good lord, 160 clean sheets(it says it in the middle there somwhere) in 373 games for those man utd teams. He must have been incredible, coz ron atkinsons man utd weren't exactly the most parsimonious.

It's even more incredible because he was rubbish.

Thanks to "The Big Match Revisited", I've got a bit of a thing going for terrible goalkeepers of the early 1980s. You know - Alex Williams, Jake Findlay, Gerry Peyton. That sort of thing.

Bailey can't have been any worse than chris Turner. He was proper shite from what I can remember. Jim leighton was patchy, and for all the relative success united had with les sealey he was pretty shite as well god bless him.

From reading a strange kind of glory Stepney was an average keeper, and harry Gregg had his mements. Was Schmeichel the first good goalie man utd had?

Petar Borota anyone?

Bailey was underrated. People still hold that Arsenal FA Cup final against him. And the occasional clanger (wasn't there one against Videoton?).

He and Southampton legend Terry Paine are regulars on South African TV as football pundits. Both are very good at it (and praise for a pundit is high praise indeed).

Bailey phoned me a couple of times when he tried to set up a panel of foreign-language speakers to help the presenters and pundits with proper pronunciations of Champions League players. The idea never caught on, but at least I got a screen credit for half a season. Which I never taped. Gah!

My brother in law holds Bailey as the template for every Manchester United goalkeeper. If United' keeper's not big, blonde haired, and wearing a green jersey, he doesn't want to know.

At the age of around seven, I was of the very firm belief that Alex Stepney should have been England England's Number One.

One of the replays of The Big Match featured a match between Norwich and Sunderland, in which Chris Turner fractured his skull and was replaced goal by Nick Pickering. There wasn't any noticeable difference.

I'll see your Peter Borota, Liq, and raise you Steve Francis (who, for some reason, I've managed to persuade myself was only about 5'7 tall)

Pan Tau wrote:

QUOTE:
Bailey phoned me a couple of times when he tried to set up a panel of foreign-language speakers to help the presenters and pundits with proper pronunciations of Champions League players. The idea never caught on, but at least I got a screen credit for half a season. Which I never taped. Gah!

My God, a football pundit trying to find out how to pronounce the names of foreigners? Is he some sort of communist homosexual or somesuch

i only ever saw gary bailey play once in the flesh.

As i recall he dropped the ball at the feet of "Big" Dave Rodgers, then immediately jumped to his feet and pointed at not so big Lou Macari.

I saw him play at Wembley in the 1985 Cup Final, and from memory he pulled off some fantastic save virtually under his own bar, pushing it up onto the bar itself from where it was cleared. I think that was still at 0-0, and United went onto win 1-0 in extra-time, so he may well be credited with winning them that final, as he is lambasted for losing them the 79 one.

'Keepers never get the credit, do they?

Chris Turner was born in March. Probably at the Robingoodfellows Road Maternity Home, about 300 yards from the house where I grew up. And Peter Hucker's dad owned a sportswear shop at the far end of my road (Station Road, if you're interested) at the time of the 1982 Cup Final.

Goalkeepertastic fenfacts, there.

Just to bring things up to date, the maternity home is now a law practice and the sportswear shop is now a christian reading room. They sell Noah's Ark pop-up books and stuff like that.