Norwich lost today, again, to Manchester City and once more, the quality of John Ruddy has come into question.
You only need to rewind a few years to go back to the point where John Ruddy was being talked about in the same vein as the likes of Joe Hart and the other top goalkeepers in the Premier League. He was battling it out for a place in the England squads and was probably one of Norwich’s best players, if not the best, certainly the most important.
He was Norwich’s brick wall. He was one of the main reasons we stayed in the Premier League in the 2011/12 and 2012/13 seasons and pulled off match saving performances on a range of occasions in the Premier League. I think if one game epitomised his early Premier League career with Norwich then it would be the outstanding 1-0 win over Manchester United at Carrow Road in 2012. Norwich took a 1-0 lead through a fantastic Anthony Pilkington header (giving you goosebumps yet) and then Sir Alex’s men were unable to find a way past the giant that is John Ruddy as he made multiple world class stops to deny the Red Devils getting anything out of the game.
That was back in the days of the old John Ruddy. That was before he started his decline. Ever since that horror injury that Ruddy picked up in the 2012/12 season, keeping him out for a number of months, he has not been able to recreate his previous form. He has shown glimpses of his former self, in the relegation season he still put in a number of good performances. However, they were to no avail, as, well, we got relegated.
So, Norwich were relegated to the Championship. This still left people wondering whether Ruddy would stay at the club. I mean, many, many people still regarded him as one of the top ‘keepers in the Premier League and, it is no surprise that Chelsea were linked with him yet again last summer. Yet, ‘big John’, as fans have fondly named him, stayed at Norwich. It was seen as one of the most important pieces of business that Neil Adams managed in last year’s summer window – keeping the England international, despite being in the second tier of English football.
However, as the season panned out, keeping John Ruddy at the club looked less and less important as he made a number of high profile ‘mistakes’ that cost Norwich plenty of points throughout the Championship campaign. Although this may be a harsh point, if Ruddy played anywhere near a good level last season, Norwich would have walked the league. Norwich finished 3rd in the Championship come the end of the season and had to go through the play-offs to gain promotion earlier this year, which they did. Yet, it could easily have been a different story had Ruddy not have made the number of mistakes he did. Norwich finished just four points shy of Bournemouth, who finished top of the league, and had Ruddy not made a few of his number of errors, Norwich would have comfortably won the league, in my opinion.
The first crucial error by Ruddy that season came against Charlton. Norwich dominated the game as a whole and were struggling to break Charlton down. That is the type of game where the team under the cosh usually gets that one chance to sneak a win, and, usually you would expect your goalkeeper to be concentrated and ready to save it. John Ruddy was not ready. A low dribbler (sort of) of a shot came in from distance from a Charlton player and John Ruddy was somehow beaten at his near post from 25-yards, even though he had a good four seconds or so to react, but he didn’t, and Norwich lost the game.
If you didn’t think that was bad enough from Ruddy. The next game was arguably worse. Norwich faced Rotherham at home and with the game at 0-0, Ruddy decided to take an age to come off his line to a ball over the top before rugby tackling the Rotherham forward in the area, getting nowhere near the ball and giving away a penalty. Norwich went on to get a point from the game, no thanks to Norwich’s ‘number one’.
However, despite his off and on again form in the Championship for Norwich, the Canaries were promoted back to the Premier League at the first time of asking. Could Ruddy make the step up to the Premier League and return to his form back in his previous Premier League seasons. Well, 11 games into the season and I think the answer is blatantly, no. Other than Liverpool away, there has not been a single game where you could say Ruddy has played ‘well’, which, for a struggling Premier League team, is nowhere near good enough. Even in the game against Liverpool, the goal he conceded should probably have been saved, well, if you are being over critical.
Some Norwich fans were calling for Norwich to bring in another quality goalkeeper to provide competition for Ruddy at the start of the season, instead, Norwich signed League One standard ‘keeper Jake Kean on a free transfer to come in and be the third choice at Norwich, waste.
This meant that Ruddy has started the season again as number one and started against Crystal Palace on the opening day hoping to return to his best form in the Premier League. Unfortunately, it was the Ruddy of the Championship season that returned again as he was beaten fairly easily for the first two goals and then beaten for a third time, however, there was nothing he could have done about that one. He should have done much better with Wilfried Zaha’s opening goal for Palace as he left his near post open and then failed to scramble it off the line. The second goal came from being too slow to come across his goal from a set-piece to cover the angle and gave Damien Delaney an easy finish.
Now. I think you get the picture by now and so I am not going to sit here and go through every single mistake he has made this season in each game as I did there. No. Instead, I am going to list some statistics from this season that, I think, paint the picture perfectly. So far this season, Ruddy has played 11 games and averaged just 1.17 saves before he concedes a goal, meaning that almost half of the shots he has faced have gone in, poor. He has also averaged just over two saves per games, alongside over two goals conceded. Yet again, poor.
So, with this evidence, is it time that Norwich drops John Ruddy?
I asked some Norwich fans what their opinion on the matter was and I have picked out two responses; one anti-Ruddy and one pro-Ruddy.
Firstly, I asked Will Seago, a writer for The Canary’s Corner, why he thought Ruddy should stay in the side, here is his reasoning, do you agree?
He’s the last line of defence, any danger should be sorted by the defenders before it reaches him. We’re a lower half Premier League team who are going to get loads of shots against us. He just gets picked off for the odd goal and don’t get credit for the saves he does make to keep us in the game. He kept us in it today for the first half with a decent save from the Yaya Toure free kick and a few stops from Bony but as per usual, he gets blamed for sloppy mistakes from the whole team which cost us the game.
I then asked Cameron Doran, one of our own writers here at ReadNorwich, what his opinion on Ruddy on and he had an opposite opinion to that of Will’s.
He is vulnerable. At the moment Ruddy is only costing us points. But if he continues to play like he is then he will cost us our survival in the Premier League. He is low on confidence, which leads to mistakes, these mistakes have led to our poor results this season and will cost us many more if we do not give Rudd a chance to shine.
Fans may not have been so sure, had Declan Rudd not been fantastic in the Capital One Cup this season. Rudd has played three cup games for Norwich this term and conceded just two goals, despite playing two Premier League sides. He also produced a number of fantastic saves in all three games and was by no means at fault for either of the goals he did concede. The Diss-born ‘keeper has been at Norwich for over 16 years now and is certainly Norwich through and through. He clearly loves the club, as he alluded to in his interview at the start of the season when he said he would have left if it was any other club other than Norwich. These are the sorts of quotes that you love to see as a fan and the fans certainly love him.
In my opinion, with Swansea at home next week, it looks like the perfect opportunity to bed Rudd into the side and give the 24-year-old a chance to prove his worth at Norwich and show everyone that he has got what it takes to be a Norwich City first-choice, which, I believe he has the talent and the ability to be. Rudd has played just 20 senior games for Norwich in his career and desperately needs/deserves the chance to show Alex Neil what he can do in a Premier League environment. I think that the Everton cup clash last week highlighted that as he put in a very impressive performance against a near-full strength Everton side, who boasted the likes of Romelu Lukaku and Kevin Mirallas in their starting line-up.
Goalkeeping is all about confidence, concentration and sharpness. Ruddy seems to have none of these traits at the moment, yet young Declan Rudd has been showing them in abundance. So, surely Alex Neil has to give the lad a chance, I mean, what harm could it possibly do? If he does poorly, his selection was justified due to Ruddy’s poor form. However, if he shines and takes his chance, then Alex Neil will be regarded as a genius So what does Alex Neil have to lose in playing him? Nothing. So in my opinion, there is no question as to if Declan Rudd should be given a chance against Swansea next week and Alex Neil would be costing the team dearly if he were to keep faith in Ruddy, who has been out-of-form for the last two or so years.
Do you think Declan Rudd should come into the side next week against Swansea?
