Will he Carson?

After a week of frantic rumour concerning Robert Green, the club today confirmed the loan signing of England goalkeeper Scott Carson! He will now be expected to 'jockey' for the green jersey with Thomas Myhre and Stephan Andersen. Spending two million on Green would have been a misallocation of scarce resources at best given more pressing concerns in other positions and the Hammers are welcome to him.

The club now has five goalkeepers on its books, although four might well be described as 'unproven'. Unless Andersen is moving on, it is not immediately clear why Dowie has pinpointed the keeper's position as a 'problem area'. We had been somewhat spoilt by the consistency of Deano for so long until his surprise departure in January, but Thomas Myhre was perhaps our outstanding performer thereafter. Given that the Norwegian was born during the same week as New York Addick, it is to be hoped that Dowie does not simply consider him 'past it.'

Not surprisingly perhaps, I have never seen Scott Carson play and know very little about him other than he once asked Ronaldo to recommend a dentist. More generally however, it is likely that fully four loaned keepers will be considered good enough to start Premiership matches this season, yet by definition are surplus to immediate requirements at their clubs (Scott Carson, Ben Foster, Tim Howard and Chris Kirkland). The mere fact that Carson went to the World Cup despite having started just four games for Liverpool, is the most direct evidence surely of the damage done to our national side by the influx of foreign imports.

Charlton clearly continue to view the loans system as a low-risk transfer strategy although it has had decidedly mixed success so far in its execution, Carlton Cole for example clearly a 'flop' and Alexei Smertin at best a frustration. We are likely to find the loans system works best if we take onboard players whom we have a genuine option to sign permanently. I am not particularly in favour of us simply offering a promising youngster first-team experience; that's what the Championship is for.

For example at the time we were loaned Cole, I don't think signing him was something Chelsea would have countenanced (West Ham's opportunity only arose when Chelsea subsequently realised the disgruntled Charlton and Villa fans were actually right about him). Carson's case is less clear-cut, but if he excels for us, then Liverpool will ask for him back; hence it might be in Charlton's best interests if he plays well, but not too well.

Indeed, the specialist nature of the position combined with a generally low incidency of goalkeeping injuries implies the likes of Carson and Kirkland could conceivably be put on the loans merry-go-round for several years. Following the introduction of the transfer deadlines, the top English clubs cannot afford to begin a campaign that might require 60 or more matches without considerable goalkeeping cover (I assume that Carson could be recalled if required).

Equally however, the top clubs will want to ensure that their first-choice goalkeeper is genuinely 'world class', and will not be afraid of scanning the globe to find him (Cech, Lehmann, Van Der Sar etc...). Promising English keepers may thus be forced either to take a step down to try to play regular football (as Stuart Taylor has attempted to do for example), to be willing to live in a motorhome whilst travelling amongst loanee clubs or to simply accept that Peter Shilton's four-figure appearance record might be a pipe dream.