Culture
Dean Henderson’s ‘head saves’ – and how they are lifting Crystal Palace
Dean Henderson is using his head in helping Crystal Palace return to form.
The England goalkeeper has been showcasing an unusual kind of save in recent months, stopping three goal-bound efforts with his face after rushing out to close down an attacker.
The first was against Pablo Sarabia during the 2-2 draw with Wolves on November 2; then, a week later, he denied Andreas Pereira even though Palace were eventually beaten 2-0 by Fulham. Most recently, and memorably, he repeated the trick against Erling Haaland in another 2-2 against champions Manchester City.
It may not be in the goalkeeping textbook but it has been effective.
And far from being a byproduct of Henderson’s technique going awry, Matt Pyzdrowski, a former professional goalkeeper and The Athletic’s goalkeeping analyst, says the opposite is true.
“It’s because he’s doing a lot of things right,” says Pyzdrowski. “When attackers are in breakaway situations and they’re free on goal, Henderson closes the space very quickly and he does a really good job of keeping his body square to the ball, including his head.
“Because he’s so good at closing the attacker down so quickly and keeping his body square, he stresses the attacker. So they feel like the only thing they can do is hit the ball as hard as they can past him. Because he keeps his head square and looks at the ball the entire time, he gets knocked in the head.
“There’s nothing wrong with this technique. If they try to coach it out of him, it has the potential to do more harm than good. This is a technique that’s taught in every single club for modern goalkeepers.
Haaland is denied by Henderson’s head (Adam Davy/PA Images via Getty Images)
“This is a middle-ground technique where you don’t have time to really stand and react and you want to close the space as much as possible. It’s just unlucky that he’s got three in a row to his head. But it’s a credit to him because he closes the space so quickly, otherwise they would try to slide it past him with more finesse.”
Henderson had to be patient in waiting for his first-team chance at Palace after arriving from Manchester United, in a deal which could reach £20million, in August 2023.
Sam Johnstone was first-choice for most of last season, and Henderson’s inability to displace him inevitably brought scrutiny over the size of his transfer fee and whether the signing was a sensible use of Palace’s limited resources. The death of his father has been another bitter blow for Henderson to deal with.
But when Johnstone suffered an elbow injury in March, Henderson finally got his chance — which he gratefully took. He duly displaced his team-mate in the England squad for the summer’s European Championship (although he did not make an appearance) and Johnstone ended up being sold to Wolves in late August for £10m.
With each passing week, Henderson is looking more settled as Palace’s No 1, with these unusual ‘head saves’ earning precious points as they seek to climb away from the Premier League’s relegation zone.
So, how does he make them?
The most recent came in the seventh minute of that draw with City last Saturday. Palace, already leading 1-0, were faced with the daunting sight of back-to-back Premier League Golden Boot winner Haaland being one vs one with their goalkeeper.
“He’s originally retreating to his line, right before the through ball is played,” says Pyzdrowski, having analysed the incident. “He wants to get in a position in case there’s a shot, but also where he can potentially impact the player if there’s a through ball, which is what ends up happening.
“As soon as the ball is played, he’s already on his toes. His body weight is forward and he doesn’t wait. He reacts directly. His head is down looking at the ball, and as soon as Haaland takes his touch and shoots, Henderson is already spreading. His arms and legs are wide.”
Early in the second half at home to Fulham on November 9, a Palace side depleted by injuries were 1-0 down when Henderson’s heroics up against Pereira kept them in with a chance of taking a point.
“This one was a little different,” Pyzdrowski says. “But it’s similar in that it’s still a through ball and ends up splitting the defenders. As the attack is coming he’s retreating to his line, but he’s able to set a lot earlier (than with the Haaland save), and his defenders are in a little better position. He doesn’t need to rush out as quickly, but as soon as the touch comes in and the striker’s free on goal, he takes a few steps out.
“His limbs are wide, but he doesn’t need to spread in the same way. It’s almost that he gets himself between the ball and the net and takes it off the noggin again. It’s about him staying up as long as he can and just making his limbs as wide as possible.”
The save from Sarabia in the previous game is, Pyzdrowski believes, the best of the three.
With 48 minutes played, the match was goalless when Matheus Cunha played Sarabia in on the left with time and space to bear down on goal, only for Henderson to rush out, make himself big again and deny the Spanish midfielder.
“It’s more of a hybrid of the other two, because it’s similar to the one against City in that the ball is played in behind,” Pyzdrowski says. “But while against Haaland he goes right away, here he’s actually really patient.
“He has a really good neutral position in the centre of his goal. He sees that the ball goes through, but also sees a centre-back (Marc Guehi) coming over to chase the ball. Henderson is about three yards from his goal, Sarabia is just outside the box when the ball is played. So that’s 15 yards.
“For him to go out and spread right away would do more harm than good — he can’t close the space fast enough by the time Sarabia shoots. But once the striker takes his touch in front of him, that’s Henderson’s signal to go, because he receives the ball about at the penalty spot.
“By that point, Henderson had already taken a step or two, so he’s almost at the six-yard box. This is the maximum distance where the ’keeper would want to go out and spread. He throws his arms and legs wide and his head continues to look at the ball, and he takes the hit off his face.
The downside to Henderson making these unusual saves is the possible risk of head injuries.
Neither Henderson nor Palace have reported concerns about him taking these blows to the kisser so far, and the necessary precautions and checks will have been undertaken, but Pyzdrowski estimates that the ball is travelling at a speed “upwards of 100kph an hour” for these shots, which creates obvious dangers.
He foresees a situation in future where it would be “almost mandatory that goalkeepers have some type of rugby scrum cap on, given what we’re learning about concussion and prevention”.
For the time being, however, Palace will simply be grateful that Henderson is finding a way to keep these shots out.
(Top photo: Nathan Stirk/Getty Images)
“Window seat with garden view / A perfect nook to read a book / I’m lost in my Jane Austen…” sings Kristin Chenoweth in “The Girl in 14G” — what could be more ideal? Well, perhaps showing off your literary knowledge and getting a perfect score on this week’s super-size Book Review Quiz Bowl honoring the life, work and global influence of Jane Austen, who turns 250 today. In the 12 questions below, tap or click your answers to the questions. And no matter how you do, scroll on to the end, where you’ll find links to free e-book versions of her novels — and more.
On Dec. 16, 1775, a girl was born in Steventon, England — the seventh of eight children — to a clergyman and his wife. She was an avid reader, never married and died in 1817, at the age of 41. But in just those few decades, Jane Austen changed the world.
Her novels have had an outsize influence in the centuries since her death. Not only are the books themselves beloved — as sharply observed portraits of British society, revolutionary narrative projects and deliciously satisfying romances — but the stories she created have so permeated culture that people around the world care deeply about Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, even if they’ve never actually read “Pride and Prejudice.”
With her 250th birthday this year, the Austen Industrial Complex has kicked into high gear with festivals, parades, museum exhibits, concerts and all manner of merch, ranging from the classily apt to the flamboyantly absurd. The words “Jane mania” have been used; so has “exh-Aust-ion.”
How to capture this brief life, and the blazing impact that has spread across the globe in her wake? Without further ado: a mere sampling of the wealth, wonder and weirdness Austen has brought to our lives. After all, your semiquincentennial doesn’t come around every day.
By ‘A Lady’
Austen published just four novels in her lifetime: “Sense and Sensibility” (1811), “Pride and Prejudice” (1813), “Mansfield Park” (1814) and “Emma” (1815). All of them were published anonymously, with the author credited simply as “A Lady.” (If you’re in New York, you can see this first edition for yourself at the Grolier Club through Feb. 14.)
Where the Magic Happened
Placed near a window for light, this diminutive walnut table was, according to family lore, where the author did much of her writing. It is now in the possession of the Jane Austen Society.
An Iconic Accessory
Few of Austen’s personal artifacts remain, contributing to the author’s mystique. One of them is this turquoise ring, which passed to her sister-in-law and then her niece after her death. In 2012, the ring was put up for auction and bought by the “American Idol” champion Kelly Clarkson. This caused quite a stir in England; British officials were loath to let such an important cultural artifact leave the country’s borders. Jane Austen’s House, the museum now based in the writer’s Hampshire home, launched a crowdfunding campaign to Bring the Ring Home and bought the piece from Clarkson. The real ring now lives at the museum; the singer has a replica.
Austen Onscreen
Since 1940, when Austen had a bit of a moment and Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier starred in MGM’s rather liberally reinterpreted “Pride and Prejudice,” there have been more than 20 international adaptations of Austen’s work made for film and TV (to say nothing of radio). From the sublime (Emma Thompson’s Oscar-winning “Sense and Sensibility”) to the ridiculous (the wholly gratuitous 2022 remake of “Persuasion”), the high waists, flickering firelight and double weddings continue to provide an endless stream of debate fodder — and work for a queen’s regiment of British stars.
Jane Goes X-Rated
The rumors are true: XXX Austen is a thing. “Jane Austen Kama Sutra,” “Pride and Promiscuity: The Lost Sex Scenes of Jane Austen” and enough slash fic and amateur porn to fill Bath’s Assembly Rooms are just the start. Purists may never recover.
A Lady Unmasked
Austen’s final two completed novels, “Northanger Abbey” and “Persuasion,” were published after her death. Her brother Henry, who oversaw their publication, took the opportunity to give his sister the recognition he felt she deserved, revealing the true identity of the “Lady” behind “Pride and Prejudice,” “Emma,” etc. in a biographical note. “The following pages are the production of a pen which has already contributed in no small degree to the entertainment of the public,” he wrote, extolling his sister’s imagination, good humor and love of dancing. Still, “no accumulation of fame would have induced her, had she lived, to affix her name to any productions of her pen.”
Wearable Tributes
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a Jane Austen fan wants to find other Jane Austen fans, and what better way to advertise your membership in that all-inclusive club than with a bit of merch — from the subtle and classy to the gloriously obscene.
The Austen Literary Universe
On the page, there is no end to the adventures Austen and her characters have been on. There are Jane Austen mysteries, Jane Austen vampire series, Jane Austen fantasy adventures, Jane Austen Y.A. novels and, of course, Jane Austen romances, which transpose her plots to a remote Maine inn, a Greenwich Village penthouse and the Bay Area Indian American community, to name just a few. You can read about Austen-inspired zombie hunters, time-traveling hockey players, Long Island matchmakers and reality TV stars, or imagine further adventures for some of your favorite characters. (Even the obsequious Mr. Collins gets his day in the sun.)
A Botanical Homage
Created in 2017 to mark the 200th anniversary of Austen’s death, the “Jane Austen” rose is characterized by its intense orange color and light, sweet perfume. It is bushy, healthy and easy to grow.
Aunt Jane
Hoping to cement his beloved aunt’s legacy, Austen’s nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh published this biography — a rather rosy portrait based on interviews with family members — five decades after her death. The book is notable not only as the source (biased though it may be) of many of the scant facts we know about her life, but also for the watercolor portrait by James Andrews that serves as its frontispiece. Based on a sketch by Cassandra, this depiction of Jane is softer and far more winsome than the original: Whether that is due to a lack of skill on her sister’s part or overly enthusiastic artistic license on Andrews’s, this is the version of Austen most familiar to people today.
Cultural Currency
In 2017, the Bank of England released a new 10-pound note featuring Andrews’s portrait of Austen, as well as a line from “Pride and Prejudice”: “I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading!” Austen is the third woman — other than the queen — to be featured on British currency, and the only one currently in circulation.
In the Trenches
During World War I and World War II, British soldiers were given copies of Austen’s works. In his 1924 story “The Janeites,” Rudyard Kipling invoked the grotesque contrasts — and the strange comfort — to be found in escaping to Austen’s well-ordered world amid the horrors of trench warfare. As one character observes, “There’s no one to touch Jane when you’re in a tight place.”
Baby Janes
You’re never too young to learn to love Austen — or that one’s good opinion, once lost, may be lost forever.
The Austen Industrial Complex
Maybe you’ve not so much as seen a Jane Austen meme, let alone read one of her novels. No matter! Need a Jane Austen finger puppet? Lego? Magnetic poetry set? Lingerie? Nameplate necklace? Plush book pillow? License plate frame? Bath bomb? Socks? Dog sweater? Whiskey glass? Tarot deck? Of course you do! And you’re in luck: What a time to be alive.
Around the Globe
Austen’s novels have been translated into more than 40 languages, including Polish, Finnish, Chinese and Farsi. There are active chapters of the Jane Austen Society, her 21st-century fan club, throughout the world.
Playable Persuasions
In Austen’s era, no afternoon tea was complete without a rousing round of whist, a trick-taking card game played in two teams of two. But should you not be up on your Regency amusements, you can find plenty of contemporary puzzles and games with which to fill a few pleasant hours, whether you’re piecing together her most beloved characters or using your cunning and wiles to land your very own Mr. Darcy.
#SoJaneAusten
The wild power of the internet means that many Austen moments have taken on lives of their own, from Colin Firth’s sopping wet shirt and Matthew Macfadyen’s flexing hand to Mr. Collins’s ode to superlative spuds and Mr. Knightley’s dramatic floor flop. The memes are fun, yes, but they also speak to the universality of Austen’s writing: More than two centuries after her books were published, the characters and stories she created are as relatable as ever.
Bonnets Fit for a Bennett
For this summer’s Grand Regency Costumed Promenade in Bath, England — as well as the myriad picnics, balls, house parties, dinners, luncheons, teas and fetes that marked the anniversary — seamstresses, milliners, mantua makers and costume warehouses did a brisk business, attiring the faithful in authentic Regency finery. And that’s a commitment: A bespoke, historically accurate bonnet can easily run to hundreds of dollars.
Most Ardently, Jane
Austen was prolific correspondent, believed to have written thousands of letters in her lifetime, many to her sister, Cassandra. But in an act that has frustrated biographers for centuries, upon Jane’s death, Cassandra protected her sister’s privacy — and reputation? — by burning almost all of them, leaving only about 160 intact, many heavily redacted. But what survives is filled with pithy one-liners. To wit: “I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.”
Stage and Sensibility
Austen’s works have been adapted numerous times for the stage. Some plays (and musicals) hew closely to the original text, while others — such as Emily Breeze’s comedic riff on “Pride and Prejudice,” “Are the Bennet Girls OK?”, which is running at New York City’s West End Theater through Dec. 21 — use creative license to explore ideas of gender, romance and rage through a contemporary lens.
Austen 101
Austen remains a reliable fount of academic scholarship; recent conference papers have focused on the author’s enduring global reach, the work’s relationship to modern intersectionality, digital humanities and “Jane Austen on the Cheap.” And as one professor told our colleague Sarah Lyall of the Austen amateur scholarship hive, “Woe betide the academic who doesn’t take them seriously.”
W.W.J.D.
When facing problems — of etiquette, romance, domestic or professional turmoil — sometimes the only thing to do is ask: What would Jane do?
A famous poet once observed that it is difficult to get the news from poems. The weather is a different story. April showers, summer sunshine and — maybe especially — the chill of winter provide an endless supply of moods and metaphors. Poets like to practice a double meteorology, looking out at the water and up at the sky for evidence of interior conditions of feeling.
The inner and outer forecasts don’t always match up. This short poem by Louise Glück starts out cold and stays that way for most of its 11 lines.
And then it bursts into flame.
“Early December in Croton-on-Hudson” comes from Glück’s debut collection, “Firstborn,” which was published in 1968. She wrote the poems in it between the ages of 18 and 23, but they bear many of the hallmarks of her mature style, including an approach to personal matters — sex, love, illness, family life — that is at once uncompromising and elusive. She doesn’t flinch. She also doesn’t explain.
Here, for example, Glück assembles fragments of experience that imply — but also obscure — a larger narrative. It’s almost as if a short story, or even a novel, had been smashed like a glass Christmas ornament, leaving the reader to infer the sphere from the shards.
We know there was a couple with a flat tire, and that a year later at least one of them still has feelings for the other. It’s hard not to wonder if they’re still together, or where they were going with those Christmas presents.
To some extent, those questions can be addressed with the help of biographical clues. The version of “Early December in Croton-on-Hudson” that appeared in The Atlantic in 1967 was dedicated to Charles Hertz, a Columbia University graduate student who was Glück’s first husband. They divorced a few years later. Glück, who died in 2023, was never shy about putting her life into her work.
But the poem we are reading now is not just the record of a passion that has long since cooled. More than 50 years after “Firstborn,” on the occasion of receiving the Nobel Prize for literature, Glück celebrated the “intimate, seductive, often furtive or clandestine” relations between poets and their readers. Recalling her childhood discovery of William Blake and Emily Dickinson, she declared her lifelong ardor for “poems to which the listener or reader makes an essential contribution, as recipient of a confidence or an outcry, sometimes as co-conspirator.”
That’s the kind of poem she wrote.
“Confidence” can have two meanings, both of which apply to “Early December in Croton-on-Hudson.” Reading it, you are privy to a secret, something meant for your ears only. You are also in the presence of an assertive, self-possessed voice.
Where there is power, there’s also risk. To give voice to desire — to whisper or cry “I want you” — is to issue a challenge and admit vulnerability. It’s a declaration of conquest and a promise of surrender.
What happens next? That’s up to you.
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