Popular goalkeeper Paddy Kenny has today left Queens Park Rangers to rejoin Neil Warnock at Leeds United. LoftforWords reflects on his time in W12.
If Billy Beane managed a football club, chances are Paddy Kenny would be his goalkeeper.
Beane, general manager of Major League Baseball's Oakland Athletics and subject of the excellent Michael Lewis book Moneyball, competes on an uneven playing field by picking up players exactly like Kenny. While traditional baseball scouts talk about "the good face" Beane has made a living out of taking a chance on those nobody else wants because they're too fat, too short, too old, too this or too that.
If you passed Paddy Kenny in the street and had three guesses at his profession I'd guess that sportsman would probably rank below astronaut. I still recall the look of surprise on the now ex-Mrs Clive's face when she saw him warming up for the first time and asked disbelievingly: "Is that really your goalkeeper?"
The modern day goalkeeper looks like Peter Cech – although not always wearing a silly hat for no good reason whatsoever of course. The modern goalkeeper is big - almost always more than 6ft 3ins tall with a chest like Jodie Marsh and hands as big as a Nissan Micra. Manchester United believe they have a decent goalkeeping prospect in David De Gea but have ordered him onto a steak and weights regime this summer so he starts looking more like a Premiership stopper and less like an unemployed poet. Paddy Kenny is only just 6ft tall and has a chest like John Prescott’s.
In the Champions League final penalty shoot out I looked at Cech in goal at one end and the imposing figure of Manuel Neuer at the other and thanked God I wasn't down for a spot kick. Where on earth would you put the ball? Even if you hit the ball at maximum power and accuracy towards the very bottom right hand corner Neuer is prone to dropping from 6ft 4ins in the air to flat on the ground with his hand outstretched to the post in time to meet it as it arrives and turn it aside.
These giants of men stomp around their penalty areas guarding them like centurions, reaching high above any oncoming striker to claim crosses out of the clouds before even Peter Crouch would be able to show an interest in them. If things go wrong they collapse to the ground and receive a free kick.
Paddy Kenny does none of this; he's like no goalkeeper you'll see in professional football today. He's the Sunday league goalkeeper made good. Paddy Kenny scampers around, surviving seemingly more by luck than judgement on many occasions, producing saves and clearances that can almost always be termed "unorthodox." But it’s not luck if it keeps happening. Kenny is somehow wonderfully effective and, because of how he looks and his style of play, grossly underrated by everybody in the sport except those who have played with him, managed him or watched him for any length of time. Ask somebody who doesn't support QPR, Sheffield United or Bury and the first word out of their mouth will be "fat", ask fans of those three clubs and there's a fair chance it will be "fantastic".
Kenny signed for QPR in the summer of 2010 for a fee in the region of £600,000 from Sheffield United. It was a fee roughly a third of what he was worth, reduced by a nine month drug ban served during the previous season which he blamed on cough syrup but the QPR fans quickly hinted through song was down to his party-boy reputation that had once seen him lose an eyebrow in a Halifax nightclub fight.
The very first thing he did - in the opening game of the 2010/11 season against Barnsley - was stride confidently from his line, walk underneath a high long ball into the box, palm it horribly backwards into his own six yard box and cause a mass panic during which several QPR and Barnsley players were killed and the ball was eventually scrambled behind for a corner and stadium-wide asthma attack. Kenny kept a clean sheet that day and QPR won 4-0. And that rather sums up what Kenny is about: he gets the job done, but not in the same way as other keepers, and not always in a way you can explain or fathom afterwards.
Fans of the twenty third, Sheffield United, were less than enamoured by the way Kenny jumped ship after the club had stuck by him through his drug's ban. Kenny pointed out that he'd been put on greatly reduced terms during his absence but he took dog's abuse on his return to Bramall Lane in our second league game of the season. Typically, he kept a clean sheet in a 3-0 win and then did likewise when Rangers recorded the same scoreline against the Blades later in the campaign. United were relegated that season, and his replacement Steve Simonsen missed a crucial penalty in this year's League One play off final preventing an immediate return. Sometimes you just get the feeling the gods are with Paddy Kenny.
He's one of those goalkeepers where you don't worry about penalties being awarded quite as much. I mean, you still worry about penalties being awarded, but I always fancy him to save them. At Swansea in a crucial midweek game against a promotion rival he palmed one aside from David Cotterill and then a couple of weeks later did the same at Portsmouth only to have a scandalous accusation of early movement from the goal line go against him.
Causes never really seem lost with Paddy Kenny until the ball actually hits the net. Against Doncaster Rovers at Loftus Road he produced a staggering save in the top left hand corner after initially starting on the right side of the goal, clawing the ball out from under the cross bar and onto the inside of the post. Against Leicester at the same end of the ground later in the season he successfully retreated ten yards at pace whilst also launching himself into the air and getting a firm hand to Yakubu's perfectly executed lob just as it was about to drop under the cross bar and in. Astonishing saves both.
He continued QPR's recent tradition of employing goalkeepers who are a bit odd. We had Lee Camp for a while, whose height should surely have prevented him from being a professional goalkeeper but somehow never seemed an issue while he was at Loftus Road – not as much of an issue as his propensity to wonder around outside the penalty area with the ball at his feet at least. Tony Roberts stayed long enough to earn a testimonial despite having as much command of his penalty area as Nick Clegg does in the coalition government and an ability to cause havoc where there was none to be caused. Sieb Dykstra and Ademole Bankole came and went in between – eccentric individuals to say the least.
Which all makes it rather a shame that we're today bidding farewell to Paddy Kenny as he heads off to Leeds United in a cut price deal. It's no surprise really, given that current Leeds boss Neil Warnock has signed him at three clubs including QPR prior to this and is in need of a keeper, but it's also not the disaster it would have been this time last year. Kenny struggled at times in the Premiership last season. That was possibly a fitness issue as he missed games in November and again around Christmas with a hip complaint that the club was disconcertingly vague about. When he returned in the New Year his form initially ranged from mediocre to dreadful, with two of the three goals in a defeat at Blackburn Rovers likely to have been saved by a better goalkeeper, but improved as the season wore on peaking in the home match against Arsenal where he thwarted Robin Van Persie.
His final performance in a QPR jersey was at Manchester City on the never-to-be-repeated last day of the season. His display at Eastlands was vintage Kenny - with a string of unorthodox, gravity and logic defying saves as City laid siege to the QPR goal - but it also included a goal-costing mistake in the first half. Had we not parted ways this summer I can't help but think Kenny's fantastic relationship with the QPR fans may have soured somewhat next season as his advancing years and declining form catch up with him.
He's leaving at the right time because we can wish him heartfelt good wishes and thanks for, overall, a superb two years of goalkeeping. The way he goes about his work makes him as entertaining as the strikers paid far more to score the goals and he's done QPR proud during his time here.
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Pictures – Action Images