The stats for a keeper indicate more about the general defence and the keeper is only a part of that.

It can be used on an individual player if averaged over a lot of games where the team is mostly the same but the player is not in all of the games. My favourite stat on this is van Nistelroy who was thought to be the great goal scorer for Manu. A journalist analysed the number of points per game during his stay at manu, looking at the average points when he played and when he did not. It turned out that manu averaged half a point per game more when he was not playing, even though he was manu's top scorer by a mile.

I presume the reason is perhaps that when he was there, the team plan was to funnel the feed to him for his tap-ins, so the real work was done by people like Ronaldo, Giggs and Beckham feeding him pin-point crosses onto the end of his boot. When he was not there, the other players contributed to the goals that won the points. So he looks like an over-rated goal scrounger taking the credit for the real work done by the rest of the team.

The media loved him though. He went through a goal drought at one point - no goals for about 8 games, I think. But in the match were he finally got on the score sheet again, he was standing on the 6 yard box facing the goal when Forlan blasted a 25 yard shot that went over his head and hit the crossbar, bounced down and hit RvN on the leg and went in. RvN could have known nothing about it as it was so fast. You could have stood my granny there and she would have been credited with the goal - and she has been dead for 50 years. But the commentator creamed his jeans and said ' a great goal by Nistelroy to get back into his scoring ways'. Tosser.