ROUVEN Sattelmaier admits his 45 minutes against Scunthorpe summed up the life of a goalkeeper.

The German was thrust into the spotlight unexpectedly when number one Colin Doyle had to come off with a knee injury at half-time.

After making a solid save from a Paddy Madden shot, he let a free-kick by Hakeeb Adelakun through his grasp in what turned out to be the winner.

Not long afterwards he made a superb double save, including a spectacular full-length dive to keep out a Madden header that looked certain to go in.

It kept City in the game but no one was really talking about that afterwards. An outfield player can make an error and get away with it – but not a keeper.

Sattelmaier said: “That’s the trouble for goalkeepers – you can play for 90 minutes brilliantly and keep the team in a game and then do a massive mistake at the end and you are the silly person.

“That’s what you have to handle – that’s the life of a goalkeeper.”

The City wall did not help the German as the ball found its way through but Sattelmaier is not absolving himself of blame.

He said: “I think in the end I could have done better definitely.

“It went through the wall and it was deflected off a hip. There was a deflection and I touched it with my hand on the line so I could have done better and kept the ball out.”

Sattelmaier found himself in the unusual position of being brought on at short notice for the injured Doyle, who he is set to replace at Shrewsbury tomorrow.

He said: “You don’t expect to come on. Since I’ve been here, Doyley has never been injured.

“Within a second you have to switch on. On the pitch he looked all right but Banksy (goalkeeping coach Steve Banks) then said at half-time ‘go on the pitch and do a bit of a warm-up’ and said, ‘Doyley’s getting worse with his knee.’

“I warmed up and then five minutes later the kitman came out and said we need to make a sub, so you just have to try to switch on as quick as possible.”

With both keepers having enjoyed a clean bill of health last season, this one is proving more problematic.

Sattelmaier pulled his hamstring in the Checkatrade Trophy at Chesterfield – forcing City to bring in an extra keeper as cover, with fellow German Lukas Raeder now set to compete for a starting spot for the rest of this year.

Sattelmaier said: “Neither of us had injuries last season, only small little things, nothing serious.

“Then I got a bad injury at the end of August and now this has happened to Doyley. It is really crazy in football sometimes – nothing for a long time and then all together.

“I’m looking forward to playing if picked but I’m sorry for Doyley.”

Now in his second season at Valley Parade, he has no qualms about linking up with his back four despite having only played a bit part.

He said: “We build a good relationship in training. I know the lads, Nat, Macca and Killa, from last year and I’ve trained a lot with Luke (Hendrie) when he wasn’t playing, so I think it should be all right.

“I know the lads and what they like to do and what they don’t. I try to help them and communicate with them on the pitch and that’s all you can do.”

Boss Stuart McCall does not intend to make changes just because City face their third game in eight days.

He said: “At the moment we have a lot of players in good form.

“We won’t rest players, certainly for this game, for the sake of freshening things up.

“If we make any changes it will be because we will look at it and think there may be areas when we can be stronger than them tactically.”