Joe Hart is a victim of England's over-hyping of its players

Joe Hart – Poor Form

If there’s one thing English football can be said to demonstrate with a reliable level of excellence, it’s the premature hyping-up of a home-grown talent. And if there’s another thing English football can be said to demonstrate with a reliable level of excellence, it’s the blusterous knocking-down of said talent once it becomes clear that the said hyping-up was indeed premature.

To the illustrious list that in recent seasons has comprised of the likes of Wayne Rooney, Theo Walcott and Jack Rodwell (remember him?), we can now add Manchester City ‘stopper’ Joe Hart, whose ability appears, in the eyes of the English football-watching public, to have gone from Lev Yashin to Massimo Taibi within the space of two short years.

Hart’s form has been one of the central narratives of the season so far, and indeed the keeper had undergone something of a mini-revival in form until Sunday’s ninetieth-minute hurling of a spanner into the works of what would have been a valuable away point. Have no doubt about it: Hart was at fault for Chelsea’s winner, his wild charge both fatally hesitant and lacking the necessarily commanding shriek that, in that situation, is the hallmark of a goalkeeper’s necessary authority toward his defenders.

Sunday’s error added to an ever-growing lowlight reel that now comprises of mistakes against Southampton, West Ham, Scotland (for England) and Bayern Munich (twice) – and those are merely the ones which resulted in goals. It’s clearly a worrying trend, for Roy Hodgson as well as Manuel Pellegrini, and David Platt’s recent revelation that the club’s previous management had plans to sign Stoke’s Asmir Begovic in the summer was a telling one. So what the hell’s gone wrong?

One of the more popular theories touted to explain Hart’s recent drop in form centres around his ego. Hart, conjecture has it, feels the need to be at the centre of his onlookers’ attentions. On a good day, this sees him leaping commandingly around his penalty box, taking on all comers to claim crosses, shots and anything else that is rightfully his. Which is all well and good, until a bad day comes along, and Hart’s insistence on such a proactive style of goalkeeping results in, say, a rash surge from his line which presents his opponent with a last-minute open goal.

Not only can this mindset set him up for such moments of misjudgement, but it also sets him in poor stead to deal with a spell of poor form when one comes along, as it inevitably will. Lacking the necessary humility to accept his failings and respond by concentrating on the goalkeeping basics, Hart instead reacts to a mistake by attempting to perform an equivalently eye-catching moment of skill or authority – a cycle which perpetuates mistakes as opposed to provoking reformation.

Whether indeed the ‘ego’ theory is accurate – none of us, unfortunately, have access to his therapist’s notebooks, and it’s most likely a simplistic diagnosis for a complex set of limitations – what is certain is that Hart, at his best, is a goalkeeper whose most notable quality is the manner in which he exudes supreme and infectious confidence. When his confidence is taken away, it becomes replaced with a desperate and unconvincing imitation of confidence, which is not the same thing at all – as demonstrated on Sunday. Hart’s indecisive rush from his line was, paradoxically, the act of a man trying to be seen to be decisive, when simply staying put and eschewing responsibility would have been the more responsible thing to do.

Now, there is little doubt that Hart is a flawed goalkeeper – perhaps one who could benefit from a spell out of the spotlight, if only to learn that lack of attention can be a good thing, too – but that’s not to say that his recent stream of errors should somehow serve to discredit or disprove the obvious talent that he’s showcased not just in the past, but in recent months, too.

There’s a trend in modern football for its watchers to too-readily denounce players after any sort of sustained underwhelming form. Whether such a propensity for soundbite-handy knee-jerking stems from football itself, or is just symptomatic of the Twitter-saturated culture of immediacy within which it now exists, the fact is that such reflexive opinions tend to be proved incorrect. The recent form of Daniel Sturridge and Aaron Ramsey, to pick two examples only from recent weeks, illustrates the stupidity in writing off young and plainly talented players at such a young stage in their careers, and the same should apply to Hart.

Of course, his recent, public falling to Earth has been a painful one, but it’s also something that’s been somewhat exaggerated due to the fact that he was never the world-class, error-immune goalkeeper that his early reputation might have led you to believe. (Remember the beginning of this piece? Building up and knocking down, kids, building up and knocking down). However, that’s not to say that he can’t learn, improve and steadily evolve into excellence if granted the requisite time and breathing space. Sure, he may not end up as England’s answer to Lev Yashin, but he’s a far cry from the Taibi he’s currently being painted as.