How Sam Johnstone rose from EFL loans to England international – and now Wolves No 1

It took a few years, a chance occurrence and a little convincing to get Sam Johnstone to give goalkeeping a try.

His father, Glenn Johnstone, donned gloves professionally for Preston North End, and Sam and younger brother Max both now make their living keeping goal. But it wasn’t always obvious they would follow in their father’s footsteps.

“I think I told them not to go anywhere near the gloves,” Glenn told The Athletic in 2020. “They were both centre-halves. Sam played for a club called Euxton Villa and one day the goalkeeper decided he didn’t want to go in goal and people said, ‘Your dad was a goalie — you go in goal, Sam’.

“He hated it to begin with, but he had a natural ability for it and he started enjoying it. Everybody wants to play football but nobody wants to go in goal as a kid, do they? But Sam did have a knack and he asked me if I’d do some training with him and I said, ‘Only if you take it seriously’.

“But I could see straight away he had something about him, and he hadn’t been in goal for long when Manchester United picked him up.”

Sam’s route from promising youngster at Old Trafford to Premier League regular has not been entirely smooth. It included multiple loan spells in the English Football League, a near-miss in the Championship play-offs with Aston Villa, promotion and relegation with West Bromwich Albion, and the frustrating loss of his No 1 spot at Crystal Palace, before signing for Wolverhampton Wanderers last month.

Yet his journey has been a good deal smoother than the one his father went on to get from promising beginnings as a teenage goalkeeper to restoring car bodywork in their native Preston.

“I played part-time from 15 to about 23 for Lancaster City and Accrington Stanley,” Glenn said in that same interview. “I originally went to Preston when I was about 19. Alan Kelly was the goalkeeper and he was about to go to Tottenham and I was meant to sign to replace him.

“But he broke his leg in a freak accident and couldn’t (make the) move, so I couldn’t sign. A few years later, when John Beck was manager, I went back and signed for them. It went really well — until I got injured. I made my debut against Fulham the week after signing and played 10 or 12 games and got injured and didn’t really get back properly.”

Glenn’s career took him briefly to Bury and then back to part-time football with Morecambe and Gretna in Scotland before leaving one ‘family business’ and returning full-time to the other.

“We had a family business, so I already had a trade behind me,” he said. “I was a panel beater. So, as soon as I finished at Preston, I was back working again.”

Glenn’s oldest son, Ryan, played rugby league at school before carving a career in IT, while Max, the youngest brother, spent time in United’s academy and played for clubs including Fleetwood, Fylde, St Johnstone and Macclesfield and now plays for Precision FC in Dubai.

Meanwhile, Sam’s goalkeeping journey has led him to Wolves — with his first start coming against Nottingham Forest — having also earned four England caps. He has an ambition to add to that tally.

With the journey having started almost by accident, it entered overdrive when a Manchester United scout recommended him to the club based on watching him in a Euxton Villa warm-up. He then had loan spells away from United in League One and the Championship with Scunthorpe United, Walsall, Yeovil Town, Doncaster Rovers and Preston, his hometown club.

“One of his first games for us was at Stevenage,” Scunthorpe United’s former assistant manager Chris Brass told The Athletic in 2021. “I remember he pulled off a save. It was a tip over the crossbar — a world-class save — and the moment always sticks with me.

“I turned to Alan Knill, our manager at the time, and said, ‘Crikey, mate, I’ve got a strange feeling this lad will go on and play for England’.”

Mick Kearns, the former Republic of Ireland international goalkeeper, coached Johnstone at Walsall and told The Athletic previously: “We had an end-of-season dinner before he went back to Manchester United.

“And the last thing I ever said to him was, ‘I am confident you are going to be a Premier League goalkeeper’. I was 100 per cent confident.”

It was on loan at Villa in 2017-18 that Johnstone got his first realistic shot at proving Kearns right, with Steve Bruce’s side finishing fourth in the Championship before losing to Fulham in the play-off final at Wembley.

A year later came another fourth-placed finish with West Brom, having finally left United permanently and moved to The Hawthorns for £6.5million ($8.5m). This time it was Villa, his old club, who ended his dream in semi-final defeat.

Success followed another 12 months later, however, as Slaven Bilic’s West Brom clinched runners-up spot in a Covid-hit season. It finally made Johnstone a top-flight goalkeeper.

That Premier League experience with West Brom ended in relegation in a season played almost entirely behind closed doors, but Johnstone’s shot-stopping, especially in the early weeks of the campaign, established him as one of the most agile keepers in the league and caught the eye of England boss Gareth Southgate. It vindicated Johnstone’s decision to leave Old Trafford for regular game time.

At United, Johnstone had been mentored by Edwin van der Sar and formed a close friendship with David de Gea, but leaving allowed him to branch out on his own.

“It’s what you dream about, it’s what you’ve waited for, it’s what you put all the hard work in for, to come and play in this league,” he told WBA TV at the time.

“United was great, you train with some of the best players in the world and you are around them every day. I was lucky to grow up at Manchester United, but it was time to go. You want to play every week.”

Johnstone’s first Premier League season earned him a place in England’s squad for the Covid-delayed Euro 2020 and, after a season back in the Championship with West Brom, Crystal Palace signed him on a free transfer.

Having leapfrogged Vicente Guaita in the Selhurst Park pecking order, Johnstone established himself as No 1 and appeared destined for a long career in south London. But the signing of fellow England ‘keeper Dean Henderson (plus injuries to Johnstone) enabled him, another graduate of United’s academy, to take the No 1 spot.

At 31, Johnstone was unwilling to settle for a place on the bench and took the chance to join Wolves, who had been tracking him since his early days at Palace. And now, with his fourth Midlands club, Johnstone is shrugging off his history with Wolves’ bitter rivals West Brom and eyeing a return to the England squad.

“Obviously the clubs are massive, massive rivals,” he said after his Wolves debut in the 1-1 draw at Forest. “But it’s football so I didn’t think about that. This is a great club with great players, great staff, great fans. It is probably difficult for the fans to see that but, for me, it’s a place I could come and play — and that was what was important.

“England has changed, obviously, with the new manager (Lee Carsley) but it would be good to get back in.

“When I’m playing, I tend to get in the squads. That is obviously an aim but first and foremost it’s about settling in here and putting in some good performances.”

(Top photo: Johnstone playing for England in October 2023; Henry Nicholls/AFP via Getty Images)