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  • 2 years later...
Bravo’s save success rate is the fourth worst of any Premier League goalkeeper to make at least 10 appearances in a season since 2009-10, though it’s still not the lowest in the current campaign. That unwanted statistic belongs to Fraser Forster, who has faced significantly less criticism this season despite failing to live up to his heroics of the previous campaign.

 

The England international achieved the third highest save success rate of the regular keepers in the league last season (73.9%) – with Petr Cech leading the way – but that number has dropped substantially to just 54.8% this time around. That’s not only the lowest in the league this season but also the worst since Chris Kirkland in 2009-10 (54.6%). Despite starting every league game this season, Forster has made just 34 saves from a modest 62 shots on target, owing much to a strong defence in front of him.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/football/who-scored-blog/2017/jan/17/claudio-bravo-worst-goalkeeper-premier-league-manchester-city

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Ouch. That's really not good. Do we know when McCarthy is due to be fit again?

No surprise to those who have watched him this season. England's No 1, not even England's No 5 or 6 at the moment. A good few of the saves he has made have been very straightforward.

As for McCarthy who knows, should have recovered from hamstring by now. But news from the Club is as ever deafening, mustn't let anyone know.

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Why is Forster not in there though? Hasn't he played at least 15 times as well?

 

Because they were trying to make the point of how bad Bravo is. Then they realised that there was someone worse. They left him off because otherwise the impact of their point would be diminished. Forster has the second worst saves per on target shots since records began apparently.

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Because they were trying to make the point of how bad Bravo is. Then they realised that there was someone worse. They left him off because otherwise the impact of their point would be diminished. Forster has the second worst saves per on target shots since records began apparently.

 

Lol you've got to be joking right?

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What on earth does 'percentage of shoots saved' actually mean. Are they weighted in any way for ease of being saved. Factors such as placement of shot, distance from goal, speed of ball, swerve, deflection, bounce, blocked view must all have an effect.

 

Total soccerball nonsense, Some people have too much time on their hands.

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What on earth does 'percentage of shoots saved' actually mean.

 

I'd say it's pretty simple: shots on target that didn't go in. Over the course of enough matches, it does tell you something. All goalkeepers will get easier and more difficult shots to deal with. It'll even itself out for a large part (but not completely, of course). Over the course of a season, I think it does tell you something.

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I'd say it's pretty simple: shots on target that didn't go in. Over the course of enough matches, it does tell you something. All goalkeepers will get easier and more difficult shots to deal with. It'll even itself out for a large part (but not completely, of course). Over the course of a season, I think it does tell you something.

 

No, I wouldn't agree. There is not enough data for a statistical analysis and comparison. Besides, a 'shot on target' can be anything from a rocket into the top corner to something equivalent to a soft back pass.

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Lol you've got to be joking right?

No, wasn't joking :) But admittedly I did mix up the BBC article with the Guardian article read earlier which showed that Bravo wasn't the worst. That was Forster, almost the worst in the history of the PL Stats (2nd only).

https://www.theguardian.com/football/who-scored-blog/2017/jan/17/claudio-bravo-worst-goalkeeper-premier-league-manchester-city

Last season he was 3rd best. Something has gone wrong, perhaps the rumour of him carrying an injury is correct.

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No, wasn't joking :) But admittedly I did mix up the BBC article with the Guardian article read earlier which showed that Bravo wasn't the worst. That was Forster, almost the worst in the history of the PL Stats (2nd only).

https://www.theguardian.com/football/who-scored-blog/2017/jan/17/claudio-bravo-worst-goalkeeper-premier-league-manchester-city

Last season he was 3rd best. Something has gone wrong, perhaps the rumour of him carrying an injury is correct.

Or perhaps teams have worked out if you place the ball even fractionally to the side of him instead of straight at him, he hasn't the mobility, agility or ability to do much about it...

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Or perhaps teams have worked out if you place the ball even fractionally to the side of him instead of straight at him, he hasn't the mobility, agility or ability to do much about it...

 

I made the same observation the other day that I thought the opposition had gone to school on him. Low down to the corners and he doesn't get near them. The same shots are of course challenging for all 'keepers but he's such a big unit his size and lack of agility goes against him.

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What on earth does 'percentage of shoots saved' actually mean. Are they weighted in any way for ease of being saved. Factors such as placement of shot, distance from goal, speed of ball, swerve, deflection, bounce, blocked view must all have an effect.

 

Total soccerball nonsense, Some people have too much time on their hands.

 

Why nonsense???

Forget splitting hairs on your complicated criteria.... On average most of the degrees of difficulty of saves will be the same. Our eyes do not deceive us, the statistics are unlikely to lie...

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Why nonsense???

Forget splitting hairs on your complicated criteria.... On average most of the degrees of difficulty of saves will be the same. Our eyes do not deceive us, the statistics are unlikely to lie...

 

In terms of statistical theory, there aren't enough samples to give a meaningful figure and these statistics most definitely do lie. For a true comparison you would have to have different keepers behind the same defence. There are simply too many variables involved.

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It is a statistical fact that Forster let the most balls through of all balls coming at his goal, compared to any other PL goalkeeper since the 2009/2010 season. It's not a statistical fact that this makes him the worst goalkeeper, but it does give you a not completely unbased sense that he might not be doing too well at the moment.

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Why nonsense???

Forget splitting hairs on your complicated criteria.... On average most of the degrees of difficulty of saves will be the same. Our eyes do not deceive us, the statistics are unlikely to lie...

 

That is not true at all, the quality of the average chance conceded varies significantly.

https://twitter.com/11tegen11/status/812948253259993088

According to this, the chances Swansea concede are on average of higher quality than anyone else, so Fabianski would have the lowest save % if the quality of finishing faced was even and all the goalkeepers in the league were as good as each other.

The chances we concede are on average the third lowest in quality, so Forster should have a high save %. Even if we are unlucky and have disproportionately faced higher quality finishing, there is no way Forster should have a worse save % than every other keeper.

The stats say he has been abysmal and the eye test says he has been abysmal, it is safe to say he hasn't been very good.

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No, wasn't joking :) But admittedly I did mix up the BBC article with the Guardian article read earlier which showed that Bravo wasn't the worst. That was Forster, almost the worst in the history of the PL Stats (2nd only).

https://www.theguardian.com/football/who-scored-blog/2017/jan/17/claudio-bravo-worst-goalkeeper-premier-league-manchester-city

Last season he was 3rd best. Something has gone wrong, perhaps the rumour of him carrying an injury is correct.

 

Thanks for link, now just wish you were joking. :cry: Discounting any potential injury, and with many other examples to choose from, this has surely got to be the smoking gun to prove players are performing significantly worse under the current manager/system/setup.

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In terms of statistical theory, there aren't enough samples to give a meaningful figure and these statistics most definitely do lie. For a true comparison you would have to have different keepers behind the same defence. There are simply too many variables involved.

 

Can you please post up some details of what would be a statistically significant number of matches? Thanks.

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I do wonder if he has been carrying an injury. It might explain why the rest of the team goes into its shell so easily - they know any half-decent shot is likely to result in a goal.

 

If that is the case then:

 

i) it's bad luck our second choice got injured; but

ii) it shows our third choice signing to have been a complete waste of time.

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Can you please post up some details of what would be a statistically significant number of matches? Thanks.

 

I think you'd need several hundred for a start and even then it would be impossible to separate the effect of the goalkeeper in isolation from the defence in front of him. How much the opposition is closed down, how far out the shots are, that sort of thing. What is the system at corners? Does the keeper always come for any cross, is he protected by surrounding defenders or is he left with a space that is his personal zone to defend. Then you'd need to separate out deflections, walk-in goals, and you'd certainly need to put some weighting in the type of shot, its position and strength amongst other things. You also have to include those shots that are blocked by defenders before they get near the goal. Some teams will get close and charge up to every attacker, others will stand off and let the keeper deal with any shots. For any statistical analysis to have any validity then all other variables and parameters need to be discounted, in other words you would need to play the same keepers behind a number of different defences before you could even begin to make a comparison. Even then they'd all have to be trained and practiced in the same defensive methods.

 

In Forster's case I cannot say that I have seen any instances this season where I have thought that he ought to have done better with any goals that we have let in. I seem to remember that last season a lot of people were making similar criticisms of Stekelenburg.

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I think you'd need several hundred for a start and even then it would be impossible to separate the effect of the goalkeeper in isolation from the defence in front of him. How much the opposition is closed down, how far out the shots are, that sort of thing. What is the system at corners? Does the keeper always come for any cross, is he protected by surrounding defenders or is he left with a space that is his personal zone to defend. Then you'd need to separate out deflections, walk-in goals, and you'd certainly need to put some weighting in the type of shot, its position and strength amongst other things. You also have to include those shots that are blocked by defenders before they get near the goal. Some teams will get close and charge up to every attacker, others will stand off and let the keeper deal with any shots. For any statistical analysis to have any validity then all other variables and parameters need to be discounted, in other words you would need to play the same keepers behind a number of different defences before you could even begin to make a comparison. Even then they'd all have to be trained and practiced in the same defensive methods.

 

In Forster's case I cannot say that I have seen any instances this season where I have thought that he ought to have done better with any goals that we have let in. I seem to remember that last season a lot of people were making similar criticisms of Stekelenburg.

 

I get what you're saying but if that many factors need to be taken into account there's no point in even collating the statistics. You may as well say Alan Shearer should be discounted as the Premier League all time top scorer because not every player has had the opportunity to shoot for goal from the same position as him against the same defence/keeper after being provided with a pass from the same team-mates as him the same number of times as him.

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I get what you're saying but if that many factors need to be taken into account there's no point in even collating the statistics. You may as well say Alan Shearer should be discounted as the Premier League all time top scorer because not every player has had the opportunity to shoot for goal from the same position as him against the same defence/keeper after being provided with a pass from the same team-mates as him the same number of times as him.

 

Well, that is the main point that I was trying to make. For someone like Alan Shearer perhaps we should be considering the ratio of goals scored to shots taken, although then we would have to weight the data by the performance coefficient of the goalkeeper that he was facing. ;) In Terms of goals scored it's a pretty straightforward record to keep but even then comparisons with other players should be used very sparingly. Football performance is a very complicated and interactive matter and the rating of any individual will depend to a great extent on the performance of the team.

 

If you're interested in statistical theory (and who isn't?) then there is a chapter in a book called 'Facts From Figures' by M.J. Moroney called 'Goals, Floods and Horse Kicks' where he explains that these events follow the Poisson Distribution (the limiting case of the Binomial Distribution), that is to say a large number of events each with a small probability of success. It's a long time since I've read it but I can recommend it.

 

http://krishikosh.egranth.ac.in/bitstream/1/2034023/1/503.pdf Page 103

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Enough smoke and mirrors there to sink a super tanker. If Forster was second or third in analysis you could begin to split hairs, however he is almost last !

Our eyes tell give us very good evidence and now the statistics back up the compelling opinion of most fans.

If you gave a margin of error for both Forster has still been very poor...

The evidence we available and method of the statistical analysis at just over half way through the season is indeed compelling and though you may question small possibilities of error, they certainly small...

Let's suppose the error went against him? Let's face it he has been below average.....at best...

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Well, that is the main point that I was trying to make. For someone like Alan Shearer perhaps we should be considering the ratio of goals scored to shots taken, although then we would have to weight the data by the performance coefficient of the goalkeeper that he was facing. ;) In Terms of goals scored it's a pretty straightforward record to keep but even then comparisons with other players should be used very sparingly. Football performance is a very complicated and interactive matter and the rating of any individual will depend to a great extent on the performance of the team.

 

If you're interested in statistical theory (and who isn't?) then there is a chapter in a book called 'Facts From Figures' by M.J. Moroney called 'Goals, Floods and Horse Kicks' where he explains that these events follow the Poisson Distribution (the limiting case of the Binomial Distribution), that is to say a large number of events each with a small probability of success. It's a long time since I've read it but I can recommend it.

 

http://krishikosh.egranth.ac.in/bitstream/1/2034023/1/503.pdf Page 103

 

I tried , I really tried. I started at page 103, read 4 pages and didn't have the slightest clue what it's all about. Maybe FF is taking a degree in statistics and has been mentally revising when he should be concentrating on the game :p

 

I think it's fair to accept that over 20+ games all keepers will have faced their fair share of soft shots, hard shots, deflections, direct shots etc for the results to show an acceptable trend. If you're insisting on so many factors to be taken into account the one I would be interested in is how many of those shots he has faced would be as a result of him not commanding his area well enough to claim crosses/loose balls before they even reached the "shooter".

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In Forster's case I cannot say that I have seen any instances this season where I have thought that he ought to have done better with any goals that we have let in. I seem to remember that last season a lot of people were making similar criticisms of Stekelenburg.

Oh dear Whitey, clearly you have been spending too much time deciding how many cavalrymen will be killed by kicks from horses each year, rather than watching games. All four goals against Spurs for example were savable (that's not to say Forster should have saved all four but an average PL keeper would have got to one or two of them). Ironically a lot of people on here blame Forster for the Burnley goal which cost us 2 points last weekend, when in fact it was one of the few this season which he really didn't have much chance with because of the deflection (though some argue with a modicum of sense that his starting position was not the best). The metrics gathered in the OPTA Stats that are being used as the basis of the analysis being argued may not be statistically significant to a statistician, but they are an indicator that what most people are observing (that Forster makes very few saves) is borne out by the metrics to an extent. What you cannot use these metrics for really is to say categorically that Forster is the worst. The metrics indicate that he is the worst this season (and second worst since the stats began, a few years ago) but in truth the difference between his metrics and those of Bravo for instance and some of the others at the bottom end of that scale, are minute and therefore not statistically significant (the difference between Bravo and Forster is less that 1%). But to try to dismiss the basic metric (shots save against shots not saved) on the grounds that the sample is not statistically significant is pushing it a bit. It will be interesting to the figures again at the end of the season when the number of games will have almost doubled. The basic point is that at present any shot on target has almost as much chance of resulting in a goal as being saved by Fraser (46% vs 54%) which is a fair indication of someone not doing their job very well. The interesting stat to me is that this is a trend for keepers in the PL over the last few years. Is this because the standard of keepers has fallen, or is it because strikers are better, or what? We are seeing less saves in the PL these days on average than we were a few years ago. Personally I don't think it is the former, not when we have keepers such as De Gea, Cech, Lloris and Courtois, unless it is the huge drop off of quality once you take these out of the equation. Incidentally arguing that the quality of strikes makes the metrics insignificant is really weak, the quality also applies to the shots saved. Some of the ones Forster is able to count as saves this season have been absolute dollies, but these still count as saves.

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The stats back up what i'm seeing tbh and most others. Last season the stats showed he was one of the best in the league. This season they show he's one of the worst and there has been a marked decline in what i'm seeing on the pitch as well. He looks so slow and static at times and he's nearly as bad as Kelvin for staying on his line.

 

You can moan about stats all you want and pick them apart in nearly every aspect but unfortunately, with Fraser this season they are bang on. He's been massively below par.

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