The controversy over Joe Hart’s position at Manchester City is all a bit baffling. Not the fact he’s been dropped, it’s the controversy bit that’s baffling. No player should have a divine right to start for a team regardless of their attachment or history with the club. In every instance it should be earned through ability, form and application.
Harts performances over the last few seasons have been a mixed bag. For City and for England, Hart always has a potential mistake in his game and all too often that potential has come to fruition. Unforced errors in the recent euros against Wales and Iceland highlighted this fact so it makes it all the more confusing as to why there is so much shock to the fact he’s been dropped from Cities starting berth. Directly after that competition there were many calling for his head, but now the injustice of someone losing their place to another footballer in better form could not be more egregious.
It’s clear that with the appointment of Guardiola Manchester Cities ambitions have out grown the level that Joe Hart currently resides. Also, it’s not unusual for a new manger to come in a make sweeping changes, modelling the squad to the team he wants them to be rather than the team that they were. Someone such as Pep is not shy of bruising ego’s to fashion a team to his current ideology. Ask Zlatan, Toure and Gomez.
But all of this is not to say Hart is a bad keeper. He isn’t. It’s just his occasional slip ups are to frequent to put him shoulder to shoulder with the league’s elite goal keepers like Lloris or Courtois. There‘s room for a keeper of Harts quality at the top end of the table and just such a club who started the season in fine goal conceding form is Liverpool. Mignolet is another keeper in patchy form. A reliable shot stopper but that’s where it really ends. Hart would at least bring a commanding presence to Liverpool’s shaky back line and maybe feeling wanted again, at a massive and storied club such as Liverpool, could bring back the confidence to weed out the clearly psychologically driven errors.
Whether Hart’s future is at Man City or at pastures new remains to be seen. Either way, England’s number one has work to do.

RG