ROBERT MIMMS

What’s the most thankless job in the world of football? Ask any person of any age and the answer you are invariably going to get is ‘goalkeeping’. SC East Bengal has managed to assemble a group of extremely talented goalkeepers—both experienced and relatively young. Our goalkeeping coach, Robert Andrew Mimms, nicknamed ‘Bobby’, has been a valuable addition to our family, given his illustrious CV as both player and coach, and is an ideal person to guide our “last line of defence”. His playing career spanned two decades and he played for as many as thirteen clubs during that period. Some of the well-known British clubs that he played for include Everton, Sunderland, Manchester City, Tottenham Hotspur, Aberdeen and Crystal Palace, but the club where he was at his resplendent best is Blackburn Rovers, for whom he played in two spells—in 1987 and from 1990 to 1996. The highest point of his playing career has to be his English Premier League-winning run with Blackburn in 1994-95. Mimms’ managerial career has been no less impressive. Besides working as goalkeeper coach for some of the top-flight English clubs such as Wolverhampton Wanderers, Blackpool, Bolton Wanderers, West Ham and Hull City, and the national teams of Bahrain and Bangladesh, he has hitherto worked in the same capacity for the Hero Indian Super League clubs Jamshedpur FC and the erstwhile ATK FC.