It’s fun to look at stats for goalkeepers, but they don’t mean very much. The best stat would be something involving goals given up that possibly could have been stopped, but that’s way too arguable. The only real way to know which keeper has the best quality is to watch every game and note which keeper allows the fewest goals on difficult shots, which keeper allows the fewest goals on save-able shots, and which keeper distributes and sets up the defense best. It’s all pretty subjective though.
I disagree on this. Goalkeeping is so subjective that you almost have to rely on stats. If you use your eyes you miss everything. My favourite example is Paul Robinson of Spurs, who has become famously ‘out of form’, but has in reality been simply ‘bad’ for years. He lets in a lot of long-range shots. Now, commentators always get excited about these screamers, but the salient point is that Robinson has not adjusted himself to these long-shots until it’s too late. We the spectators are not looking at the goalkeeper when he does his most important work, which is how Niemi can make all these tumbling saves and Keller can appear not to move, but the latter end up keeping the ball out of the net. We see Niemi tumbling because his original positioning and subsequent movement necessitate a spectacular dive!
I’m going to come back and disagree with you to a degree… stats can quantify a performance at any position in any sport to, being redundant, a certain degree. However, in this game, of all positions, goalie would have to be the hardest to quantify.
Where’s stats on percentage of crosses/corners snagged?
Stats on back line organization?
Wall formation?
Gaffes per shot on goal? (Subjective, but could work like errors in baseball)
Occasionally, if a goaltender were more decisive, there’d be less shots on goal.
Shots faced during a PK are obviously more difficult to save, and with this in mind, that could improve Mr. Warner’s notably small sampling due to the one he faced.
The stats provided have some degree of merit, but don’t provide enough to work with… it’s why baseball is the easiest sport to judge on stats, yet, even the wealth of baseball stats doesn’t always tell the whole story.
Not only that, but I think we all saw what we had in Warner… he’s a player with good physical tools and athleticism, but maybe not the most confident guy in the back. Once again, small sampling… but there’s a reason he’s never caught on as a top division starter, while Keller and Niemi, though generally their squads aren’t of the highest merit…
…but there’s a reason Keller’s started for top division squads in England, Spain, Germany and Niemi has done the same in England and Scotland while spending large amounts of time as first choice keepers for their respective nations while Warner hasn’t started for more than a handful of games above the second division and only backed up Kalvin Jack at the 2006 World Cup while only having one appearance for Trinidad and Tobago.
robbyrevs/soundersfan said, on May 13th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
Given the same field players to work with (especially the back), and given a large enough sample size, the stats we do have on goalkeepers do capture all the issues you listed above. For example, good ‘wall formation’ would show up as reduced shots and goals when the wall blocked shots.
Where I think the goalkeeping stats let us down is in breaking down the goalkeepers’ more specific strengths and weaknesses.
Yeah, it was just a “here, look at this” post. I don’t claim any great wisdom, although it does show that Keller, for whatever reason, kept the ball out of the net more than did his rivals.
And Steve, I think all of those things ultimately overcomplicate: it all comes down to how many shots does he face and how many does he keep out? We’re getting dangerously close to ‘range factor’ in baseball, which was revolutionary in 1977 but has been left behind somewhat now. But there’s not much else to go on. Certainly a good defence helps: if your defenders are in the forward’s face the shots you have to deal with will be less difficult, but that’s another level that I can’t really get to here.
Warner’s interesting, you’d think that somehow someone could find a way to tap the obvious talent. He was absolutely magnificent at Arsenal, but his mistake against Boro arguably started the rot from which we only just recovered.
hey guys-
remember our first game of the season against Arsenal? Warner was so good that non-fulham fans in the pub who were waiting for their games to start began cheering for him or asking “who the hell is that guy?” The Arsenal fans were cursing him. He didn’t maintain his form, but on that day he looked like our first team keeper.
Mike
Yes, I do remember that. Then he came back for a howler the following game…I think. It’s all turned into a big blur.
But I do want to agree with Rich. In any keeper licensing course you take, they will tell you that positioning is 75% of keeping. The best keepers don’t have to fling themselves all over because they are already where they need to be. But there is another stat that is secondary and yet very important and that is distribution percentage.
Against Bolton he ran into Zat Knight and dropped the ball, then against Boro he let a Mido shot go through him, despite the shot being very soft. It must be a concentration thing.
Frankly, I feel like keeper performance is totally subjective, rather than objective. A shot on target could mean a soft little shot right into the keeper’s arms, meaning that the quality of a save, and thus the overall quality of the keeper is not quantified in any of these numbers. That being said, I do think the Niemi looked a bit better than Keller overall. I found myself getting frustrated at Keller everytime he booted the ball out of bounds, when he should have targeted a forward. However, he did make saves, and relatively difficult ones against Portsmouth. The rocket shot from Krankjar could easily have gone in if Keller wasn’t in the correct positions.
I think this is exactly the point: Niemi might *look* better than Keller, but that’s because he moves (I assume) later and has to make the spectacular saves. Over 15 or so games I’m fairly sure the quality of the shots they see evens out, and you’re left with Keller conceding a good deal fewer goals than Niemi.
I expect Rich would be the first to agree that the sample size proberly isn’t big enough to show a genuine trend. The way I read them Keller and Niemi are fairly close though based on my own eyes I would give Keller the edge. I think if Warner had played in more games he would have conceded more and his stats would have been worse. I suspect he has as much, if not more, talent but his focus and consistency let him down. I think we could be looking for a couple of new ‘keepers come summer.
Did a better organized defense help Keller look better?
Did a better organized Keller help the defense get more organized?
Six o’ one; half-dozen of the other.
From February in the 2006-2007 season, when our forwards stopped scoring, through the end I firmly believed that it was Bocanegra and Niemi that kept us up. I was sanguine about having Keller on hand. I thought he’d be much better than Warner, but that he would be best used on the bench. The problem was that the guy who we named Superhero over on FUSA, started looking startled and hesitant. Niemi began to scare me to death. I was glad when Keller came in and then disheartened when he got injured.
Keller’s weakness is his kicking … no doubt about it. It was never his strong suit and he’s lost a good bit of distance since he kept for Tottenham. He does have solid positioning, and he is very cool under pressure. Niemi has lost his edge, I’m afraid.
I’m still banking on Batista’s maturation. It would be nice to develop a young goalkeeper, and keep him until we can sell him for a packet. I’ve only seen him against England U-23, but he looked sound and athletic.
As for Robinson’s “always-crap-not-lately-crap” evaluation, BRILLIANT! I must tell you that I can’t remember a time when so many substandard #1s have turned out in an England shirt. Put a tenner on Joe Hart to be your keeper for Euro-12.
Brian, Opta (stats service that most news outlets subscribe to) actually has some very detailed stats on keeper distribution. Here’s what they saw for Keller on Sunday:
It’s fun to look at stats for goalkeepers, but they don’t mean very much. The best stat would be something involving goals given up that possibly could have been stopped, but that’s way too arguable. The only real way to know which keeper has the best quality is to watch every game and note which keeper allows the fewest goals on difficult shots, which keeper allows the fewest goals on save-able shots, and which keeper distributes and sets up the defense best. It’s all pretty subjective though.
I disagree on this. Goalkeeping is so subjective that you almost have to rely on stats. If you use your eyes you miss everything. My favourite example is Paul Robinson of Spurs, who has become famously ‘out of form’, but has in reality been simply ‘bad’ for years. He lets in a lot of long-range shots. Now, commentators always get excited about these screamers, but the salient point is that Robinson has not adjusted himself to these long-shots until it’s too late. We the spectators are not looking at the goalkeeper when he does his most important work, which is how Niemi can make all these tumbling saves and Keller can appear not to move, but the latter end up keeping the ball out of the net. We see Niemi tumbling because his original positioning and subsequent movement necessitate a spectacular dive!
I’m going to come back and disagree with you to a degree… stats can quantify a performance at any position in any sport to, being redundant, a certain degree. However, in this game, of all positions, goalie would have to be the hardest to quantify.
Where’s stats on percentage of crosses/corners snagged?
Stats on back line organization?
Wall formation?
Gaffes per shot on goal? (Subjective, but could work like errors in baseball)
Occasionally, if a goaltender were more decisive, there’d be less shots on goal.
Shots faced during a PK are obviously more difficult to save, and with this in mind, that could improve Mr. Warner’s notably small sampling due to the one he faced.
The stats provided have some degree of merit, but don’t provide enough to work with… it’s why baseball is the easiest sport to judge on stats, yet, even the wealth of baseball stats doesn’t always tell the whole story.
Not only that, but I think we all saw what we had in Warner… he’s a player with good physical tools and athleticism, but maybe not the most confident guy in the back. Once again, small sampling… but there’s a reason he’s never caught on as a top division starter, while Keller and Niemi, though generally their squads aren’t of the highest merit…
…but there’s a reason Keller’s started for top division squads in England, Spain, Germany and Niemi has done the same in England and Scotland while spending large amounts of time as first choice keepers for their respective nations while Warner hasn’t started for more than a handful of games above the second division and only backed up Kalvin Jack at the 2006 World Cup while only having one appearance for Trinidad and Tobago.
Given the same field players to work with (especially the back), and given a large enough sample size, the stats we do have on goalkeepers do capture all the issues you listed above. For example, good ‘wall formation’ would show up as reduced shots and goals when the wall blocked shots.
Where I think the goalkeeping stats let us down is in breaking down the goalkeepers’ more specific strengths and weaknesses.
Yeah, it was just a “here, look at this” post. I don’t claim any great wisdom, although it does show that Keller, for whatever reason, kept the ball out of the net more than did his rivals.
And Steve, I think all of those things ultimately overcomplicate: it all comes down to how many shots does he face and how many does he keep out? We’re getting dangerously close to ‘range factor’ in baseball, which was revolutionary in 1977 but has been left behind somewhat now. But there’s not much else to go on. Certainly a good defence helps: if your defenders are in the forward’s face the shots you have to deal with will be less difficult, but that’s another level that I can’t really get to here.
Warner’s interesting, you’d think that somehow someone could find a way to tap the obvious talent. He was absolutely magnificent at Arsenal, but his mistake against Boro arguably started the rot from which we only just recovered.
hey guys-
remember our first game of the season against Arsenal? Warner was so good that non-fulham fans in the pub who were waiting for their games to start began cheering for him or asking “who the hell is that guy?” The Arsenal fans were cursing him. He didn’t maintain his form, but on that day he looked like our first team keeper.
Mike
Yes, I do remember that. Then he came back for a howler the following game…I think. It’s all turned into a big blur.
But I do want to agree with Rich. In any keeper licensing course you take, they will tell you that positioning is 75% of keeping. The best keepers don’t have to fling themselves all over because they are already where they need to be. But there is another stat that is secondary and yet very important and that is distribution percentage.
Against Bolton he ran into Zat Knight and dropped the ball, then against Boro he let a Mido shot go through him, despite the shot being very soft. It must be a concentration thing.
Frankly, I feel like keeper performance is totally subjective, rather than objective. A shot on target could mean a soft little shot right into the keeper’s arms, meaning that the quality of a save, and thus the overall quality of the keeper is not quantified in any of these numbers. That being said, I do think the Niemi looked a bit better than Keller overall. I found myself getting frustrated at Keller everytime he booted the ball out of bounds, when he should have targeted a forward. However, he did make saves, and relatively difficult ones against Portsmouth. The rocket shot from Krankjar could easily have gone in if Keller wasn’t in the correct positions.
But who cares anyway because we’re staying UP.
I think this is exactly the point: Niemi might *look* better than Keller, but that’s because he moves (I assume) later and has to make the spectacular saves. Over 15 or so games I’m fairly sure the quality of the shots they see evens out, and you’re left with Keller conceding a good deal fewer goals than Niemi.
I expect Rich would be the first to agree that the sample size proberly isn’t big enough to show a genuine trend. The way I read them Keller and Niemi are fairly close though based on my own eyes I would give Keller the edge. I think if Warner had played in more games he would have conceded more and his stats would have been worse. I suspect he has as much, if not more, talent but his focus and consistency let him down. I think we could be looking for a couple of new ‘keepers come summer.
Thanks, Chopper, that’s probably about a good a summation as we could hope for.
Interesting that Keller ended up number one. This is what we thought back when he came to Fulham.
Did a better organized defense help Keller look better?
Did a better organized Keller help the defense get more organized?
Six o’ one; half-dozen of the other.
From February in the 2006-2007 season, when our forwards stopped scoring, through the end I firmly believed that it was Bocanegra and Niemi that kept us up. I was sanguine about having Keller on hand. I thought he’d be much better than Warner, but that he would be best used on the bench. The problem was that the guy who we named Superhero over on FUSA, started looking startled and hesitant. Niemi began to scare me to death. I was glad when Keller came in and then disheartened when he got injured.
Keller’s weakness is his kicking … no doubt about it. It was never his strong suit and he’s lost a good bit of distance since he kept for Tottenham. He does have solid positioning, and he is very cool under pressure. Niemi has lost his edge, I’m afraid.
I’m still banking on Batista’s maturation. It would be nice to develop a young goalkeeper, and keep him until we can sell him for a packet. I’ve only seen him against England U-23, but he looked sound and athletic.
As for Robinson’s “always-crap-not-lately-crap” evaluation, BRILLIANT! I must tell you that I can’t remember a time when so many substandard #1s have turned out in an England shirt. Put a tenner on Joe Hart to be your keeper for Euro-12.
HatterDon, that’s a pretty dead-on assessment of Keller.
Brian, Opta (stats service that most news outlets subscribe to) actually has some very detailed stats on keeper distribution. Here’s what they saw for Keller on Sunday:
goal_kicks 10
accurate_goal_kicks 4
total_long_balls 17
accurate_long_balls 6
passes_right 2
passes_left 1
long_pass_own_to_opp 27
long_pass_own_to_opp_success 9
total_fwd_zone_pass 16
accurate_fwd_zone_pass 5
total_back_zone_pass 6
accurate_back_zone_pass 4
total_pass 22
accurate_pass 9
Indeed, distribution was not so good, but hey, nobody’s perfect. I’ll take the clean sheets, thank you!