“I’ve made it clear in the last few years that I want to go and be a number one and play week in, week out,” expressed Caoimhin Kelleher while on international duty with the Republic of Ireland squad.
The 26-year-old is bound for a move to Brentford for a fee of £12.5m but it’s a deal that will inevitably bring bittersweet feelings to the shot-stopper.
His time at Liverpool began in the summer of 2015 when he joined the academy from Ringmahon Rangers - a club based in Cork, Ireland, where he was born and raised.
But after a decade at the club, Kelleher only has 25 senior appearances to show for it.
Still, he has progressed. In 2018, he signed a new contract with Liverpool after featuring for large parts of a pre-season tour of the United States.
And when they reached the final of the Champions League in 2018-19 – eventually beating Tottenham Hotspur – Kelleher was an unused substitute but still became only the 12th Irish footballer to win the competition, and the first to do so in over a decade.
There was more success coming for him, too. Although he was uninvolved for many major tournaments throughout his time at the club, his performance in the 2022 Carabao Cup shed light on his potential which some could suggest was wasted for far too long at Liverpool.
Two years after that new contract, and a year after making his competitive debut for Jurgen Klopp’s side back then, Kelleher started and kept a clean sheet against Ajax in the Champions League.
Only five days later, he earned his third consecutive clean sheet for the club and became the third-youngest Liverpool goalkeeper to keep a Premier League clean sheet. Not so bad for a goalkeeper who was picked only when Alisson and Adrian were ruled out.
But a string of solid performances gave Klopp no other choice but to promote the Irishman to second-choice goalkeeper, and although he never made it past Alisson, his notable performances gave him strong credibility for a move to Brentford, which is in its final stages.
Another remarkable campaign for Kelleher was the 2022-23 Carabao Cup where, in the third round, he saved three penalties against Derby County to send Anfield into elation. His name was well and truly known at that point.
It wasn’t long after that performance that his national team boss, Stephen Kenny, said: “He has been starved of games this year and that has been a problem for him.”
That is now no longer a problem given Mark Flekken’s exit from Brentford, and to Bayer Leverkusen, is on the horizon, opening up the No1 slot for Thomas Frank’s side.
A newer problem that could surface, however, is Kelleher’s lack of experience. With 11% of appearances, and 25 from a possible 228 at Liverpool, the one component of his game to let him down will be the lack of exploitation of the game at a high level.
And paired with the fact that Brentford claimed the second-most blocks in the league in the most recent campaign shows that Kelleher will be tested a lot if Frank doesn’t bolster his defence in the summer.
Whether or not Kelleher's move is a good or bad decision, if the goalkeeper can absorb the huge demand in minutes in the forthcoming season then he will, in addition to his present abundance in talent, only get better.