Sideways Sammy

The soap opera of Coventry City’s summer is over with the permanent addition of Carl Rushworth. With Brighton & Hove Albion finally having accepted their pound of flesh from the Sky Blues for his signature, Coventry now have the goalkeeping position sorted for the upcoming Premier League season with the best to have played for the club in that spot for well over a decade. Carl Rushworth was the key signing last summer that transformed the team’s prospects and the hop is that his permanent signature will do the same thing one year later.

Carl Rushworth’s strengths as a goalkeeper are already well known to Coventry City fans. A goalkeeper who is first and foremost an excellent saver of shots, it was Rushworth’s saves that helped cement the team’s top spot last season and will be under sterner inspection this coming season with his workload likely to increase. His command of his area improved massively during his first season at the club, going from a weakness to a complete non-issue. His distribution is seen as his biggest area for improvement, not so much from a lack of ability but in his decision-making and tendency to over-hit long passes in an attempt to get the team on the attack.

Just how much the reported fee and clauses in the deal matter will only become apparent in a year or two’s time. The worry is that if he does well, Brighton will instantly trigger Carl Rushworth’s buy-back clause and if he doesn’t do well, Coventry City have ended up paying a premium when there may have been better value for goalkeepers elsewhere in the market. The club’s immediate goal is to stay in the Premier League and having a high-quality and settled goalkeeper feels a key step towards that. Whatever comes of this deal over the long-term, it will be a lot easier to weather any consequences as a top-flight football club.