Karl Hein ended uncertainty over his future by signing a new contract with Arsenal this week but it still isn’t completely clear what will lie in store for the goalkeeper during the upcoming campaign.
With David Raya and Aaron Ramsdale away at Euro 2024, Hein will most probably act as Arsenal’s first-choice goalkeeper for the beginning of pre-season training.
However, the 22-year-old is now at a stage where he needs to gain more experience of senior club football.
Hein has already amassed 30 senior caps for Estonia, having made his international debut when he was just 18 years old.
In terms of club football, though, Hein has had to be comparatively patient for chances. He has made just one senior appearance for Arsenal, which came against Brighton in the League Cup in November 2022. Hein also played five times during a loan spell at Reading in 2022 but he needs to be playing more games.
If Aaron Ramsdale was to leave the club then it is possible that an opportunity could open up for Hein to become Arsenal’s second-choice goalkeeper. Even in that scenario, though, the chances of him featuring prominently would be somewhat remote and he would most likely be restricted to opportunities in cup games.
A loan move could well be the best option for Hein in order to accelerate his progress, but that would create a problem for Arsenal with regards to who their second and third choice goalkeepers would be should Ramsdale depart.
There is an additional issue in that the U21s only have Alexei Rojas and Brian Okonkwo as their goalkeeping options following a host of departures in that department this summer. Rojas and Okonkwo are talented but are both only 18 years old and are likely to mostly spend this season gaining more experience at U21 level.
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Jeorge Bird is the author of www.arsenalyouth.wordpress.com Follow him on Twitter @jeorgebird
A 2nd and 3rd keeper should be brought in… Hein should go out and play every week to see how he does. Wasting away on the bench at his age is odd…
Prediction on trajectory :
Loan to League 2
Loan to Championship
Sold
David Raya is 28 and will likely only be replaced by a high profile signing.
But I do like this sort of business. We have to make money from these talented academy players who are good but not quite Arsenal quality.
I agree, but given we’ve actually got quite a lot of business to do this summer, I wonder whether they’re considering giving him the no. 2 spot. I don’t think Turner was a particularly good GK, and we fared fine with him, and the less said about Runarrsson the better. It might save us £10-15m that could go towards a kick ass centre mid this summer, which I guess is indirectly making money..
Hein is still very young – 22 for a goalkeeper is like 18 for a striker – Kelleher at Liverpool is 25 for example and only really started playing last year. I’d imagine the plan is for him to go away, improve, then fill the backup HG goalkeeper spot a couple of years from now.
Keep Rammers for another year, sell him next summer, make Hein #2 after a strong loan. In Heinsight a few years down the road you’ll all see this is the right decision.
I think I watched him play one game for Estonia. I have no idea how good he is or how good he is likely to become. I have much more trouble rating keepers than outfield players. Sometimes you see a brilliant save–but anyone who signs a pro contract probably makes one of those sometime. If you’re watching on television, it’s even harder to judge a keeper’s positioning than to see if a winger is making good runs off the ball (and that’s pretty hard). If you see him often, eventually you can tell if a keeper is uncomfortable with the… Read more »
Go easy on yourself, I think keepers take longer to rate in general, even for the most experienced goalkeeping coaches, simply because they tend to have less touches and even then many of their touches are less consequential or require a pretty standard action that doesn’t allow them to distinguish themselves. Defenders are that way too, you might see Jakob Kiwior play brilliantly for 7 matches in a row but then get his weaknesses exposed or have a crucial lapse in concentration in the 8th one. A great goalkeeper is one who has a lapse like that maybe once in… Read more »
If he sticks around as second choice GK he’ll surely get chances when Arteta decides an in game goalkeeper sub is needed