For the second straight season, Brad Guzan finds himself on a team relegated from the Premier League.
Middlesbrough was guaranteed relegation to the EFL Championship after suffering a 3-0 defeat at league-leaders Chelsea on Monday afternoon. Guzan started in-goal on Monday, seeing efforts from Diego Costa, Marcos Alonso, and Nemanja Matic beat him to the back of the net.
Guzan will finish the season with Middlesbrough before joining MLS expansion side Atlanta United in July. It will be Guzan’s first stint in Major League Soccer since 2008 as the goalkeeper played with Chivas USA during 2005-2008.
After joining from relegated Aston Villa following their 2015-16 relegation campaign, the 32-year-old American goalkeeper made 12 appearances for Middlesbrough across all competitions. Eight of those appearances came in league play, with six coming in 2017.
Steve Agnew’s side suffered their 18th defeat of the season and remain the lowest-scoring side in the top-flight with 26 goals. Middlesbrough has only won one league match since the start of 2017, a 1-0 home victory over Sunderland on April 26.
It will be interesting to see what he can do with a team whose D is struggling, but on a team that is NOT a hopeless waste of time.
Atlanta is right on the edge and a little bit better organization of the D might be the difference.
All three goals yesterday went between his legs. One of them wasn’t even going in until he re-directed it towards the goal. A nightmare of an outing.
Really hoping his move to Atlanta gets him back on the right track. Last couple years have been a huge let down with being unable to take the position from aging/declining Tim Howard.
The “Old Guard” of keepers….Howard & Rimando….are already under considerable pressure from the young generation of keepers in MLS (Horvath, Steffen, & Cropper). Than there’s still Bingham, Hamid, and Yarbrough. If Guzan isn’t careful he’ll be overtaken as well.
That next generation has failed to produce anyone capable or consistent enough to make a run at the position from the matches I’ve watched or articles I’ve read about from those I haven’t.
Hamid? Flirts with the prospect, but is seemingly always injured around time for tournaments or call-ups. The position is no longer the catalyst for the squad or even the backline. It’s odd.
The thing about Guzan is there is nothing special about him, like he literally does nothing spectacular for me. He struggles with aerial balls, doesn’t command the backline like a TH and is not a penalty shot stopper so basically he’s average. It’s time for some of our younger keepers to hold it down and I’m thinking if Hamid can stay healthy he’lol be the one to take over that GK mantle
Guzan is a penalty shot stopper. He doesn’t have Rimando #s but he has also played against tougher competition than Rimando for a good part of his career