Post match V Fc Kolon

[The Emirates Gallactico]

Nah, this is a classic case of absence making the heart grow fonder. Almunia was absoutely dog shite for most his tenure at us apart from a brief spell (when the Almunia for England noise started).

Ospina has been decent for us and saved our bacon a few times but it's been tempered by a few high profile mistakes, notably against Olympiakos.

Also the goal against Chelsea in the cup final wasn't a GK mistake per say, more that he didn't have the GK quality to save it (a taller GK with stronger wrists like a De Gea, Courtois .. could have pushed Costa's shot just wide).

[Power n Glory]

Your stat has little context too. A 'keeper can keep a clean sheet simply because we dominated the game and they came under little pressure or because the opposition's strikers were wasteful.
Or they can have a great game but be beaten by a shot that no 'keeper could be expected to save.
Like assist stats, clean sheets stats tell you something but they don't paint the whole picture.

In the context of the argument and whether or not he's a decent 2nd string keeper, the wins, loses and clean sheet stats makes sense. I'm not arguing that he doesn't make mistakes or world class.

The chances created stat is ridiculous because you'll quote it even though you'd watched the game and seen we've looked flat creatively and created next to nothing.

[Power n Glory]

Nah, this is a classic case of absence making the heart grow fonder. Almunia was absoutely dog shite for most his tenure at us apart from a brief spell (when the Almunia for England noise started).

Ospina has been decent for us and saved our bacon a few times but it's been tempered by a few high profile mistakes, notably against Olympiakos.

Also the goal against Chelsea in the cup final wasn't a GK mistake per say, more that he didn't have the GK quality to save it (a taller GK with stronger wrists like a De Gea, Courtois .. could have pushed Costa's shot just wide).

Almunia was the worst.

[Coney]

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.

[Herbert_Chapman's_Zombie]

Nah, this is a classic case of absence making the heart grow fonder. Almunia was absoutely dog shite for most his tenure at us apart from a brief spell (when the Almunia for England noise started).

Ospina has been decent for us and saved our bacon a few times but it's been tempered by a few high profile mistakes, notably against Olympiakos.

Also the goal against Chelsea in the cup final wasn't a GK mistake per say, more that he didn't have the GK quality to save it (a taller GK with stronger wrists like a De Gea, Courtois .. could have pushed Costa's shot just wide).

Almunia was an average keeper. Couldn't expect much out of him and was capable of the odd howler

Ospina is definitely a better shot stopper than Almunia was. But I don't remember anywhere near the amount of glaring errors. Almunia had average distribution, his decision making was mixed and was an okish shot stopper (saved a few penalties for us).
I do remember goals we conceded that were Almunias fault, I don't remember the same volume as with Ospina

Spurs, Crystal Palace, QPR, Newcastle, Chelsea, Swansea, Man United, West Brom

Those are games in 2015 I remember him making a fluff that was either costly or could have been costly. That's far too often even for an average keeper.

And then there was the game against Olympiakos where even the stubborn Wenger had to change his mind about playing Ospina in goal for the champions league because he was so shit in that game.

Believe me when I say he's worse than Almunia it's not crying for the moon for Almunia he was terrible at times.

For me it's like comparing Fabien Barthez to Roy Carroll. Carroll was the epitome of average, but Ferguson just couldn't rely on Barthez simply because of the sheer volume of fuck ups.

[GP]

Ospina is way better than Almunia ever was, c'mon now.

I'll never forgive Almunia for that Danny Rose goal. No idea what the fuck he was doing.

[Letters]

In the context of the argument and whether or not he's a decent 2nd string keeper, the wins, loses and clean sheet stats makes sense. I'm not arguing that he doesn't make mistakes or world class.

I don't think the stat makes much sense for the reasons I've outlined. A clean sheet doesn't tell you much about the 'keepers performance. As Coney said, the defence play a bigger part in whether we get a clean sheet or not, by all accounts Cech was excellent when we got humped by Liverpool, but for him it would have been a much bigger embarrassment. Assist scores are a bit more meaningful IMO. I take the point about different types of assists but overall I think things like that balance out a bit.

Overall I think He IS a decent 2nd string 'keeper, I just don't think that stat illustrates that for the reasons I've outlined.

[Power n Glory]

I don't think the stat makes much sense for the reasons I've outlined. A clean sheet doesn't tell you much about the 'keepers performance. As Coney said, the defence play a bigger part in whether we get a clean sheet or not, by all accounts Cech was excellent when we got humped by Liverpool, but for him it would have been a much bigger embarrassment. Assist scores are a bit more meaningful IMO. I take the point about different types of assists but overall I think things like that balance out a bit.

Overall I think He IS a decent 2nd string 'keeper, I just don't think that stat illustrates that for the reasons I've outlined.

The results of the the game, the clean sheets and wins indicate that he hasn't cost us as many games or points as Herb suggests. Again, key word here being decent. He's going to make mistakes but we get that in all areas of the pitch.

Also, I was pointing out that when he's had a long run in the team, we've only lost two games and drawn two. It doesn't paint the full picture but it's enough to show that he's not an absolute calamity that can't be trusted. I suspect like most players, it's hard to judge a player until he gets a full run in the team. At the time when we bought Cech, Ospina had a good run in the team and most weren't blown away by the Cech signing.

[The Emirates Gallactico]

Anyway if you want to see why we're so tactically impotent check out these screen shots from Elliot:

https://twitter.com/YankeeGunner/sta...34091627888641


If Wenger really wanted to play three at back he needed to buy a CM or at least train one of Xhaka/Elneny/Ramsay to play in the role effectively. As it is, with the current setup we've pretty much got no central midfield and unless one of the CB goes on a run it's difficult for them to create openings.

[Marc Overmars]

IMO, 3 at the back was a placebo.

We were so bad last season that Wenger could have made a number of changes and it probably would have made a positive difference. What happened was what normally happens at the tail end of the season when we're on the brink of disaster - we suddenly found our balls.