3 Things We Learned Against West Brom

Pepe Reina will forever be underrated – A strange thing to notice from the absolute goal-fest at the weekend, I know. Anybody who paid a bit of notice to our disgustingly under-capped Spanish ‘keeper on Saturday will agree. He spent a great deal of the game staring at the back of Martin Skrtel’s head, which is equal parts boring and scary (you wouldn’t want him to catch you doing it, I don’t think). Yet, on several occasions he was called upon to fly into action and be a goalkeeper. We’ve had many goalkeepers in the past and lesser mortal like Chris Kirkland, Scott Carson and yes, David James would probably realise far too late that they needed to take action. Then, the minute after making a great save, he was straight to it – bypassing the men in front of him and spotting pin-points balls to wide players and strikers with his feet or his hands.

Few goalkeepers have both defensive and attacking attributes in this way; you’re either a Cech or a Barthez but Reina is one of the few that ticks all of the required boxes for a world class modern ‘keeper. Part of Reina’s underrated’ness comes from the fact that we don’t even feel the need to praise him anymore; it’s total neglect on our part. What’s even sadder is that a traffic cone like Victor Valdes has now usurped Pepe’s place on the Spain bench and, let’s be honest, he’s only there to warn opposing teams that this is Barcelona’s goal and you shalt not put the ball in here. You can’t help but think that, if Pepe had done a Mascherano/Xabi Alonso and moved to one of Spain’s ‘Big Two’, neither Casillas or Valdes would get a look in, ever again.

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