The author of the “ONES to Watch” section in the Nottingham Forest match program spared Andre Onana without blushing.
“Onana is capable of both the sublime and the ridiculous between messages and it can sometimes have erratic trends,” they wrote about Manchester United goalkeeper before Forest’s victory in the middle of the week.
An unnecessary touch, perhaps, but many United Fans would accept, basically, that they could have had one point.
The two years from Onana to United were strewn with errors, as when he charged his goal to give Ipswich an early goal in February and to offer Brighton a third defeat against the Seagulls when he overthrew a cross on the way of Georginio Rutter.
His series of errors contributed to United to get rid of the Champions League in the group phase.
However, the International of Cameroon is in no way the only goalkeeper of the Premier League to be examined – just look at the standing man with the goal of the opposition Sunday afternoon.
Andre Onana made a number of high -level errors during her first two seasons in Man United
He spilled the ball on the way to Georginio Rutter from Brighton for a simple goal in January
The usually reliable Ederson has also suffered a difficult season between posts at Man City
Three high -flying guards have made more mistakes leading to Onga and Ederson goals
Ederson broke the mold of what was expected of a goalkeeper from the Premier League after Pep Guardiola led him to Manchester City and the era of the Balayeur goalkeeper began.
However, he made two huge mistakes of defeat against Real Madrid in the Champions League, Callum Hudson-Odoi beat him at his close post in the defeat of the city against Nottingham Forest.
Two of the most expensive goalkeepers in two of the biggest clubs in the world to make great mistakes. Do the goalkeepers they joined?
Upward errors
What is clear is that goalkeepers make more expensive mistakes. Before this weekend, the Opta statisticians recorded that the guards had made 81 errors so far this season which has led their opponents to have a blow – already 20 more than the average for the four full campaigns. Thirty-seven of them led to a goal, one more than all last season.
The goalkeepers today are unrecognizable for goalkeepers of the past. Their work is no longer just to prevent the ball from going into the net. These are now game leaders, often a key element of the construction game which is just as important as stopping shots. The supervision of modern football has changed everything.
The goalkeepers have more touches than 10 or 20 years ago and the passes they play are much, much shorter.
During the 2003-2004 season, only one of their out of 10 passes was played short. This season is more than half. The average duration of a first league goal kick in 2013-2014 was more than 60 meters, beyond halfway. This season is 37 yards, inside the defensive third party. Over 80% of Tottenham and Chelsea do not leave their own penalty area.
The closer they get to the ball to their own goal, the more dangerous it is if it does not go, and as more and more teams have become better to hurry … This obliges errors.
The number of short passes played by goalkeepers has increased considerably over the years
Is the blow dead?
But are they worse to do what was always their main task – backups and keep the ball out of the net.
“The size and athletics of the guards to make backups are certainly more important than it was in yesteryear,” a performance director told Mail Sport in a better Premier League club. “It is very difficult to beat them from a distance.
“Even when shots are on the target, the guards are much more agile, powerful and explosive than they were in previous seasons.”
Over the past 20 years, however, the percentage of shots that Premier League guards regularly save, so slowly, so slowly. The guards recorded three on four strokes at the time, now it’s about two out of three.
The percentage of backup alone can be a misleading statistic because it treats all the shots equally – whether it is directly at the goalkeeper or in the upper corner, at close range or 40 meters.
And nowadays, they are rarely 40 meters away. The rise of football analysis and an obsession with terms such as expected goals (XG) mean that teams know that there is more chance of scoring if they work the ball in a dangerous area than taking a long -range pot.
Twenty years ago, only half of all the first league shots were taken inside the box. Now it’s more than two thirds.
The teams approach the objective and the precision of the attackers is increasing. It is more difficult to save shots than before.
The goalkeepers to save about 3 on 4 shots, but it now fell to 2 in 3
However, goalkeepers have actually started to warn more goals this season than before
It is more informative to see what a statistic called the expected objectives on Target (XGOT), which measures the power and the placement of a shot to assess the probability of finding the net and therefore the number of objectives that a goalkeeper has prevented or let slide.
If we go through these figures, the goalkeepers were… terrible. During the previous four seasons, they left 226 more goals than they were planned on the basis of the target shots they were confronted with. During the 2021-222 season, where goalkeepers sent nearly 80 more goals than they should have done, only four clubs have positive figures.
This current season is the only recorded (since 2017-2018) where goalkeepers have prevented more than expected.
For all his mistakes, Onana prevented more than he lets pass. During his two Premier League seasons, he was in the Green by more than four goals – like Ederson throughout his career in town. Even that I cannot compare, however, at 12.5 that his predecessor David de Gea prevented in the 2017-2018 campaign alone.
Onana and Ederson are in green with regard to the prevented goals, but none can get closer to the ex-goalkeeper, David de Gea
These advanced numbers do not extend far enough to compare the current harvest of traffic jams with the big names of the past like Peter Schmeichel and Petr Cech. As large as they are undoubtedly, nostalgia often makes them infallible.
We forget that Schmeichel beat the first goals of Niall Quinn for Manchester City in 1993 and remember his last stop and the return of United. We are delighted with the errors of CECH against Bolton, shipping three in eight minutes, in 2009, to rent his heroic global of Chelsea. Cech fought with the ball at his feet, ask any arsenal fan.
We will never know how Gordon Banks or Peter Shilton would get out in modern game. Do you want to come back Alisson to save Pelé’s header? Could Banks beat the press with a punctual pass in the midfield?
These famous names will be forever considered the best, but the only thing we really know with certainty is that the art of goal, for better or for worse, is judged on a canvas different than ever.