Why Leeds have signed a goalkeeper from League 2
YEP chief football writer Graham Smyth and Leeds United journalist Joe Donnohue explain why the club have moved to bring in Salford City 'keeper Alex Cairns
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00:00Can we talk about Alex Cairns then, being the signing that was announced yesterday evening?
00:06Slightly left field on the face of it, because he's a League 2 goalkeeper from Salford City,
00:11but there is a bit of common sense to it, isn't there? It's the whole club developed thing,
00:20homegrown talent. You need to have seven homegrown players, so basically they are players who've
00:27been with clubs affiliated to the FA of Wales or the FA for three years before they turn
00:3619, is it? It's basically three years as a youth with a British club and
00:45you need seven of those. It doesn't need to be your club, it just needs to be a British club.
00:48I think it's between the 18th and 21st birthday, so you have to think that qualifies you as
00:54homegrown and then to be club trained you have to have trained for a couple of years before
01:00your under-19 season. Yes, I think it's three again, three seasons I think. Alex Cairns qualifies
01:07as both. You have to have a club developed player in your squad on a match day or you can't have
01:15seven subs, so if you don't have one you can only have six. The signing of Cairns helps satisfy that,
01:22him and Byron count, Shackleton did too, Creswell did. There's not that many others,
01:31now that Archie Gray's gone, what you would call match day squad players. Leeds had that in mind.
01:37It's a replacement for Cleyson as a third choice goalkeeper. It's really, on the face of it to me,
01:43it looks more like a Scott Carson type signing than it does a he's actually going to push for
01:48a place in the team. Maybe he sees it differently. It's actually a tactic which is employed by quite
01:52a few clubs. Newcastle have done it with Mark Gillespie, he's club trained and the goalkeeper
01:59who I think has played three times in four seasons, none of which were in the league.
02:03Man United did it with Tom Heaton. Burnley have done it with Lawrence Vigoro, he's not club
02:08trained but he is homegrown. Just in terms of the financials of it, I think it makes sense because
02:14Cleyson arrived three summers ago as Leeds' number two goalkeeper, up and coming, a Norwegian youth
02:21international, the number one for Norway's under 21s and he was already a first team goalkeeper
02:28for Vallorenga in Norway. He signed for a Premier League club, he won't have been on
02:36a YTS pay packet to say the least. Still will not have been a cheap contract and
02:41you're kind of not really getting your money's worth when you're a third choice goalkeeper are
02:45you? Especially if they are on what was once Premier League money.