martyn,robinson etc......

but how does hart rate to the likes of Banks, Clemence and Shilton? Is he as good as those guys, as I have only ever seen clips of them.

Just interested to now if the pundit was talking absolute rubbish?

[mr-ska]

I think Shilton had the edge over Ray Clemence..  just...

By the time i was old enough to remember Gordon Banks  he had had a car accident and lost an eye. From footage and accounts he was one hell of a keeper .

Hart is quality  and i think he has his best years to come...  Keepers tend to get better with age..

[VicHalomsLovechild]

Banks, Shilton, Bonetti and Seaman all great keepers but just like everybody has their favorite Bond, I'd go with Banks

[SaltfordWhite]

I don't know about Banks as I was to young, but THAT save that he made was incredible.

I would have said that of the rest, Seaman was the better keeper, and I include Shilton and Clemence in that.

I also think that Hart has the potential to be better than Seaman was, but he has some way to go before he gets there.

[Burt]

Hart certainly has the potential to be up there. He has the talent, and has got time on his side too.

Shilton is the one to beat in terms of appearances - I think I am right in saying he has more international caps (100+ in total) than the others.

[JimmyDunnesBum]

shilton was better than clemence ,imho , because he was more consistent . sure, they all make mistakes from time to time , but ray  did it more than most top 'keepers . peter , on the other hand , rarely made an error.

as for the 70s (ish) as a whole , what we ( england ) did have was real strength in depth - it was a golden era for goalkeeping in this country . players such as phil parkes ( the west ham and qpr one ) , jimmy rimmer and  joe corrigan , to name just three , were all very good at what they did and would have almost certainly  earned more caps than they did had they been around in a different era. ( a little research tells me that the aforementioned earned just 11 full caps between them ,which is a reflection of just how strong the goalkeeping division was back then .)

as for how hart compares  , joe is still very young so it's  hard to say . 

[filham]

You are right the pundit was talking rubish.

If he had watched Fulham in the sixties he would realise that Tony Macedo was better than Hart and Tony never got a full England cap.

[TonyGilroy]

You are right the pundit was talking rubish.

If he had watched Fulham in the sixties he would realise that Tony Macedo was better than Hart and Tony never got a full England cap.

And from his mid twenties was no better than Ian Seymour and Jack McClelland, each of the three taking turns in playing inadequately in goal for us.

Macedo was a GREAT prospect who wasted his career. Banks was a great keeper throughout a long career and prevented many very good keepers from having an England career .

Bonetti, West, Waiters, Glazier, Jackson, Montgomery, Parkes are just a few who come to mind.

[Rupert]

The problem with these comparisons is that the game has changed. How would Banks, Bonetti, etc have coped with the demand they play the ball quickly, the back-pass rule, etc, and how would the likes of Hart have coped with the more robust approach to the game back then, when a goalie was expected to take any physical contact like a man, and not roll around screaming if anyone invades his personal space so that the ref gives him a free-kick (yes, yes, I am exaggerating here for dramatic effect, live with it)?

I can just remember Banks in his prime, the 1970 World Cup in particular, grainy black and white pictures of that particular save against Pele, and he really was better than any keeper I have seen since, but the rose-tinted glasses of my youth may well be embellishing his performances. I know his car crash (1972?) was one of the main headlines on the news when it happened, so evidently I wasn't the only one who considered him to be the best.

[MOR :]

Gordon Banks for me everytime...

[cheerupjimmyhill]

Banks i think will always be the best maybe because of being in the world cup team and also that Pele save.. I was born in 66 and banks was my first football hero, infact my nan knitted me a yellow top like his and i also remember sending him a letter after his car crash. I will also own upto meeting him in Disney Florida only 4 years ago and got his autograph where he came across as a very nice guy. Although my daughter wasnt too pleased as her Disney character autograph book with such legends as cinderella, sleeping beauty to name a few also has Gordon Banks in it...

For me Shilton and Clemence were way ahead of Seaman and Hart needs to play a while yet to be compared to any of these.

My dad though will never acknowledge any Fulham keeper being anywhere near as good as Macedo, which has caused many a debate between us.

[SG]

Whilst for nostalgic reasons it would be Banks i have to say that Shilton would take some beating in any era. Brian Clough always used to say that he was worth a goal start at least every game when Notts Forest were leading the way in this country and Europe

[mr-ska]

Jim Stannard...... :011:

[cmg]

I always thought Shilton a better keeper than Clemence, and couldn't understand England's flirtation with Clemence which 'deprived' Shilton of 30 odd caps. Still Shilton did end up with 125 so I guess he won't be complaining and Clemence was pretty good. I'd put Pat Jennings (N.Ireland) in the same league as these two guys.

I'd be too biased to be objective about Macedo - but he was a GREAT keeper.

Banks was simply the best goalkeeper I ever saw. He had an immense all round game, gave confidence to his defenders and rarely made an error. He was brave, acrobatic when neccessary and intelligent. For me only Dino Zoff comes close.

Hart is a decent keeper but not really in the class of those above.

The question of comparing eras is as always an interesting one. I would have thought that the overall role of the keeper has changed less than that of other positions. They get much less time to deal with back passes today, but are given the kind of protection that Macedo would consider laughable. The ball used today seems to do some interesting things, but, overall conditions are much better.

Not sure what you think, but I feel that Nat Lofthouse's second goal (3.20) in this clip might not be allowed today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13prB-g5fDU#ws

Intersting, too to see Bobby Charlton with hair.
In goal for Bolton was Eddie Hopkinson, one of the worst keepers to play for England.

[cebu]

I'm one of the oldies here that would tend to say Banks.

However during some recent football related TV palaver, one of the commentators mentioned something Bob Wilson (former Arsenal GK and GK-coach) had told him. Wilson was quoted as saying that in his day, playing with the old heavy ball, he knew within the first 5 yards of the flight of the ball exactly where it was going. Today's GK, playing with the modern light ball, couldn't determine the exact flight of the ball until the last 5 yards.

It makes you wonder if comparisons of GKs of yesteryear with those of today is actually at all fair.

[bulgariawhite]

Being the age I am I suppose Banks has to get the vote. As a teenage and a goalkeeper my hero was Macedo. In the mix must come Pat jennings who had what looked like enormous hands at the time. Still nice memories

[A Humble Man]

You cannot compare one generation of footballers with another the game keeps changing so quickly.

[nose]

Banks by a mile the best i have seen, on TV Lev yashin looked good.
Jennings was immense. Shilts and clemence were very good but not in the same class as the three I mentioned. iriba for spain was pretty hot too.

[HatterDon]

The only way you can realistically compare players from different eras is by measuring where they rate among their peers. It's especially difficult for keepers since the nature of their play changed so dramatically when they were no longer able to pick up a back pass. They basically became sweepers and had to be so much better with their feet than they had before. I think you'll find that every keeper in the Championship is a more rounded player than any of the old 1st division keepers. It's a different game now. Having said all that ... .

While I think that Joe Hart is on his way to being the best keeper in the world, the best English keeper ever -- for my money -- is Gordon Banks. He was universally recognized as the best at his position in the world for 5 or 6 consecutive years. Shilton had similar respect and so will Hart, but only Banks had that degree of universal acceptance as the best.

He's also the best I've ever seen, regardless of nationality.

[filham]

You are right the pundit was talking rubish.

If he had watched Fulham in the sixties he would realise that Tony Macedo was better than Hart and Tony never got a full England cap.

And from his mid twenties was no better than Ian Seymour and Jack McClelland, each of the three taking turns in playing inadequately in goal for us.

Macedo was a GREAT prospect who wasted his career. Banks was a great keeper throughout a long career and prevented many very good keepers from having an England career .

Bonetti, West, Waiters, Glazier, Jackson, Montgomery, Parkes are just a few who come to mind.

No, this is missleading. Macedo played 391 games for us and for most of his time here was a great keeper and a clear 1st choice. It was only towards the end of his Fulham days that McCleland and Seymour started to displace him from time to time. No way can it be said he wasted his career

It was Seymour who showed great promise as a young keeper but in the end played only about70 odd games for us and seemed to have wasted his career.