Paul Smith (footballer born 1979)

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For other persons of the same name, see Paul Smith.

Personal information
Paul Smith

Full name	Paul Daniel Smith
Date of birth	December 17, 1979 (1979-12-17) (age 28)
Place of birth	Epsom, England
Height	6 ft 4 in (1.93 m)
Playing position	Goalkeeper
Club information
Current club	Nottingham Forest
Number	1
Youth clubs
1997-1998	Walton & Hersham
Senior clubs¹
Years	Club	App (Gls)*
1998-1999 1999-2000 2000-2004 2004-2006 2006-	Charlton Athletic Carshalton Athletic Brentford Southampton Nottingham Forest	00 (0) 87 (0) 16 (0) 91 (0)
National team
	England	0(0)
¹ Senior club appearances and goals counted for the domestic league only and correct as of 06:18, 5 December 2007 (UTC). * Appearances (Goals)

Paul Daniel Smith (born December 17, 1979 in Epsom, England) is an English footballer who plays as a goalkeeper for Nottingham Forest

1 Early Playing career
2 Nottingham Forest
3 Honours
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Early Playing career

Smith started his career at Charlton Athletic but was released in the summer of 1999 after one year as a professional. After a short period with Walton & Hersham, Paul moved to Carshalton Athletic in late 1999 but moved to Brentford in August 2000 after they spotted Smith guesting for Crawley Town in a pre-season friendly against The Bees. At Brentford he made 104 appearances as a goalkeeper. In January 2004, to address financial problems at Brentford, Smith was sold to Southampton for a reported £500,000. At Southampton he was initially deputy to Antti Niemi but following Niemi's departure, Smith took over as their number one. However, he found himself further down the pecking order with the arrival of Bartosz Białkowski and Kevin Miller.

It is thought^{[citation needed]}that he was close to an England call up on their 2005 tour of the U.S.A when they faced Colombia and U.S.A., but instead Sven-Göran Eriksson chose the usual trio of Robinson, James and Green.

According to Southampton's Official Website, Smith holds A-levels in PE, Home Economics, Sociology, Advanced Mathematics,Biology and Geography.

Smith once won a contest involving the throwing of the football from behind the by-line to land exactly on the corner of the six yard box. His accuracy was outstanding. Pavel Srníček came second closely followed by ex-Forest keeper Andy Marriott.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Nottingham Forest

In search of first team football, Smith signed League One side Nottingham Forest for around £500,000 in July 2006. He established himself ahead of Rune Pedersen as Forest's first choice goalkeeper for the club's 2006-07 promotion campaign. Smith was in sparkling form that season, keeping Forest in many games and celebrated his 50th Forest league appearance with a tremendous save, doing a Gordon Banks as the ball deflected the other way.

In the 2007-08 campaign, Smith helped Forest gain automatic promotion finishing second in the league, as Forest were promoted from League One to the Championship. Smith had a terrific season and helped enormously in goal, making match winning saves to help the Reds get promoted. He kept 24 clean sheets in 46 games, the record for the league in that season. This achievement was recognised when he received the Puma Golden Glove award.

He also made footballing history in the Carling Cup after he scored in 23 seconds against Leicester City in the second round of the competition on 18 September 2007. Smith became the quickest goalkeeper ever to score in world football, and the quickest ever goalscorer in the Carling Cup and for Nottingham Forest.^{[citation needed]} The unusual goal came about because the tie had been previously abandoned at half-time due to the collapse of Leicester City's Clive Clarke, while Nottingham Forest were 1-0 up. In a show of sportsmanship, Leicester allowed Forest to take the kick-off and run up to score the goal, to restore the score-line to what it was at the abandonment of the previous match. It was decided that Smith should be the player to score, in order to avoid suspicions surrounding betting patterns ^[1]. Leicester City did come back into the game to beat Forest 3-2. ^[2] ^[3]