One of the purest sights in football is a goalkeeper scoring a goal of any kind.
It’s a rare occurrence in the game, with only five goalkeepers in the history of Premier League having achieved such a feat, one of them being former Tottenham Hotspur goalkeeper Paul Robinson.
Robinson is one of English football’s forgotten figures. Fans forget that the retired keeper was at one time the nation’s number one player between the sticks, and a player who could have gone on to be a legend at Spurs had Juande Ramos not come in and disrupted key figures at the club by dramatically changing the style of how he wanted to team to play.
Signed from Leeds for a reported fee of £2 million, Robinson instantly took over as the number one keeper in north London following his arrival.
In four years at Spurs from 2004 to 2008, Robinson made 174 appearances for the club, keeping 51 clean sheets, and becoming the third keeper in the history of the Premier League to score a goal, beating England international teammate Ben Foster from 95-yards out with a bouncing free-kick.
As well as asserting himself as one of the best keepers in the country, Robinson was vital in Spurs’ 2007/08 League Cup win, the club’s first trophy in nine years.
The English international captained the side en-route to the final, where they beat the likes of Arsenal and Manchester City, and Robinson playing in the 2-1 win against Chelsea at Wembley Stadium, with Jonathan Woodgate scoring an extra-time winner to secure the cup for Spurs.
Despite being an integral part of Spurs’ League Cup winning squad, it would be Robinson’s last season in north London as the following summer the then 28-year-old goalkeeper was shipped off to Blackburn Rovers for a cut-rate fee of £3.5 million after losing his starting place for both Tottenham and England.
Robinson would go on to play for the Lancashire club for seven seasons, remaining with the club through relegation into the Championship in 2012 before joining Burnley for the final club of his career in 2016, where he would get to play Premier League football one last time with at the Clarets.
How good was Paul Robinson in his prime? Let us know below!
