Everton reserve Tom King and Sheffield United’s Adam Davies have usually been third choice behind Darlow and Ward but neither is playing for their club and, at 31 and 34 years old respectively, they are approaching the latter stages of their careers.

That means Bellamy has had to widen his search for successors. As he wryly notes himself, it is a far cry from Tuchel’s situation with England, pondering whether to stick with Pickford or give another opportunity to Leeds United’s James Trafford, who at 24 years old has already cost clubs nearly £100m in transfer fees.

Burnley paid a portion of that sum when Bellamy was working at Turf Moor as Vincent Kompany’s assistant boss.

“You’ve got to earn your stripes. I’ve seen it with Traffs, who had really good loans with Bolton before he came to us,” he says.

“We paid a lot of money for him but if we didn’t do it then we were going to miss him.”

Bellamy cannot delve into the transfer market to bolster Wales’ goalkeeping ranks, which he describes as “an area where we’re lacking at the moment”.

What he can do is look far and wide – and sometimes in unexpected places – in his search for a future number one.

As Raya, Pickford, Trafford and others have shown, there is no shortage of examples to follow as Duncan plots his route to the top.



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