Robert Sanchez success another feather in the cap of Ben Roberts

For a long time now, we have been of the opinion that Brighton & Hove Albion have the best goalkeeper coach in the country. The remarkable rise of Robert Sanchez to the full Spain squad merely backs up that belief in Ben Roberts.

Since Sanchez was called up to La Roja, the Spanish media have been clamouring to find out more about a 23-year-old who has played just 17 games of Premier League football in his life. Subsequently, little is known about Sanchez across his homeland and so interest and intrigue is high.

In one interview, Robert Sanchez talked about Ben Roberts. “He is like my second father here in England,” Sanchez said. It highlighted the important role that Roberts has played in taking yet another lower league goalkeeper and turning them into a player who is deemed capable of playing international football.

You probably do not need reminding of how Sanchez’s season has gone, but sod it, here it is again. He came back to the Amex in the summer after a 35-game loan spell in League One with Rochdale as Brighton’s fifth choice goalkeeper behind Maty Ryan, David Button, Jason Steele and Christian Walton.

Button was then sold to West Bromwich Albion for £1 million and Walton picked up a long term injury in a friendly against Chelsea, elevating Sanchez to third choice by default.

When Ryan’s form deserted him as winter arrived, Graham Potter decided to take the bold move of chucking Sanchez into a Premier League relegation battle. There were more than a few questions asked about how wise such a decision was, but it has paid off handsomely.

Potter will not have arrived at the decision by himself, of course. He would have sought out Roberts for his opinion on whether Sanchez was ready to make such a huge leap.

Roberts would also have needed to know if Sanchez could handle the pressure that would come with taking over the number one shirt for a team who has spent the entire season in the bottom six.

Both Potter and Roberts have been proven spot on with their judgement. As a result, Brighton have a goalkeeper deemed better than Chelsea’s £71 million signing Kepa Arrizabalaga by Spain manager Luis Enrique. When the Blues paid that fee for Kepa, Sanchez had just joined Forest Green Rovers.

Sanchez’s transformation has been even more rapid than Roberts’ other great success story, Nick Pope. Roberts was Charlton Athletic goalkeeper coach when he spotted Pope playing for non-league side Bury Town.

The Addicks signed Pope on Roberts’ advice in 2011. The two worked together at the Valley for four years before Roberts accepted Chris Hughton’s offer to return to Brighton in the summer of 2015. A year later and Pope moved from Charlton to Burnley.

Pope is now one of the best goalkeepers in the Premier League, keeping the joint-highest number of clean sheets last season and being many peoples idea of England number one – even if Gareth Southgate does not share that opinion because Pope plays for an unfashionable club. See also Dunk, Lewis.

To nurture the talents of one young goalkeeper from League One to international level is impressive enough. To do it with two shows you how talented Roberts is at identifying promising players and developing and preparing them for the challenge of football at the highest level.

Sanchez and Pope are not Roberts’ only success stories either. In fact, the one player whose career shows just how good Roberts is at his job is David Stockdale.

Stockdale endured a pretty disappointing first season in a Brighton shirt in 2014-15. Every shot he faced in his opening six games resulted in a goal and even when he did make his first save as an Albion goalkeeper away at Brentford in mid-September, it still ended in a 3-2 defeat.

For much of that 2014-15 campaign, a lot of Brighton fans felt that 18-year-old Christian Walton would have been a better option than Stockdale.

Dave though kept his place until the end, but the writing looked on the wall when Chris Hughton made Finnish international Niki Maenpaa one of his first signings of the summer of 2015.

Then Roberts arrived. Stockdale suddenly went from being unsure of a place even on the Brighton bench to being one of the best goalkeepers in the Championship between 2015 and 2017.

Stockdale’s weight dropped and he kept 40 clean sheets across two seasons, coming close to equalling Roberts’ club record of six in a row set in 2004 and which went a long way towards securing Brighton’s promotion via the Division Two playoffs.

A place in the 2016-17 PFA Championship Team of the Year was well-deserved by Stockdale as he played a huge role in helping the Albion into the top flight.

He then famously decided to leave Brighton on a free transfer for Birmingham City, where Harry Redknapp was doing his usual trick of handing out wages so big that they would nearly bankrupt a club.

What a bad move that turned out to be for Stockdale. No longer working with Roberts everyday, he played just 40 times in three seasons for Birmingham, during which he went a tour of the lower divisions with loan spells at Southend United, Wycombe Wanderers and Coventry City.

Stockdale is now number two at Wycombe and has turned out for Stevenage this season, playing under the management of former Brighton striker Alex Revell. From best goalkeeper in the Championship in 2017 to League Two in 2021. Look what happens when you do not have Roberts in your life.

Maty Ryan too underwent something of a transformation under the tutelage of Roberts. Ryan had looked like a rabbit in the headlights during his first few Brighton games, so much so that Hughton went out and signed Tim Krul on transfer deadline day.

Signing a man who only three years earlier had been one of the heroes of the Netherlands run to the semi finals of the World Cup with his penalty saving exploits was something of a coup for the Albion.

And yet Krul wasn’t required to play a minute of Premier League football in 2017-18. Roberts coaxed such improvement out of Ryan over the coming months that Krul instead found himself turning out for the Under 23s before joining Norwich City in the summer of 2018 because he could find no way to oust Ryan.

Since leaving Brighton for the Canaries, Krul has won the Championship title in 2018-19, looks set to do so again come the end of the current campaign, was one of Norwich’s star performers in the Premier League last season and has returned to the international fold.

As far as backup goalkeepers go, Krul is probably the best the Albion have ever had – and the reason he had to make do with being number two was because of what Roberts did with Ryan.

Ryan himself has now been usurped, the Australian’s poor form having unexpected long-term benefits for Brighton. There can be little doubt that the Albion have stumbled across a better option based on 2020-21 performances, as improved results and defensive returns have shown.

Robert Sanchez is the latest protégée to roll off the Ben Roberts production line. Another feather in Roberts’ cap and further proof that Brighton have the best goalkeeper coach in the country.