West Brom goalkeeper Alex Palmer will return this weekend to the venue where he mad his league debut for Albion – since becoming a key player for the team.
The date is 24th May, 2015. West Bromwich Albion have enjoyed a storming end to the Premier League season under winter arrival, but they’re on the beach at the Emirates Stadium on the final day of the campaign and are swept aside by Arsenal, who are playing the game as though they’re schoolkids in the playground. It’s an otherwise pretty forgettable afternoon in the proud history of Albion, but it’s a day that Alex Palmer is unlikely to forget – it’s a day he was named as a member of the first-team squad for the first time.
Still only 18 years old at that point, Palmer – who had been fourth choice behind the injured Ben Foster, Boaz Myhill and fellow academy product Jack Rose – had no previous senior experience, but that would be the first glimpse of the role which was his aim to fulfil. Being number one at Albion would be Palmer’s goal.
Years and years of loan spells, development football and an overall requirement to be patient wouowld foll. There were openings here and there when Palmer would be required to make the step up and make up the numbers, if Foster or Myhill had picked up injuries. Palmer learned his trade at nearby Kidderminster, the place of his birth, in the non-league and then had brief outings at Oldham and Notts County as a keeper in his early 20s.
Back at Albion, with Foster having left and with Myhill having hung up his boots to take up a role on the club’s coaching staff, Palmer wasn’t yet deemed ready to be exposed to first-team football at that level. Albion, with those blissful parachute payments which feel a distant memory these days, splashed out on Sam Johnstone on a four-year deal and the number one spot was again filled for the foreseeable future.
As Palmer moved into his mid twenties, EFL opportunities arose. It’s fair to say that he grasped those chances with both gloves, too. It began with Plymouth Argyle, where Palmer played his part in their rise which has carried them all the way to the Championship, and who will visit The Hawthorns immediately after the forthcoming international break. They won promotion under Ryan Lowe, whom Palmer will come across this weekend at Deepdale.
“Alex is a terrific goalkeeper. He has got ambitions of playing at the highest level,” Lowe said during Palmer’s loan spell. “He has come here to help us but he has also come here ultimately to get into West Brom’s team.” That he did, Ryan. That he did, but not before another loan. League Two? Completed it, mate. The natural next challenge was the next rung on the ladder, and that was presented by former coach Michael Appleton at Lincoln.
“I look at Alex and it’s only my opinion, but for what it’s worth I think he’s one of the best – if not the best – of the keepers in League One,” Appleton told BirminghamLive midway through his loan. “I think very highly of Alex, I think he knows that. We worked really hard to get him in. We watched him 3 or 4 times last season at Plymouth so we knew what he was about.
“I knew Alex previously anyway, although I’d never worked with him because he’d always been in different age groups to the ones I was working in. It was an absolute no brainer for us when we had the opportunity. He’s been great. He’s not had an awful lot to do, but when he’s had to make big saves at big moments he’s done so.”
In 2021, and with Albion back in the Championship, Palmer was finally getting closer to what he’d sampled back at Arsenal six years earlier. Arsenal, fittingly, were the side who Palmer made his long-awaited debut against, although the night itself – through none of the young lads’ fault against high quality opposition – proved to be a pretty punishing ordeal.
Palmer’s first taste of Championship football, ironically, didn’t come in an Albion shirt. He was borrowed in emergency circumstances by Luton and played a couple of times. The first, at Middlesbrough, he didn’t cover himself in glory in but Palmer atoned days later when he kept a clean sheet at Coventry City – and even collected a rare assist for winning goalscorer Elijah Adebayo.
Back to Albion, then, and Palmer – still awaiting his league debut at the age of 25 – agreed a new four-year contract. Steve Bruce challenged him and David Button, in the absence of the departed Johnstone, to battle for the number one jersey. Button was given the nod having kept at the back end of the season before, but it proved to be an error of judgement and Palmer immediately made a positive impression at Preston, even in defeat. A first clean sheet followed against former loan club Luton a week later, but then Bruce was gone.
Carlos Corberan, a goalkeeper previously himself, oversaw a rapid rise and Palmer did more than his bit, pulling off some stunning saves in the months that followed before that untimely injury in training which thrust Corberan’s plans and hopes of promotion up in the air while Palmer sat out weeks’ worth of games.
The sliding doors moment arrived this summer. Luton again came calling, this time as a Premier League team and keen to have Palmer back on a permanent basis. The goalkeeper, in a stance seldom seen in modern football, decided against the opportunity of testing himself at a higher level and explained how he wished to remain at Albion, in order to take advantage of the fact that, finally, he was the number one – and, hopefully, enjoy top flight football in an Albion shirt.
There have been errors. There are still, even now, things that can be improved in Palmer’s game, but as a 27-year-old goalkeeper he could be in situ for many years to come if form and fitness allows. Corberan, too, has been pleased by his personality in the face of those mistakes – at Bristol City recently, for example, where he almost cost Albion a goal in the first half but ensured they’d take a point in the second.
