Simon Mignolet certainly had some ups and downs during his Liverpool career.It's sometimes easy to remember the Belgian goalkeeper merely for his wonkier moments and there's no denying that he wasn't reliable enough to take the club to the very highest level.That being said, despite Mignolet's penchant for erratic decisions and cringe-worthy errors at times, we'd be remiss not to credit him as one of the Premier League's most underrated shot-stoppers.
Mignolet's Liverpool career
After all, this is the man who started his Liverpool career with an epic double save from a penalty and he nearly finished his debut season at Anfield as the goalkeeper of the English champions.
Sadly, Mignolet never quite produced the goods often enough to prevent Loris Karius and eventually Alisson Becker from usurping him, but you certainly couldn't fault him for entertainment value.
And even in the wobblier moments that we've referred to, you could probably rely on Mignolet to go about them in unique ways and that was definitely the case during the 2015/16 season.
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Liverpool vs Bordeaux
Cast your minds back to the first few months of Jurgen Klopp's time on Merseyside and Bordeaux are coming to town in the fifth round of the Europa League group stages.
If you simply look at the results, you'll see that Liverpool took one step closer to qualifying for the knockout rounds with a 2-1 win courtesy of goals from James Milner and Christian Benteke.
However, the Reds had to fight back from 1-0 down after Henri Saivet scored under truly bizarre circumstances with Mignolet incurring one of the least-known rules in the beautiful game.
Mignolet breaks obscure football rule
According to the BBC, Mignolet was punished for holding on to the ball in his hands for more than 20 seconds - the maximum time allowed is six - to give away a needless indirect free-kick.
And just to compound Mignolet's misery, Bordeaux made him pay for neglecting such a forgotten footballing law by working the set-piece well and allowing Saivet to ripple the top of the red netting.
Given how rare indirect free-kicks are at the best of times, never mind when they're awarded for such a unique occurrence, it really does make for fascinating viewing, so be sure to check it out:
It just had to be poor old Mignolet, didn't it?
At least Klopp saw the funny side of things, though; joking during a long pause between questions in the post-match press conference: "You take almost as long as Simon Mignolet taking a kick."
What was he thinking?
Now, regular players of the FIFA video games series might be those most familiar with the rule that Mignolet fell foul of because a timer user to appear whenever you held on to the ball for too long.
And although you'd imagine that the rule would pop up incredibly often given how fleeting six seconds actually is, referees are clearly pretty lenient on the exact timing within reason.
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Besides, we've all seen a goalkeeper hang on to the ball for far more than six seconds when they're protecting a lead in the dying minutes. It just happens that Mignolet took things to a whole new level.
We love you, Simon, we do, but what were you thinking keeping the ball in your arms for almost half a minute when the game was goalless in the first-half?!
