John Fallon is never slow to tell you that the job of the goalkeeper is the hardest in the game. He is certainly correct in that statement. Mistakes are always remembered, whereas good days are often shrugged off as “Well, that’s what he is paid for, isn’t it?”
Celtic have been very fortunate in that they have had many great goalkeepers, and if pushed to say who the best is, one has a difficult task.
It is tempting to go for John Thomson, basically because of the tragic circumstances of his death in 1931, and certainly all accounts agree that he was good, with even the Scotland selectors, an arbitrary and whimsical bunch at the best of times, convinced throughout 1931 that he was the best around.
John Thomson? Ronnie Simpson?…
One is similarly tempted to go for Ronnie Simpson, again possibly for romantic reasons because of Ronnie’s long, eventful and really rather strange career which saw him capped for Scotland and winning a European Cup medal some 22 years after his debut, and when he had been written off at least twice by the very Manager who eventually glorified him!
In modern times we have had Fraser Forster (twice), Craig Gordon and Artur Boruc and it would be difficult to find an awful lot wrong with any of these three. Slightly older supporters will mention Pat Bonner who is also worth a mention, and in the old days there was Dan McArthur and Davie Adams. John Thomson’s replacement from 1931 onwards was a Canadian called Joe Kennaway, and he was well thought of as well.
David Potter narrowed the choice down to two
The truth is that you never can say, but I would be inclined to narrow my choice down to two, and I could never dream of picking the better one because one played for a very good Celtic team, and the other played for a very bad Celtic team. Both however were much loved by the fans at the time that they played and you cannot really ask for a great deal more than that.
