Joe Hart having Tottenham medical ahead of free transfer signing

When I went to bed Sunday evening, I did not expect to wake up to a credible report that Joe Hart is having a medical at Tottenham Hotspur, but here we are. According to numerous reports, the former England #1 is set to sign with Spurs to join their keeper corps, along with club captain Hugo Lloris and Paulo Gazzaniga.

Few keepers, or even players, have had such a catastrophic fall from grace over such a short period of time as Joe Hart. Eight years ago, Hart was the lock-down starter for a Manchester City side that won its first Premier League title. He won the Golden Glove award that season as well. In hindsight, that was probably Hart’s high water mark. He went from England’s #1 keeper to being a backup at Burnley this past season. He has proven himself, repeatedly, to not being a very good keeper over the past few seasons.

I’m absolutely not one of Joe Hart’s biggest fans, to say the least. He has proven himself to be absolutely dreadful the past few years, and there aren’t very many scenarios in my head that would make me happy to see Joe Hart walking out on the pitch as a member of Tottenham Hotspur. However, if he’s coming in as a third keeper, basically replacing the released Michel Vorm, then fine — he’s homegrown, English, and helps with that pesky quota in the Premier League and European competition. He’s not going to play very much, if at all. Whatever.

The flip side to this is that Spurs have a couple of young homegrown keepers already that just graduated out of the academy in Alfie Whiteman and Brandon Austin. Considering how unlikely it is that third keepers take the pitch at all for Premier League teams, it’s puzzling that Spurs would be willing to sign Joe Hart instead of taking a chance on one of those guys, who obviously would be on much lower wages and also have the English homegrown advantages that Hart does.

If the end result is that Spurs’ youth keepers are sent out on loan this year and Hart becomes our guy, then I guess it’s fine? At least it would make sense from a player development perspective, or it would be a sign that we don’t trust either Austin or Whiteman to make the leap to Premier League caliber keeper. But this would otherwise be an extremely meh signing. And if Hart somehow manages to leapfrog Gazinga (who I’m also not exactly thrilled with), then BIG YIKES.

Whatever. Looks like he’s coming, so we better make our peace with it. To close, here’s a picture of Joe Hart with an animal.