Fulham acquires new keeper, Gabor Kiraly

The search for 'an experienced goalkeeper' role may just have come to an end with news that Hungarian goalkeeper Gabor Kiraly will be joining Fulham from 1860 Munich of Bundesliga 2. SkySports with the details (including the fact that he needed both Zoltan Gera and Moritz Volz to convince him to take the move).

This is... great good something in the category of news, I guess? The guy is old and that's not the beginning of an overused Barney Stinson joke. It's just a fact. He's 38-year's old and nearing the end of his career. I've said from the start that I feel that Magath seems confident enough to keep Jesse Joronen as the starting keeper through out the season and it's hard to tell if he's being brought in to help be that experience for Joronen to lean on or if he's going to be pushing for playing time.

This all comes on the backlash of Kiraly being suspended earlier this month after an altercation mid-game, with a fellow teammate following an embarrassing goal. Which the British and London media will love to talk about, as if Fulham wasn't becoming a big enough circus. Oh, referencing things I found on wikipedia there is the issue of his gear or referenced "style".

Király is recognizable for wearing a pair of tracksuit bottoms instead of shorts in almost every match he plays. Some pundits joke that he appears to playing in pyjama-bottoms. During his time in English leagues, the only two known times when he wore shorts instead of tracksuit bottoms was when Crystal Palace played Chelsea at Stamford Bridge, where he let a shot from Mateja Kežman embarrassingly slip between his legs as the Blues won 4–1, and against Premier League side Aston Villa, in his first league appearance for Palace.

Back to things that kind of matter and the arduous task of trying to assess the quality of Kiraly. How good he is now? We know he was once the international keeper for Bulgeria (another? Yes, to answer my own question--another.) Goals conceded and saved shots and all that stuff that is often quoted for keepers to give you an idea of how good they are but that is pretty much just a bunch of crap. Usually I'm a bit nicer in how I reference that thought but it is what it is. Simply noise and non-sense when it comes to evaluating the quality of a goal keeper.

The issue that he, Kiraly, needed convincing on the move could mean a lot of various things and it's not worth speculating or getting into. Being that he's announced it and not the club means that there could potential still be some terms and various assortments of agreements to work out. Or it could just be that Fulham had a game today and the personnel had other responsibilities to focus on either way I wouldn't take this all as gospel just yet but just short of that seems perfectly suitable to me.