Why Leeds have signed a goalkeeper from League 2

Yorkshire Evening Post

YEP chief football writer Graham Smyth and Leeds United journalist Joe Donnohue explain why the club have moved to bring in Salford City 'keeper Alex Cairns

Transcript

00:00Can we talk about Alex Cairns then, being the signing that was announced yesterday evening?

00:06Slightly left field on the face of it, because he's a League 2 goalkeeper from Salford City,

00:11but there is a bit of common sense to it, isn't there? It's the whole club developed thing,

00:20homegrown talent. You need to have seven homegrown players, so basically they are players who've

00:27been with clubs affiliated to the FA of Wales or the FA for three years before they turn

00:3619, is it? It's basically three years as a youth with a British club and

00:45you need seven of those. It doesn't need to be your club, it just needs to be a British club.

00:48I think it's between the 18th and 21st birthday, so you have to think that qualifies you as

00:54homegrown and then to be club trained you have to have trained for a couple of years before

01:00your under-19 season. Yes, I think it's three again, three seasons I think. Alex Cairns qualifies

01:07as both. You have to have a club developed player in your squad on a match day or you can't have

01:15seven subs, so if you don't have one you can only have six. The signing of Cairns helps satisfy that,

01:22him and Byron count, Shackleton did too, Creswell did. There's not that many others,

01:31now that Archie Gray's gone, what you would call match day squad players. Leeds had that in mind.

01:37It's a replacement for Cleyson as a third choice goalkeeper. It's really, on the face of it to me,

01:43it looks more like a Scott Carson type signing than it does a he's actually going to push for

01:48a place in the team. Maybe he sees it differently. It's actually a tactic which is employed by quite

01:52a few clubs. Newcastle have done it with Mark Gillespie, he's club trained and the goalkeeper

01:59who I think has played three times in four seasons, none of which were in the league.

02:03Man United did it with Tom Heaton. Burnley have done it with Lawrence Vigoro, he's not club

02:08trained but he is homegrown. Just in terms of the financials of it, I think it makes sense because

02:14Cleyson arrived three summers ago as Leeds' number two goalkeeper, up and coming, a Norwegian youth

02:21international, the number one for Norway's under 21s and he was already a first team goalkeeper

02:28for Vallorenga in Norway. He signed for a Premier League club, he won't have been on

02:36a YTS pay packet to say the least. Still will not have been a cheap contract and

02:41you're kind of not really getting your money's worth when you're a third choice goalkeeper are

02:45you? Especially if they are on what was once Premier League money.

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