CRAIG GORDON has lifted the lid on the life of a modern goalkeeper and revealed that preparation is now as important as ability or fitness.
Gordon will line up for Celtic against Dundee United in tomorrow's League Cup final at Hampden looking to pick up the second medal of his career. In his first season back after a two-year injury lay-off, the 32 year-old is a likely Player of the Year candidate after making a number of impressive saves and stops as Celtic chase a domestic treble. Gordon, however, said that a lot of what looks instinctive to the untrained eye has actually been closely studied in advance.
"We spend a lot of time on video analysis before every game," he revealed. "Free kicks, penalties, the way strikers like to finish the ball, and how they strike the ball; I look at those things and keep mental notes on how they like to finish, what's their favourite side, all that stuff.
"It's about taking that research out on the training pitch, too, and practising for who you are going to be playing against - a team that likes to put in a lot of low, early crosses into the box, for example. For the Rangers game [the League Cup semi-final] it was deep, early crosses hung up to the back post so we focused our training around that. That played out during the game, too, as I was able to come and take the deep crosses and that took the pressure off. Between all of us we come up with a plan for each game and if there are any players who do anything special we look into that, too.
"Is it satisfying when it pays off? Absolutely. It becomes a team effort with Woodsy [Stevie Woods, the Celtic goalkeeping coach] and the video analysis guys to ensure we're as well prepared as possible. And that's not just me - John Collins [the Celtic assistant manager] does it with midfielders and defenders. What we're trying to do is make the game as easy as possible for us so we know what we're coming up against."
Gordon's only other senior cup final appearance - the 2006 Scottish Cup final between Hearts and Gretna - was settled on a penalty shoot-out. Back then it was based largely on memory, rather than pre-planning.
"I had a fair idea of most of the Gretna penalty takers. I had seen penalties from them. James Grady took one and I knew him from personal experiences what he did with them. Most were from memory. Penalties nowadays everyone does their homework. But you can never tell, especially in shootouts when different things can come into play.
"If someone has missed one side is there something psychological about the next guy who takes one. There are loads of different clues, but I'm not going to go through every single one and say what I look at. There are many more things [apart from just the taker's eyes] I take into consideration - and then I still get it wrong most of the time!"
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