Playing against the very best is bringing the very best out of Sam Johnstone, the West Brom goalkeeper reckons. Week in, week out the Albion stopper is coming up against the crème de la crème of attacking talent in English football and, to date, he’s been faring rather well. Albion aren’t where they want to be as a collective right now, but in Johnstone they possess a first choice keeper who is in sparkling form, perhaps the best we’ve seen of him since his move in the summer of 2018.
Sam Johnstone said “It’s a massive step up. I played in the Championship for a few years, but these players can do something out of nothing and you always have to be switched on and alert, That’s what I wanted. I said to Gary Walsh last year ‘we need to get up, we need to go up. Not that I didn’t last season in the Championship, but you want that adrenaline of playing against [Jamie] Vardy and Kane and so on, you want to test yourself against the best and see how you do. That’s been frustrating. We’ve played well and the Tottenham game we played well and just didn’t manage to do it, the same with the United game, You have to take it into the next game. It feels so much better when you make a few saves and get something from the game on a Saturday. You make saves but when you lose you’re not happy.”
