In Profile: Joe Lumley
With a wealth of experience across the EFL in a decade-long career to date, Southampton’s third summer signing, Joe Lumley, arrives on the South Coast to bolster the club’s goalkeeping department.
Still at a young age in goalkeeping terms at 28-years-old, Lumley has amassed over 200 career appearances which includes over 150 games in the Championship.
Hailing from Harlow, in Essex, he joined Tottenham Hotspur at the age of 10 and spent six years there, before making the switch across London to Queen’s Park Rangers to complete his scholarship.
After impressing in the Academy being coached by Dean Thornton, Saints’ current Goalkeeping Coach, and benefitting from a goalkeeping crisis at the time, Lumley was thrust into the senior side to make his debut at 20-years-old.
His first outing came in an FA Cup defeat against Nottingham Forest, which was swiftly followed by a first Championship appearance in a 1-1 draw against Blackburn Rovers.
Joe Lumley started his professional career at QPR. (Photo: Stephen Pond)
From then, his time at the R’s was clearly destined to extend beyond the scholarship years as he spent eight seasons in West London, first gathering a varied education across the football pyramid with several loan spells.
From Bishop’s Stortford, then in the Conference South, to Bristol Rovers in League One, it was the latter where he made his first big impression as a youngster between the sticks.
He joined The Gas for the second half of the 2016/17 season and kept eight clean sheets in 19 games, earning a respectable 10th place finish in their first season back in the division following promotion.
A short spell at Blackpool followed the season after but he was recalled prematurely and started the final two games for QPR, a return that prefaced his long-awaited rise to become Rangers’ first-choice goalkeeper.
A series of loan spells helped shape Lumley's career. (Photo: Pete Norton)
In the 2018/19 season that followed, after the departure of Alex Smithies, Lumley became the go-to man in goal, making 46 appearances and keeping 16 clean sheets.
He helped QPR survive relegation by eventual comfortability with an 11-point cushion, and off the pitch became an ambassador for the club’s Trust that worked across sports participation, education, health, homelessness, and food poverty.
That off-pitch compassion was called upon again more recently in January 2023, highlighting the maturity of Lumley’s personality that has perhaps been moulded from his extensive playing experience.
Following his best friend and former teammate Nick Anderton’s diagnosis with bone cancer, Lumley joined players from his former club, Bristol Rovers, in showing solidarity by shaving his head to raise awareness for the cause that hit close to home.
Back on the field, his next career chapter after QPR came in 2021, when Lumley turned down a contract offer with sights set on guaranteed first-team football; a bold decision to leave the club that set him on the professional path, he made the journey up to Middlesbrough.
The decision to seek “a new chapter and new challenge” proved fruitful as Lumley made 42 appearances for Boro in an exciting campaign for the North East outfit.
Despite 13 league clean sheets and a seventh-place finish that narrowly missed out on the playoffs, it was in the Emirates FA Cup that Middlesbrough - and Lumley - grabbed the headlines.
Boro knocked out Manchester United at Old Trafford in the fourth round, with Lumley making key saves to deny Cristiano Ronaldo and Marcus Rashford in a 1-1 draw that ended in a penalty shootout victory.
Another Premier League scalp followed as Lumley kept a clean sheet against the side that released him as a teenager, in a 1-0 win at the Riverside against Tottenham.
The heroics were halted by then-European Champions Chelsea in the quarter-finals, but Lumley had made his mark in a season to remember for Middlesbrough.
Lumley celebrates a heroic FA Cup scalp with Middlesbrough. (Photo: Clive Brunskill)
Last season, Lumley once again proved his determination to play regularly without shying away from a challenge and made a loan move to fellow-Championship side Reading.
In the midst of a tumultuous period off the pitch, he couldn’t prevent the Royals’ relegation but gained another campaign of first-choice Championship football under his belt.
After leaving parent club Middlesbrough at the end of last season, Lumley will provide a vital addition to the goalkeeping union at Saints, having already experienced the highs and lows of the division so far in his career.
