Cambridge United goalkeeper Will Mannion charts his journey to the Abbey Stadium featuring the likes of Harry Maguire, Trent Alexander-Arnold and Andrew Robertson
The life of a back-up goalkeeper must surely be one of the most mentally challenging roles in football.
You train hard all week long, going through the same drills and processes as the other goalies in the squad to ultimately sit among the substitutes come matchday.
Weeks if not months can pass by between appearances, yet for each fixture you need to be prepared for the unexpected to happen and then all of a sudden you are required to step up.
For goalkeepers whose careers are winding down it can often be the perfect job. They have done the hard yards, spent years putting their bodies on the line and now the time is right to ease a bit more comfortably towards retirement.
But for Will Mannion, the desire to play every week burns brightly.
The 24-year-old has had to bide his time since joining Cambridge United in the summer of 2021 with no previous Football League appearances under his belt.
He made just two Sky Bet League One appearances towards the back-end of last term alongside spending a month on loan in the Vanarama National League South with Havant & Waterlooville.
But after working hard with United’s goalkeeping coach Martyn Davies throughout pre-season, head coach Mark Bonner was convinced that Mannion was ready to provide some genuine competition to established number one stopper Dimi Mitov.
He played in the EFL League Cup ties against Millwall and Southampton alongside being called up for duty on Papa John’s Trophy evenings before his big chance came.
Mitov sustained an ankle injury in the 2-0 home defeat to Sheffield Wednesday on October 15 that has ruled him out until the new year. All of a sudden Mannion was number one, but the pressure and responsibility has so far rested easy on his shoulders, highlighted by the fact he was named the Love Cambridge Player of the Month for November after a string of impressive displays between the posts.
“That’s the situation at every club, there’s only one position for a goalkeeper. You have to try to take your chance whenever you can,” said Mannion.
“You’re not going to come straight into a club – especially when you’ve not played much in the Football League like me – and be number one straight away.
“Cambridge felt like the right place for me, especially with the environment they have.
“I just wanted to keep my head down, see what happened and luckily it’s really worked out.
“It’s not the best scenario to come in when someone like Dimi gets quite a serious injury but I stepped in towards the end of last season so you’ve always got to be ready.
“You have to go into every game in the mindset that there’s a chance you’re going to end up playing.
“I train as hard as I can every day and make sure I keep doing what I’m doing because a chance can come at any time like it has for me.
“Because of that I felt ready. I played in the cup games and had some games towards the end of last season so it wasn’t a completely new experience.”
It remains to be seen what will happen when Mitov returns to full fitness.
The Bulgarian has plenty of credit in the bank after a particularly impressive 2021/22 campaign – the pinnacle being a stunning display at Newcastle United in the Emirates FA Cup.
Yet from Mannion’s perspective he is pleased that he has at least given his manager some food for thought.
“Ultimately it is always going to be down to the manager what he wants to do,” he added. “The only way I look at it is that I’ve got to keep doing what I’m doing right now.
“I feel like I’m playing well and hopefully it’s giving the manager a decision to make.”
But perhaps Mannion’s confidence and performances levels should not come as the greatest surprise given his journey to the Abbey Stadium.
He joined Hull City – then a Premier League outfit – in 2016 from AFC Wimbledon and while he only made the one senior appearance, the experience of training alongside a clutch of international footballers proved to be invaluable.
“It was my first time living away from home and going from a League Two team to one in the Premier League, that was a massive, massive difference. The standard of the training and the mentality of the players, the level of each player, it was such a huge experience,” he reflected.
“I got to travel away to a few of the games, to places like Anfield and that was amazing.
“It was a big learning curve. I didn’t play much obviously but to be able to train with those players every day, you always learn.
“We had some big players back then like Andy Robertson, Harry Maguire, Tom Huddlestone, Michael Dawson and Jared Bowen – training with them every day at such a young age was amazing.”
His time on Humberside was punctuated by loan spells at Plymouth Argyle, Aldershot Town and Kidderminster Harriers.
Fellow goalkeeper and England World Cup squad member Nick Pope has previously spoken of how valuable his temporary spells at other clubs were to his development, and Mannion is an agreement.
He said: “You’ve got to go and get roughed up by these strikers.
“It’s all well and good playing in the Under-23s, but it’s nothing like coming up against players who need to score and win because they’ve got mortgages to pay.
“It’s a quick learning curve when you go out on loan. It gives you a real taste of what to expect, but as a goalkeeper it’s not overly different at any standard.
“At whatever level you’ve got to save shots, you’ve got to come and claim crosses and you’ve got to kick well. The best thing about getting out on loan is it gives you the chance to do all that in games that really matter.”
And like Pope, Mannion also got a taste of international football in the same year he moved to Hull when he was called-up to represent England’s Under-19s, making two appearances alongside the likes of Trent Alexander-Arnold.
“It was one of those pinch yourself experiences. To see some of those players go on and do what they’re doing now shows the standard it was,” reflected Mannion, who also had a spell in Cyprus with Pafos prior to joining United that did not work out too well in a footballing sense but that he describes as a ‘good life experience’.
“Training every day with those players and having a coach like Eric Steele to learn from, they are amazing experiences to have.
“When you go to St George’s Park you’re rubbing shoulders with the first team. I walked in the gym and there’s Joe Hart and Jordan Pickford, it’s a bit of a shock at first but you’ve got to be confident, believe you belong there and take as much from it as you can.”
Yet while the aforementioned Pope, Pickford and Alexander-Arnold all have World Cup glory on their minds, Mannion’s concerns are much closer to home.
He has come into a United side struggling for form and confidence after their latest defeat at Forest Green Rovers – although he very nearly rescued a point with a header after coming up for a corner in stoppage time.
“We’re in a bit of a rut but every team goes through one of those,” he said.
“It’s one of those things when a run of games just doesn’t go for you.
“We’re all working hard to get out of it and we’re very confident it will happen at some stage.
“January might help if we can get some players in because we’ve struggled with injuries, but it’s just one of those where only hard work is going to get us out of it because we’ve got the quality in the squad.
“You need that bit of luck as well. We haven’t had much, like on Saturday with the penalty and with my header. Either side of their ’keeper and it probably goes in – that’s the way it’s going for us at the moment.”
My relationship with Cambridge
“I keep saying that punting is something I need to try, it’s something I’ve not got around to doing yet. I’ll try to do that in the summer," said Mannion
“There’s a few nice restaurants in the city, the Grand Arcade is really good as well.
“I don’t always get out too much because of football commitments but it looks like a really nice city.
“When I first signed for the club I went around it on one of the scooters, had a day out and it looked like a picturesque city.”
