The writer of the ‘Ones to Watch’ section in the Nottingham Forest matchday programme spared Andre Onana no blushes.
‘Onana is capable of both the sublime and the ridiculous between the posts and he can possess erratic tendencies at times,’ they wrote of the Manchester United goalkeeper ahead of Forest’s victory in midweek.
A touch uncalled for, perhaps, but many United fans would accept, deep down, that they might have had a point.
Onana’s two years at United has been littered with mistakes, like when he charged out of his goal to hand Ipswich an early goal in February as well as gifting Brighton a third in defeat to the Seagulls when he spilled a cross into the path of Georginio Rutter.
His string of errors last season contributed to United crashing out of the Champions League in the group stages.
However, the Cameroon international is by no means the only Premier League goalkeeper to come under scrutiny – just look at the man standing in the opposition goal on Sunday afternoon.
Andre Onana has made a number of high-profile errors in his first two seasons at Man United
He spilt the ball into the path of Brighton’s Georginio Rutter for a simple goal back in January
The usually reliable Ederson has also endured a difficult season between the posts at Man City
Three top-flight keepers have made more errors leading to goals than Onana and Ederson
Ederson broke the mould of what was expected of a Premier League goalkeeper after Pep Guardiola brought him to Manchester City and the era of the sweeper keeper begun.
Yet he made two huge mistakes in defeat to Real Madrid in the Champions League, Callum Hudson-Odoi beat him at his near post in City’s defeat to Nottingham Forest.
Two of the most expensive goalkeepers at two of the biggest clubs in the world making big mistakes. Are goalkeepers getting worse?
Errors on the rise
What is clear is that goalkeepers are making more costly mistakes. Before this weekend, statisticians Opta recorded that keepers had made 81 errors so far this season that led to their opponents having a shot – already 20 more than the average for the previous four full campaigns. Thirty-seven of those led to a goal, one more than the whole of last season.
Goalkeepers today are unrecognisable to goalkeepers of the past. Their job is no longer just to stop the ball going in the net. They are playmakers now, often a key part of build-up play that’s equally as important as stopping shots. The Guardiolaification of modern football has changed everything.
Goalkeepers have more touches than they did 10 or 20 years ago and the passes they play are much, much shorter.
In the 2003-04 season, only one in 10 of their passes were played short. This season, it’s more than half. The average length of a Premier League goal-kick in 2013-14 was more than 60 yards, beyond the halfway line. This season, it’s 37 yards, inside the defensive third. More than 80 per cent of Tottenham and Chelsea’s don’t leave their own penalty area.
The closer they have the ball to their own goal, the more dangerous it is if it goes wrong, and as more and more teams have become better at pressing…that forces mistakes.
The number of short passes being played by goalkeepers has dramatically risen over the years
Is shot-stopping dead?
But are they worse at doing what always used to be their primary task – making saves and keeping the ball out of the net.
‘The size and athleticism of keepers to make saves is definitely greater than it has been in yesteryear,’ one director of performance at a top Premier League club told Mail Sport. ‘It’s very difficult to beat them from distance.
‘Even when shots are on target, keepers are much more agile, powerful and explosive than they have been in previous seasons.’
Over the past 20 years, though, the percentage of shots that Premier League keepers save has steadily, if gently, declined. Keepers saved three in every four shots back then, now it’s about two in three.
Save percentage on its own can be a deceptive stat as it treats all shots equally — whether they’re straight at the goalkeeper or into the top corner, from close range or 40 yards away.
And nowadays, they are rarely from 40 yards away. The rise of football analytics and an obsession with terms like Expected Goals (xG) means teams know there’s more chance of scoring if they work the ball into a dangerous area than taking a long-range pot-shot.
Twenty years ago, only half of all Premier League shots were taken inside the box. Now, it’s more than two thirds.
Teams are getting closer to goal and strikers’ accuracy is on the rise. It’s harder to save shots than before.
Goalkeepers used to save around 3 in every 4 shots, but that has now dropped to 2 in 3
However, goalkeepers have actually started preventing more goals this season than previously
It’s more instructive to look at what a statistic called Expected Goals on Target (xGOT), which measures the power and placement of a shot to assess how likely it is of finding the net and therefore how many goals a keeper has prevented or let slip.
If we go by those numbers, goalkeepers have been…dreadful. Over the previous four seasons, they have let in 226 more goals than they would have been expected to based on the shots on target they have faced. In the 2021-22 season, where goalkeepers shipped nearly 80 more goals than they ‘should’ have done, only four clubs boasted positive numbers.
This current season is the only on record (since 2017-18) where goalkeepers have prevented more than expected.
For all his errors, Onana has prevented more than he’s let through. Over his two seasons in the Premier League, he’s in the green by more than four goals – the same as Ederson over his entire City career. Even than can’t compare, though, to the 12.5 his predecessor David De Gea prevented in just the 2017-18 campaign alone.
Onana and Ederson are in the green when it comes to goals prevented, but neither can get close to ex-United goalkeeper, David de Gea
Such advanced numbers do not stretch far back enough to compare the current crop of stoppers to the big names of the past like Peter Schmeichel and Petr Cech. As great as they undoubtedly were, nostalgia often turns them infallible.
We forget Schmeichel flapping at Niall Quinn’s opening two goals for Manchester City in 1993 and remember his final save and United’s comeback. We gloss over Cech’s errors against Bolton, shipping three in eight minutes, in 2009 to laud his overall Chelsea heroics. Cech struggled with the ball at his feet, ask any Arsenal fan that.
We will never know how the likes of Gordon Banks or Peter Shilton would fare in the modern game. Would you back Alisson to save Pele’s header? Could Banks beat the press with a pinpoint pass into midfield?
It will be those famous names that will forever be talked about as the greatest but the only thing we really know for certain is that the art of goalkeeping, for better or worse, is judged on a different canvas than ever before.
