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Tom Heaton, the Burnley and England stopper, is now Sean Dyche’s third choice keeper as Heaton has struggled with injury in the last year or so. Now Leeds could come calling as we are now down to our two academy keepers to come into the first team. Heaton has just three senior England caps to his name but has been one of English football’s best respected keepers in his long journey to the top. Having left Manchester United in 2010, he climbed his way back up to the Premiership, and now he could get the chance to go again with Leeds United.
Burnley’s promotion winning season in 2015/2016 was a fantastic season for Heaton, keeping twenty clean sheets from forty-six matches before keeping ten Premier League clean sheets in his last regular season between the sticks at Burnley in the 16/17 campaign - a repeat of his previous Premier League clean sheet record in the 2014/15 season.
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Now, the injury crisis at Leeds is getting worse. Marcelo Bielsa revealed during his press conference today that Bailey Peacock-Farrell was injured and will be unable to play on Saturday against Bristol City. Of course, this comes on top of Jamal Blackman’s broken leg which forced the keeper to head back to Chelsea, his parent club, early, virtually cancelling the loan deal.
However, if Leeds want an emergency loan deal, it can’t come from the Premier League which makes it more difficult to find an available and good quality keeper from the Football League, as there will be few teams looking to lend Leeds a hand.
Leeds will be able to try and push for a Heaton deal in the January transfer window, but until then it may well be Will Huffer, Kamil Miazek, or bust. These two look like they have a lot of ability, with Huffer looking the better of the two for me. Let’s hope their quality shows up on Saturday against Bristol City.