Bart Keeping Things Tidy At The Back

Please excuse the pun but in goalkeeping terms, Bart is literally poles apart from the best of the rest.

For a long time we struggled to find a goalkeeper who was up to the job and in fairness to manager Mick McCarthy and his scouting crew, we finally found one and what a revelation he has been!

Strange then, that our manager persistently remarks that he has two number one keepers at Town and of course when Bialkowski was forced back to Poland briefly after the sad passing of his father, Bart found himself back on the subs bench again on his return.

I suppose it could be argued that after this sad episode in his life, Bialkowski was not mentally at the races and if this was indeed the case, then there is some justification in keeping him in reserve.

The trouble is, we really do not know but what we are all aware of is our manager’s praise for Dean Gerken – sometimes at the expense of the man who wears the number 33 shirt still!

Finally, it seems that Mick McCarthy has accepted what most of us fans have believed for quite some time and that is that Bartosz Bialkowski should always be considered as our number one.

Yes, he will make the occasional mistake, as all keepers do but week in and week out he is performing extraordinarily well and has kept us in matches that we have no right to get anything from.

In all the years of following the Blues, I can only really think of one keeper that compares and that is Paul Cooper but even he rarely pulled off the kind of saves that Bart is making these days and we should thank our lucky stars that we have him in our goal.

With the January transfer window looming there will be some big fish on the lookout for a new keeper and one of them apparently is Jurgen Klopp of Liverpool!

Let us hope that the thought of another big sell-off of our only star attraction these days is rescinded by Marcus Evans, otherwise our miserable season so far, will get decidedly worse.

Frank Weston – Editor of Vital Ipswich