In the wake of Charlton Athletic‘s crushing home defeat to Portsmouth on Tuesday night, Thomas Kaminski has come under an increasing amount of scrutiny from fans.
The Belgian’s errors compounded what was a difficult night for the Addicks in their fight to stay up in the Championship after securing promotion via the playoffs at Wembley in 2024/25.
Ahead of a three-game week where the Reds travel to in-form Southampton, followed by a six-pointer away to West Bromwich Albion & another stern test against Wrexham who are unbeaten in their last five away games.
Let’s delve into Kaminski’s season & whether Nathan Jones should be considering a switch behind the sticks.
On face value the 33-year-old is having an excellent season with 11 clean sheets in the second tier which is the most having signed from Luton Town last summer for a reported £1m.
This betters the likes of promotion chasers Carl Rushworth (Coventry), Sol Brynn (Middlesbrough) and Christian Walton (Ipswich), who have 10 and nine respectively, in contrast to the South East London side’s survival tilt.
Playing for relegated Luton Town last season, Kaminski has already matched his clean sheet record where he also picked up 11 clean sheets in 13 more games.
Out of the three sides who were either promoted or stayed up in the Championship last season (Oxford United, Derby County and Portsmouth) only Jamie Cumming of the U’s registered more clean sheets (13) whilst Jacob Widell Zetterstrom and Nicolas Schmid failed to hit double figures.
Delving deeper into his stats for this season, the shine on Kaminski’s performances begins to fade away as he has underperformed his advanced metrics this season.
The former Blackburn keeper has conceded 4.43 more goals than he should have done as per Sofascore, which puts him in the bottom quarter for keepers in the league.
This highlights his erratic shot stopping that has in turn been a net negative for the Addicks.
With a further two conceded from long range in that 3-1 defeat against Portsmouth, Kaminski has now shipped eight goals from outside the box which has him level alongside Michael Cooper and Vladan Kovacevic for this unwanted stat.
Another issue is that when Kaminski normally makes one mistake in a game, he struggles to compose himself back into a match and normally follows up one mistake with a second.
Terry Devlin’s 56th-minute strike to put Pompey 3-0 up effectively sealed the result.
A fine strike from long range, that the 6ft 3 custodian did not cover himself in glory as he left the near post wide open for the invitation.
This has been a recurring theme throughout the season, where back in November, Stoke winger Sorba Thomas took advantage of some questionable keeping to score twice from crosses that somehow looped into the corner.
In their 4-0 drubbing away to South East London rivals Millwall last month, Kaminski flapped at a cross that allowed their opposition to take the lead via Kayne Ramsay
Even when Kaminski did make a save from the spot after a tame Camiel Neghli penalty, he pushed the ball straight into danger which allowed the Lions to scramble home for their third goal of the match.
The Addicks manager Jones who took charge in February 2024 now has a decision to make with Will Mannion.
He was a key part of the side’s promotion back to the Championship after five seasons away from the second tier, keeping 12 clean sheets in 28 matches.
Mannion has only featured twice this season in the EFL Cup and FA Cup.
He has yet to make an appearance in the league despite a growing number of Charlton fans asking for him to return to the starting line-up.
Even in their 5-1 pummelling by Chelsea in the third round of the FA Cup, the former Cambridge keeper who signed for Charlton in the summer of 2024 made 11 saves, including five in his own box,
The only negative was that he made a massive error that led to a goal in the same match.
Mannion did concede seven times from outside the box last season; this is one less than Kaminski so far.
This was achieved having played four fewer games and in the sixth highest amount of time in the entire divison only behind sides that finished in the lower reaches of the division.
This could be more indicative of a system issue where the Reds like to keep men in their 18-yard-box as a way to block potential shots.
In turn, the defence are not stepping up enough, which gives players a greater belief that they can line up to strike and score.
In my opinion, Kaminski should retain his place for these next three games which are coming thick and fast as a way of continuity.
Charlton will likely face a large number of shots, and despite his poor metrics for this season, only five keepers in the Championship have made more saves than the Belgian.
If his performances are not of the required standard after this run of games, then a swap for Mannion should certainly be on the cards.
With just 11 games to go, the Addicks will aim to survive a season in the second tier for the first time since 2014/15, having suffered relegations in 2015/16 and 2019/20.
