Grant joins Clarets on loan

We’ve been linked with a number of goalkeepers over the past ten days but the name of Lee Grant only surfaced this morning and then, after the deal was done last night.

Grant joined the Derby Academy in 1998, straight from school, and this despite the opportunity to sign for Chelsea. He made his debut for the Rams first team as a substitute against Burnley and won a place in the England Under-21 team before the end of that season at the age of 19. In the 2003/04 season he became the regular first team goalkeeper, taking over from former Burnley youth keeper Andy Oakes.

He lost his place at the beginning of last season to Lee Camp, who had impressed at the end of the previous season in a loan spell at QPR, and Grant’s only league appearances since came in October last year when Camp was suspended.

One allowing Grant to join the Clarets, Rams’ boss Phil Brown said today, “Lee needs games to show he is the good young keeper we know he is.”

Steve Cotterill said, “We are delighted to have signed Lee from Derby on a month’s loan and obviously he will go straight into the team on Saturday against Leicester. We welcome him to the club and we are thankful to Phil Brown who has loaned him out to us because it’s hard trying to find a goalkeeper at any stage of the season.

“He has some good experience at this level and we certainly don’t have to worry about him there so we are delighted to have him on board for the month.”

It is ten days since Brian Jensen was sent off, we can only be thankful it didn’t happen in a Saturday game with a midweek game to follow, we would then have had just a couple of days to find a new keeper.

But we’ve got one and Steve’s joke about playing John Spicer there can thankfully now be accepted as such.