David Raya has been a standout player for the newly promoted Brentford this season, which some great performances before his unfortunate knee injury. Raya is a smaller goalkeeper, standing at only 6ft Tall but he plays a lot bigger. His senior career began at Blackburn Rovers where he made 98 appearances for the club, during this time he was loaned to stockport county where he made 16 appearances. In 2019, he joined Brentford, a club he has been ever present for since joining. Gaining promotion to the Premier League at the second time of asking.
A member of the One Glove brand, along with some other premier league stoppers such as Alex McCarthy and Fraser Forster (both of Southampton). He wears a modified version of the GEO 3.0 Vision gloves. The lightweight white-out glove that the brand introduced for this season.
The gloves worn by Raya have the same construction as the retail model, with the same backhand materials used which maintains the lightweight and tight fitting feel that the new material backhand provides compared to a latex backhand, this has been a part of Raya's gloves for his years with ONE Glove as his gloves had the same backhand as the relative retail model, such as his custom SLYR Pure he wore during Brentford's championship days.
Onto the modifications, the main modification is the cut of the gloves. The retail model is a negative hybrid, one similar to our Hawk GK 1NS and MOTION gloves, however Raya opts for a different cut. An unreleased cut to the public which features a negative cut which contains index and pinky fingers but flat cut middle and ring fingers. This is an interesting cut which is a tight fitting cut but a larger surface area than having negative cut throughout. Not many goalkeepers have this cut but it is an interesting method to have a tight fitting glove that also have great surface area for handling. Giving the second skin feel as well as good surface area for catching or parrying.
However, similar to the retail model, the glove features the extended palm, a feature on many of the brands gloves, this is due to many of their gloves having a removable strap giving the goalkeeper the option to wear their glove strapless like the Adidas Predator Pro gloves or the Nike Mercurial Touch gloves. However unlike some goalkeepers, Raya's SMU features a fixed latex strap. Which, compared to the retail model, is totally different as in the retail model there is a elasticated strap with dual velcro to help to hold the strap in place.
To finish off this special SMU glove, Raya has his own personalisation on the unique latex strap, this personalisation features his name and the Spanish flag, paying homage to his nation. As seen in the photo to the right, the large Spanish flag is printed on the underside of the wrist with the name being on the opposite side.
What do you think of the strapless glove trend?
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