Keeper of art covets clean sheets and colourful canvases

Galleries and goalmouths are the consuming passions of Charlton's cultured custodian

Thomas Myhre recalls with a chuckle a trip to Paris he made with his wife, Benedicta. "I ended up spending 13 hours in the Louvre one day and then shooting off somewhere else and then the next day saying we have to go to Sacré Coeur and the Picasso Museum and she's saying, 'No, no, I've got blisters'," he says.

Art is his passion - an interest he developed soon after his football career began to flourish in his teens - and his own personal collection is extensive. Mainly by Norwegian artists, the work, from oil paintings to sculpture and more abstract canvases, takes up much of the wall space in his home, his parents' house and is also in storage in the North-east. Myhre struggles to put a figure on the number of pieces he owns, saying it is somewhere around 100, and admits he might have to sell some just to make it more manageable.

He has played for a few football clubs too. Charlton Athletic are now the 11th port of call in a career which stretches back 13 years. But Myhre has a simple answer for being so peripatetic. "I always wanted to play," he says. "I always want to feel that I'm contributing, and if I'm on the sidelines for a long time I don't feel that."

Of his clubs, it should be remembered that five have been on loan, with Myhre spending three months at the end of 2003, for example, driving back and forth from Sunderland to Crystal Palace. "I could have taken the easy option," he says of the prospect of simply seeing out his contract, "but the benefit of playing week in, week out is so important."

That desire, which included a fierce loyalty to protecting his place in the Norwegian national team, helped Myhre force his way back into the reckoning at Sunderland. He played 31 times in their promotion season but left last summer for Norway, turning out three times for his local team, Fredrikstad, before Charlton came calling. They were a club he found hard to resist, even if it meant once more uprooting his wife, who was by now pregnant with their second child.

"It was a strange situation, weird," Myhre admits. Contract talks at Charlton were protracted. He started behind Stephan Andersen with first choice Dean Kiely injured, but accepted the decision of the manager, Alan Curbishley. "I signed as a kind of emergency," he says. "I understood he couldn't play me ahead of the other two if I wasn't going to be there for long. But I didn't want to stay unless I had a chance of playing."

Charlton began brilliantly, which made it easier for Myhre to accept his own situation. "Even when you are not in the team and they are doing well you are still on a bit of a high and you can understand why the manager doesn't make a change," he says. But things did change for Charlton - and for the worse. A slump was just as dramatic as their impressive early form.

The week before Christmas, Myhre signed until the end of next season. On Boxing Day, at home to Arsenal, he was one of six drastic changes made by Curbishley to arrest the slide. They lost, but fortunes soon improved.

"I had to be patient, wait for my chance and grab it with both hands," says Myhre. He did just that. After just one clean sheet in 12 games, Charlton have now recorded seven in the past 15 and are in the quarter-finals of the FA Cup. His season, like his club's, has been "a rollercoaster".

Myhre's approach has helped settle those in front of him. "I'm very aware of being part of the team, even though as a goalkeeper you are probably the most individual player on the pitch," Myhre says. "I'm not there to grab headlines or make showy saves when you can stand up. People think as a goalkeeper you have to dive around, but if you can position yourself then that's an important part."

Myhre, who says goalkeeping is all about "small decisions, but we live on those decisions", has certainly been in the right place at Charlton, who today face West Ham. His assured performances have filled the void left by Kiely's decline and departure to Ports-mouth. It is not the first time that Myhre has had to replace "a legend". His first English club were Everton, where he was chosen as the successor to Neville Southall. "I had watched English football and he was the world's best goalkeeper, an absolute legend, 750 games, and it's not easy to come and replace someone like that," says Myhre. "But when I got the chance he said, 'This is the new guy, he'll be playing now', and I learnt from him every day. It was the same here with Dean."

A broken ankle helped bring to a close his career at Everton and injuries have blighted Myhre's career, making him hungrier for success. "I've had my share [of injuries]," he says ruefully. "I came here when I was 24. My body was fresher then but my head is mature now. I've a lot more experience and I'm a lot wiser. It has helped me be a lot more stable as a goalkeeper."

Fatherhood - Angelica was born in February, while Isabel is two - has also been crucial. "When I was younger, football was everything in my life, and if I was not playing or I was struggling it hit me hard. Now I'm older and have a family and I just think positive. I can't come to the training ground and sulk. It wouldn't benefit my family."

It helps that he works with Curbishley and Myhre, 32, marvels in the "enthusiasm and moti-vation" his manager shows even though he has been at Charlton so long. He is not surprised that Curbishley has been interviewed for the England job. "I would have been surprised if Alan wasn't approached as one of the candidates," he says. "He's as good as anyone. He's very modern, he's out there all the time, taking sessions, technically and tactically. He's what a modern manager is. He's very passionate."

Indeed, Myhre says he would be happy to end his career at Charlton, the club whose progress he describes as a "fairytale". Then he will return to Norway and may go into coaching himself - or the art business. It's an open canvas.