Raya’s rise from non-league to being wanted by Arsenal

Turning heads is something David Raya does a lot. In fact, he was doing it on the first day he kicked a ball on English shores.

After just one training session into his trial at Blackburn 11 years ago, the club immediately moved to sign the then-15-year-old from Spanish club Cornella for around £10,000. How humble that figure is now.

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The Brentford goalkeeper is now valued at £40m, according to his manager Thomas Frank – even with one year left on the Spaniard’s contract. And with Arsenal and Bayern Munich jostling for his signature, to go with Tottenham and Manchester United’s interest earlier in the window, you can see why.

It is set to be a busy summer for Raya – but the goalkeeper is used to that.

No goalkeeper was used more – by his team-mates and the opposition players – last season. Raya faced the most shots, made the most saves, claimed the second-most crosses, made more touches and completed the most passes out of all the other top-flight goalkeepers last season.

‘He’s like an extra outfield player’

Raya’s all-round play as a goalkeeper, balancing the ‘ordinary’ shot-stopping skills associated with a No 1 with the ability to play from the back, makes him the complete modern goalkeeper. But that’s nothing new to those who have followed his career.

The Brentford goalkeeper attributes a lot of his development to Steven Drench, who worked with him for several years in the Blackburn academy as a development goalkeeper coach.

Drench, now in a dual player-goalkeeper coach role for sixth-tier Chorley, oversaw most of Raya’s progression from that trial as a teenager to his breakthrough to the Blackburn first team.

“Being from Spain, he had that European way of moving around the goal, but what stood out was his technique, shot-stopping and pure athleticism,” Drench recalls to Sky Sports about first meeting the young goalkeeper.

Raya said last year that working with Drench, a goalkeeper who is also known for using his feet, helped take his game to the next level.

“In Spain, he played a lot of futsal when he was younger, so he was comfortable with the ball at his feet,” adds Drench. “But we did a lot of football golf and head tennis with lots of distribution practice as we knew that was a strength of his.

“The reason I’ve been able to play until I’m 37 is because I’ve been able to play with my feet. The way the game has changed now, if a goalkeeper is good with their feet, that’s one of the first checkpoints coaches look for. Can they make saves? Can they collect crosses? Can they be good with their feet?

“His distribution is a major plus point and being at Brentford with the style of football they play, he suits them. But he could go into any team in the top leagues in Europe and fit in quite well with the confidence he has on the ball. He’s like an extra outfield player.”

Raya has certainly taken that style of play forward. When Brentford got promoted to the Premier League in 2021, he ended the Championship season with 300 more completed passes than any of the other second-tier shot-stoppers.

Jurgen Klopp also saw it after taking his Liverpool side to Brentford in September 2021. Raya’s distribution was clear to see on that day, his long ball out to Sergi Canos playing a major part in Brentford’s second goal in a 3-3 draw.

“The goalkeeper could wear the No 10 shirt. He has sent several incredible balls, exactly what you should do when you play against us,” Klopp said of Raya.

The Brentford shot-stopper knew that, of course. “It’s just the style we play, we’ve always relied on it,” Raya told Sky Sports a few weeks after that Liverpool game. “Teams don’t tend to press the goalkeeper as much, so I have a bit more time than the centre-backs.

“It’s something we’ve worked out we can create chances from, across the last two seasons, through me being brave and being able to pick out the player who might not score, but will go on to create a chance.”

It makes sense to use Raya’s long-ball prowess, given Brentford’s own speciality in aerial duels. Last season, the Bees had three out of the top 10 players in the ‘aerial duels won’ category in Ben Mee (1st), Ivan Toney (6th) and Ethan Pinnock (7th).

Raya’s footwork is something the Spanish goalkeeper has used everywhere he has been. Alongside the likes of Jordan Pickford and Nick Pope, the Brentford goalkeeper’s development was aided by exposure to non-league football via a brief spell at Southport in the 2014-15 season.

Midway through Raya’s stint at the Conference Premier club, Gary Brabin was hired to take over the team who sat bottom of the fifth-tier table.

“He was a young goalkeeper right down the pecking order at Blackburn,” Brabin tells Sky Sports. “You’re thinking, ‘is he going to be experienced enough for this relegation battle?’ Because you need strong characters.

“A new manager comes in, the team is bottom of the league and a lot of people’s heads were down and they were considering what’s next. But that wasn’t the case with David. He was an unbelievable character, confident and bubbly and it was lovely to feed off that and spread it among the squad. It was a great team spirit.

“It was his feet that really impressed me. The way David was so confident, we played a lot more football on the ground than other teams at our level and we quickly got out of those bottom four places. He was integral to that because of how good he was.

“We felt safe having him at the back and it wasn’t just keeping the ball out, he was starting our play. He was our starting point and it was successful for us.”

‘Hands like shovels’

Raya, of course, is not just about his feet. Another highlight from that Liverpool game in 2021 was a superb reflex save to deny Diogo Jota from a few yards out. Shot-stopping was another aspect of his game highlighted in his Blackburn youth days.

“The thing about David is he’s not your normal 6ft 4in, 6ft 5in goalkeeper and he’s been fighting against that stereotype,” says Drench. “So, he has to have that little bit more spring, power and athleticism.

“You have to be able to make those saves that would be top-drawer saves. But the way he moves around the goal and the way he plays with his feet makes him the all-round package.

“When he made a save, we’d always joke that he’d spin on his bum and go the other way. I didn’t want to take that away from him because he could cover the goal that quickly.

“You see some of the saves he makes now, he’s saving the ball two or three yards past his post because his feet are that quick. He’s that agile and powerful that when he does take that step, he’s covering more of the goal. He’s making difficult saves look very, very easy.

“And if you ever meet him, he has hands like shovels, they’re massive.”

At Southport, those hands came in, well, handy. The game that started placing him on the goalkeeper map was a FA Cup third-round match away at Steve McLaren’s Derby in 2015.

Southport were within minutes of holding the then-Championship leaders to a replay, with Raya putting in a string of superb stops at Pride Park. Chris Martin’s stoppage-time penalty broke the non-league club’s hearts – but word was getting out about the Spaniard.

“At the time, publicly I was telling people that he was a Premier League goalkeeper and that he would play for Spain,” says Brabin. “People were looking at me as if I was carried away but I genuinely believed in him.

“I got a job at Everton working in the academy and I was pushing them to sign him. We actually enquired about him on the strength of my recommendation but it didn’t go any further.”

Why Arsenal want Raya

Arsenal first came calling for Raya’s services in the middle of 2020, the year they were looking for competition for Bernd Leno and one season before they opted for current No 1 Aaron Ramsdale.

The key figure in Arsenal’s long-standing interest in Raya is Gunners goalkeeping coach Inaki Cana, who moved from Brentford to Arsenal in December 2019, a few months before the north Londoners first approached the Bees over Raya.

Raya did not make the move from Brentford to Arsenal back then, with the Gunners instead moving for Icelandic goalkeeper Alex Runarsson, who Cana had previously worked with at FC Nordsjaelland in Denmark.

But what we have seen is a clear similarity between the way Arsenal and Brentford build up from the back with Cana working with both teams. In fact, their goal kick paths are almost identical, looking at the graphic below.

Raya’s statistically exceptional season for Brentford in the 2022/23 campaign has resulted in more clubs stepping up.

Bayern Munich have expressed an interest to take the Spaniard on loan, while Tottenham and Manchester United held interest earlier in the summer before moving to other targets.

These are the big strides the goalkeeper has taken, from the days at Southport to “one of the best in Premier League”, according to Frank, who is already planning for life without his No 1.