Casper Ankergren ⭑ From A-Z since '92

This is part of my (eight year long, it'll fly by) attempt to write about every Leeds United player since 1992. For more about why I'm doing this, go back to Aapo Halme, and to read all the players so far, browse the archive here.

It's a dull truism that goalkeepers benefit from a calm temperament, but Casper Ankergren was a player of exemplary peace. Perhaps it's significant that, the one time he lost temper about how his career was going, he ended up signing for Leeds.

Not many goalkeepers manage to win international call-ups while never quite making themselves first choice with a club, but that was Ankergren. He played for Brøndby, for Leeds and for Brighton, and usually he played well. He won League One Player of the Month three times, twice for the Peacocks and once for the Seagulls, an unusual honour for a goalie. But he always seemed to be under pressure from some other keeper, always doubted by his managers, always popular with supporters who would, nonetheless, keep looking around and wondering if someone else might be better. And Casper always just seemed to be getting on with his job.

Goalkeeping had become a job for Ankergren when he moved from his hometown team, Køge, to the team he loved, Brøndby, one of the biggest clubs in Denmark. Until then he'd been a self-taught semi-pro, who became a goalkeeper because he was tall and who learned how to do it by staying out late to give all the wannabe goalscorers in the area someone to shoot at. "There are some fundamental errors in my game," he told a goalkeeping podcast recently, because, "There was no goalkeeper coach back then, it was something you had to figure out for yourself."

He was pushed harder as a professional at Brøndby, and by the level of expectations when he took over from Mogens Krogh. Brøndby had signed Krogh to replace Peter Schmeichel when he went to Old Trafford in 1991, and he retired as their no.1 in December 2002, 464 games later. Ankergren was the in-house replacement, and won the Danish Cup in his first campaign, but manager Martin Laudrup put new signing Karim Zaza ahead of him as first choice for 2003/04. After a season on the bench Ankergren was called upon for 2004/05 after Zaza was injured, and Brøndby won the double, Ankergren keeping a record eighteen clean sheets. He played the first half of 2005/06. Zaza played the second half. Zaza left. Ankergren signed a three year contract and took over in goal for the first half of 2006/07. Then, during the winter break, Brøndby signed Stephan Andersen from Charlton Athletic.

Andersen had almost joined Leeds a few months earlier. Former Leeds keeper Scott Carson had taken Andersen's place in goal after joining on loan from Liverpool, and Andersen was on his way to Elland Road on loan until Leeds objected to a recall clause and extended Tony Warner's loan instead. Warner went back to Fulham in January meaning the goalkeeping department at Leeds at the start of 2007 comprised 37-year-old Neil Sullivan and Graham Stack, on loan from Reading. Ankergren thinks someone at Leeds knew Laudrup's assistant manager, former Arsenal midfielder John Jensen, and rang him asking about spare goalkeepers in Denmark. With Andersen arriving to take over in goal for Brøndby, Jensen knew just the man.