The Keen & Judah Show: 'The crowd shouldn't be getting to Sam Johnstone'

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Liam Keen and Nathan Judah discuss the good and the bad following the 2-1 defeat to Liverpool.

Transcript

00:00Where do you want to start, bad or good?

00:02Bad?

00:03I'll start bad.

00:04I think you have to.

00:05Yeah, we've got to go down.

00:07Okay.

00:09Let's start with the goalkeeper, Sam Johnston.

00:12Look, difficult start to him.

00:14Difficult start to life at Wolverhampton.

00:16Wanderers was left out of being number one at Crystal Palace.

00:20Wolves brought him in in the summer for £10 million.

00:24A bit of a shock.

00:25A shock, I think, to Jose Sarr as well,

00:27who's lost his place currently in the side.

00:29And perhaps one of those positions where you think

00:32if Wolves are going to strengthen,

00:34that wouldn't be the first or second port of call.

00:37But, look, that's what they've done.

00:39They wanted someone who was more reliable,

00:41I think someone more dependable, someone who had better distribution.

00:45And so far it hasn't really gone to plan, has it?

00:48And, look, I think that he definitely had his critics,

00:52I think, in that Nottingham Forest debut with the first goal.

00:55There's been a couple of instances where he hasn't looked

00:57particularly safe and strong,

01:00and that was a really poor performance all round, really.

01:04I don't think you can get away from that on Saturday.

01:08Yeah, and to be honest, he's fortunate, really,

01:11that none of his individual mistakes directly resulted in a goal,

01:15albeit there is an argument to say that maybe he should have done

01:19a bit better with the first as well.

01:21Look, when Johnstone first arrived at Wolves,

01:24I think it was relatively clear to see,

01:27and it was clearly the thought process behind bringing him in,

01:30that he was a bit of a calming influence in comparison to Sarr,

01:33less erratic, both as a player and as a personality.

01:36Sarr's a very good goalkeeper, don't get me wrong,

01:38but I think quality-wise, was it much of an upgrade?

01:41We've got our reservations, but in terms of the character

01:44and, I suppose, having a bit of a commanding presence within his box,

01:49Wolves were hoping that would be a bit of an upgrade.

01:52From what we've seen so far, he's had good moments, don't get me wrong.

01:55I don't think he's been particularly poor in his whole four or five weeks.

02:01We've had Sam Johnson at Wolves now, but he was against Liverpool,

02:04and he had one world-class save.

02:06It was some more defensive errors, and all of a sudden,

02:09Sobieszalai should be scoring from four or five yards out.

02:12Johnson makes a fantastic save, very reactionary instinct,

02:17really impressive, really, really impressive.

02:20Aside from that, he allowed...

02:23He looked rattled by the crowd to me.

02:25He allowed the atmosphere to get on top of him,

02:27and that sounds strange when you're talking about a home game,

02:30but the reason I say that is Wolves fans at Molineux

02:34get very nervous when the team plays out from the back

02:37and when the team takes risks.

02:38Jose Sarr, in previous seasons, has turned to the Southpank

02:41and tried to plead with them to calm down and please not make too much noise

02:46while he's trying to play out from the back because it's putting players off.

02:50But you have to deal with that.

02:51If fans aren't going to like it, you're going to have to deal with it.

02:54It seemed to me like he just let people get into his head a little bit.

02:57He got rattled by the nervousness amongst the supporters.

03:03He started to make mistakes with the ball at his feet,

03:06and because of that, it was a pretty unconvincing performance.

03:10That one great save, yeah, could have been better for the first one.

03:13The second one, obviously, is a penalty,

03:15so you can't blame him particularly for that.

03:18Just an overall poor performance from a goalkeeper

03:20who I think we have seen better from and can see better from.

03:23But is he an upgrade with the ball at his feet?

03:25I'm just not sure.

03:26Yeah, I mean, this is an England international.

03:28The crowd shouldn't be getting to him in these situations, really.

03:32If Jose Sarr had been in goal,

03:34I don't think we would have seen much of a difference, to be honest.

03:36You wouldn't think this is a big upgrade.

03:39In fact, it would have been probably Slating Star at this moment in time.

03:42When you're bottom of the table, things are going to be on you pretty quickly,

03:46the scrutiny is going to be there.

03:47I think better days are ahead for Johnson,

03:49but it hasn't been the start of the honeymoon period

03:51that I think all would have expected.

03:53So hopefully he can improve,

03:55and he's going to have to improve very, very quickly.

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