April 26 – The best goalkeeper in Europe’s Big-5 leagues this year is Bayern Munich’s Manuel Neuer and the worst is, not surprisingly, American Brad Guzan who has had a miserable season at a miserable Aston Villa.
The ranking of keepers released by the CIES Football Laboratory takes into account the number of goals conceded per match, number of minutes per goal conceded, number of saves per match, number of passes per match, number of saves per goal conceded, and percentage of saves.
By their metrics a goalkeeper in a top league team is likely to rank at the top of his positional ranking because he very likely has less work to do and will often be involved in the play in a non-pressure situation. A poor team with an awful defence (Aston Villa, for example) frequently leave their goalkeeper hopelessly exposed and scrambling to prevent goals – Villa’s four conceded goals against Southampton at the weekend being a case in point.
So Guzan, headed for the Copa America this summer, might not be as bad as his stats.
Guzan has conceded 2 goals per match on average. His percentage of saves is 59.5% and this season, he has only played on one winning side – August 8, 2015 against Bournemouth – after which Villa has drawn 5 matches and lost the remaining 22 in which Guzan has played.
In contrast the Premier League’s top goalkeeper in these stats, Hugo Lloris, has only conceded 0.8 goals per match (compared to 0.5 for Europe’s top keeper Neuer) and saved 73.9% of shots (78.8% for Neuer).
The highest percentage of saves overall was recorded for Paris St-Germain goalkeeper Kevin Trapp: 80.6%. He is the only player with a percentage of saves greater than 80%.
CIES is to release its player rankings for centre backs, full backs, defensive midfielders, box-to-box midfielders, attacking midfielders and forwards over the next three weeks. Expect to see more Bayern players at the top of the rankings and Villa players at the bottom.
See the CIES Football Observatory ranking at http://www.football-observatory.com/IMG/sites/b5wp/2015/147/en/
Source: CIES Football Observatory
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