One To Watch: Lee Camp

Tomorrow night sees the return of Championship football to St Andrews where Birmingham City play hosts to Rotherham United. The away side sit rock bottom of the Championship and so it isn’t unreasonable to expect the Blues’ to dominate this game and really take all 3 points.

In a game in which we should dominate, it is always the case that the opposition’s goalkeeper players out of his skin and somehow seems to save everything in his vicinity. Due to this, I have to go with Lee Camp, the Rotherham goalkeeper, as my one to watch. To say he is an experienced goalkeeper is an understatement; he knows the position inside out and back to front. He has made over 460 appearances throughout his career and at the age of 32, he isn’t exactly going to claim his pension anytime soon, so he will be still hard to beat.

In terms of his attributes then, you have to credit that he is a wonderful shot stopper. I understand that all goalkeepers are agile at this level but the way in which he jumps; he just seems to hang in the air before pushing the ball away to safety. Having asked people who know more about goalkeeping than I do, apparently it is all about the quickness of the feet in order to get into position in order to be underneath the ball when it is heading for the top corner. If this is the case, then he must have very quick feet indeed.

He also pushes the ball to safety regularly. Some goalkeepers have a tendency to just get any part of their body on the ball without really thinking about the next move. Lee seems to see the picture in front of him and therefore is able to push the ball either completely out of bounds or to a defender which is a risk but usually is done in a controlled manner.

I would hope that we do test him a lot tomorrow night because that way, it means that we are dominating the game. But we have to be clever. He isn’t the best at crosses or short distance saves so we need to pile bodies forward and into the box rather than try and rely on an effort from range as the likes of Kieftenbeld usually do.