A Look at Goalkeeper Options and Replacing De Gea

[TomSkalle]

What concernes me the most is that opposition is targetting our weak ball handling in defence deliberatly now. Everybody know united is slow starters and that they doesnt handle pressure on the ball well, so they pressure our defence hard from start every game. And also have had sucsess doing so.

Isnt it obvious that we need to sort this out when DDG contract is running out?
When i heard they had offered him a new contract i couldnt help thinking "here we go again"..

That said, i like DDG as a person and he has had some fantastic matches for us, but going forward with ETH and his style of fotball, its about time we let him go.
In fact, its crucial.
IMO.

 

[lex talionis]

Just to be clear, while my long post was about the issues De Gea creates throughout the team, I do of course agree that we badly need to sign a striker.

However the reality is despite that, the number of "big chances" we miss is right on average for a team with our level of possession; we are 6th in terms of highest average possession and 5th in terms of big chances missed, with the 4 teams above us in terms of big chances missed also being above us in terms of possession - Liverpool way out ahead with the most missed, City, Newcastle, Brighton, us. For completeness Arsenal, the other team ahead of us the possession stats are in 7th on big chances missed. The anomaly being Brentford, who while having the 5th lowest average possession, have the 6th most big chances missed - although it is clear they is a stylistic thing due to them playing the ball into the box directly from the goalkeeper or wide centre backs multiple times a game.

So essentially we aren't actually missing more chances than you would expect us to, I understand why it appears that way as we watch United more than other teams and the misses stick in our head because we aren't making up for it by scoring a goal 5 minutes later like several other teams at the top end of the table.

So what the data in both this and my previous post would suggest to me (and I appreciate this is very obvious regardless of data) is that if we had more possession, we would create more chances on average. However, in order for us to consistently both hold more possession AND create more "big chances" we need to be able to play football higher up the pitch than we do at present, and that is where the goalkeeper comes in. If your goalkeeper is a few yards further up on average and looking for balls over the top to deal with, the team can step further forward and compress the play in attacking areas which makes keeping possession so much easier. Or if the goalkeeper makes themselves a genuine option in possession rather than a last resort, the ball moves from point a to point b much quicker and the attack starts from a different point meaning the opposition have to shift across leading to potential space being created.

Just to add in terms of the West Ham game as you mention it; the goal wasn't the worst aspect of his game that day for me, any goalkeeper can make a mistake like that occasionally. Worse for me was him twice passing the ball to West Ham attackers in the final third, him staying down feigning injury while West Ham had possession in our penalty area and finally (and most of all) it was him refusing to leave his area to collect the ball late on when we were chasing the game, forcing Lindelof or Shaw to run 30/40 yards back which both wasted time and allowed West Ham's defence to regroup.

When I read this:

“we are 6th in terms of highest average possession and 5th in terms of big chances missed, with the 4 teams above us in terms of big chances missed also being above us in terms of possession -

I see as the obvious conclusion that it’s our forward play, not our keeper play, that explains why we’re third/fourth in the table.

Average possession is an interesting but not dispositive stat in evaluating attacking power. We outpossess a lot of opponents who sit back and invite us into their last third. We create a fair but not outrageous number of big chances, and our finishing is just insanely poor. No one who watched United when we eeked out a 2-0 win over Wolves came away thinking our finishing was excellent or even just commensurate with a top four club. Even allowing for a normal number of misses on great chances, we really should have hammered Wolves 3 or 4 nil. Our second goal only came deep in stoppage time. Ok, we can wrong our hands about the opposing keeper putting in an insane shot stopping performance but when you look at some of those shots, especially Sancho at point blank range, they were shots that should have been buried.

We kept a clean sheet against Wolves, a team achievement of course, but because of our poor finishing we were only up 1-0 in stoppage time and anything could have happened in stoppage time. Defensively, you can’t do much better than a clean sheet, but offensively we can and should be doing a lot better than 1 goal against a midtable club like Wolves or 0 goals against a midtable club like West Ham. Going back just a bit, we scored 0 goals in both matches against Brighton — a good side, no doubt — where ETH publicly moaned about our poor finishing on big chances.

I accept the argument that when we keep a clean sheet that our keeper still could do more to improve our possession stats, but I cannot accept the argument that the performance of De Gea has anything to do with poor finishing by Martial, Sancho, Antony or Weghorst — none of whom can be described as clinical finishers. When our sheet is clean and we’re botching point blank shots on goal one after the other, it’s beginning to reek of agenda to keep coming back to De Gea as the primary source of the problem.

 

[eire-red]

I've been analysing the goalkeeper data available through FBRef as I think goalkeeping is the easiest of all positions to analyse statistically.

I've taken some of the provided ones and come up with a few transformations to create a list of metrics to score goalkeepers from the top five leagues on their league performances over this season and the previous two to create reasonable size samples.

Metric	Definition	Limitations
Stopped Crosses %	Crosses Stopped divided by Crosses Faced	Doesn't take into account how "stoppable" a cross is, or failed cross claims
Distance Swept /90	Number of sweeping actions multiplied by average sweeping distance, divided by 90s played	doesn’t take into account failed sweeps which usually result in high scores quality chances
Shot Stopping	Post-shot xG faced minus goals against, divided by post-shot xG faced	FBRef post-shot xG model doesn't take into account shot location or power
Bad Touches /90	Miscontrols plus dispossessions per 90 played
Bad Touch Ratio	Miscontrols plus dispossessions divided by total touches
Outside Area Touches	Touches Outside penalty area divided by total touches
Outside Area Touches /90	Touches Outside penalty area per 90 played
Short and Medium Passes /90		Somewhat team style dependent
Short and Medium Share	A ratio of short and medium passes relative to total passes	Somewhat team style dependent
Short Accuracy	Completion percentage of short passes
Medium Accuracy	Completion percentage of medium passes
Long Accuracy	Completion percentage of long passes
Passing Tendancies	An average of the percentile rank of "Short and Medium Passes /90" and "Short and Medium Share"
Passing Accuracy	An average of the percentile rank of "Short Accuracy", "Medium Accuracy" and "Long Accuracy"
On Ball Comfort	An average of the percentile rank of "Bad Touches /90", "Bad Touch Ratio", "Outside Area Touches" and "Outside Area Touches /90"
Crosses	Percentile rank of "Stopped Crosses %"
Sweeping	Percentile rank of "Distance Swept /90"
Shot Stopping	Percentile rank of "Shot Stopping"
OVERALL SCORE UNWEIGHTED	An Average of each of the six above
OVERALL SCORE WEIGHTED	As above but each category is weighted by the amount specified

That then gives us the below table for the top 50 overall (Costa is highlighted as he doesn't play in a top five league and thus his data may or may not be comparable):

Lots of names you would expect, but also quite a few that I hadn't heard of: Casteels (contract expires 2024 and valued at 8m Euros on TransferMarkt), Samba (10m Euros) and Diouf (5m Euros) look very well balanced, with none of the six metrics being below average. Diogo Costa, Pau Lopez and to a lesser extent David Raya also look like good options for United.

David De Gea - 78th out of 90 goalkeepers that have played at least 50 games' worth of minutes:

If you're more of a traditionalist and value shot-stopping and command of area uber-alles, quadrupling the weight of those two metrics gives the following top 50

For a visual comparison of some we've been linked to and others we should be considering:

Conclusions

• David De Gea is either average or poor at everything a goalkeeper is required to do
• Upgrading on him can be done in an inexpensive manner
• Obviously scouting/eye-test and personality assessment would also be required before signing any of the above

You can download the Excel file from the link below and add your own weightings for each category in the first sheet ("Scoreboard"), I'd recommend filtering "90s" to at least 30 if not 50 to ensure the goalkeepers being looked at have reasonable sample sizes. The second ("Comparison Charts") allows you to create your own radar comparison chart for up to five of the goalkeepers included in the analysis.

Link to File

That is some impressive work, well done on that and thanks for sharing.

I agree when you say it's easy to analyse statistically GK performance due to the binary nature of many actions ( eg saved or not etc etc).

However, I think GK is probably the one position on the pitch where the immeasurable is so important - character and resilience. Being a GK for United is probably one of the most scrutinised positions in the league, and you can't measure how that will impact someone.

That's not a criticism of anything you've produced, just an overall limitation to stats in football, and it's very relevant for GK's in my view.

To be a GK for United, you have to be all of the above, and have the right character, mentality, leadership, organisational skills etc etc.. It's a flaw of all measurement unfortunately, especially in sport/business. We have all sorts of ways to measure KPI's, but limited ways to measure interpersonal attributes.

It's fascinating to see this though, and I'd love to be a fly on the wall and see the conversations that take place inside the recruitment teams with the various key decision makers, and how the weigh the type of analysis that you've produced along with that kind of 'intangible, gut feeling'.

 

[sifi36]

When I read this:

“we are 6th in terms of highest average possession and 5th in terms of big chances missed, with the 4 teams above us in terms of big chances missed also being above us in terms of possession -

I see as the obvious conclusion that it’s our forward play, not our keeper play, that explains why we’re third/fourth in the table.

Average possession is an interesting but not dispositive stat in evaluating attacking power. We outpossess a lot of opponents who sit back and invite us into their last third. We create a fair but not outrageous number of big chances, and our finishing is just insanely poor. No one who watched United when we eeked out a 2-0 win over Wolves came away thinking our finishing was excellent or even just commensurate with a top four club. Even allowing for a normal number of misses on great chances, we really should have hammered Wolves 3 or 4 nil. Our second goal only came deep in stoppage time. Ok, we can wrong our hands about the opposing keeper putting in an insane shot stopping performance but when you look at some of those shots, especially Sancho at point blank range, they were shots that should have been buried.

We kept a clean sheet against Wolves, a team achievement of course, but because of our poor finishing we were only up 1-0 in stoppage time and anything could have happened in stoppage time. Defensively, you can’t do much better than a clean sheet, but offensively we can and should be doing a lot better than 1 goal against a midtable club like Wolves or 0 goals against a midtable club like West Ham. Going back just a bit, we scored 0 goals in both matches against Brighton — a good side, no doubt — where ETH publicly moaned about our poor finishing on big chances.

I accept the argument that when we keep a clean sheet that our keeper still could do more to improve our possession stats, but I cannot accept the argument that the performance of De Gea has anything to do with poor finishing by Martial, Sancho, Antony or Weghorst — none of whom can be described as clinical finishers. When our sheet is clean and we’re botching point blank shots on goal one after the other, it’s beginning to reek of agenda to keep coming back to De Gea as the primary source of the problem.

No one is blaming De Gea for poor finishing, I don’t know why you keep bringing this up.

If we were more clinical this season we wouldn’t have gained that many more points. The Wolves example you provided leans into that nicely, we got all three points despite poor finishing. Brighton is not an example as their finishing was equally wayward. We were outplayed by them and they had the better chances. We deserved to lose that game, no amount of clinical finishing would make it so that we outplayed them, it might have got us an extra point, maybe even three but we got outplayed.

We have dropped the most points by far in games where we created very little and gave up a lot of chances. A clinical striker doesn’t stop us from having almost no chances against Liverpool, Arsenal, City, West Ham, Brighton and Newcastle away. We wouldn’t suddenly have outplayed Brighton if we had Osimhen up top. Not when our goalkeeper gave up possession 20 times compared to their three.

He isn’t to blame for our poor finishing in any way. He is significantly responsible for our lack of control against effective pressing teams and our inability to be competitive against said sides.

 

[JB7]

When I read this:

“we are 6th in terms of highest average possession and 5th in terms of big chances missed, with the 4 teams above us in terms of big chances missed also being above us in terms of possession -

I see as the obvious conclusion that it’s our forward play, not our keeper play, that explains why we’re third/fourth in the table.

Average possession is an interesting but not dispositive stat in evaluating attacking power. We outpossess a lot of opponents who sit back and invite us into their last third. We create a fair but not outrageous number of big chances, and our finishing is just insanely poor. No one who watched United when we eeked out a 2-0 win over Wolves came away thinking our finishing was excellent or even just commensurate with a top four club. Even allowing for a normal number of misses on great chances, we really should have hammered Wolves 3 or 4 nil. Our second goal only came deep in stoppage time. Ok, we can wrong our hands about the opposing keeper putting in an insane shot stopping performance but when you look at some of those shots, especially Sancho at point blank range, they were shots that should have been buried.

We kept a clean sheet against Wolves, a team achievement of course, but because of our poor finishing we were only up 1-0 in stoppage time and anything could have happened in stoppage time. Defensively, you can’t do much better than a clean sheet, but offensively we can and should be doing a lot better than 1 goal against a midtable club like Wolves or 0 goals against a midtable club like West Ham. Going back just a bit, we scored 0 goals in both matches against Brighton — a good side, no doubt — where ETH publicly moaned about our poor finishing on big chances.

I accept the argument that when we keep a clean sheet that our keeper still could do more to improve our possession stats, but I cannot accept the argument that the performance of De Gea has anything to do with poor finishing by Martial, Sancho, Antony or Weghorst — none of whom can be described as clinical finishers. When our sheet is clean and we’re botching point blank shots on goal one after the other, it’s beginning to reek of agenda to keep coming back to De Gea as the primary source of the problem.

The issue you keep missing here is that literally nobody has ever blamed De Gea for poor finishing by the attackers; just like nobody has ever said we don't need to sign a striker in the summer.

And in terms of the rest of your post - no possession is not a dispositive stat in terms of evaluating attacks, but when the teams that score the most goals, also have the most possession, also have the highest average defensive lines and concurrently also miss the most big chances, there is a very clear pattern. The point of my previous posts is that we with De Gea in goal we make the game harder than it needs to be, because we cannot play a high line which clearly makes retaining possession in the opposing teams half and creating chances more difficult. Of course a more clinical striker will take more chances but in terms of missing big chances we don't miss any more chances than other teams vying for those top 4 positions based on the data available.

 

[DickDastardly]

Emi Martinez.

We need shithousers like that.

He fecking annoyes me to shit. And that's him playing against Liverpool who i hate.

Still annoying.
Can only think how annoying he'd be playing for us.

 

[croadyman]

Emi Martinez.

We need shithousers like that.

He fecking annoyes me to shit. And that's him playing against Liverpool who i hate.

Still annoying.
Can only think how annoying he'd be playing for us.

Would you want him over Costa/Raya

 

[DickDastardly]

Would you want him over Costa/Raya

To be honest, haven't watched a full game of football with Costa on goal.

Just seen the highlights. Don't know how he carries himself in a game of football, how he reacts under pressure, how well he controls hostile crowds or agressive players....

Yesterday, i saw a Villa keeper (not to mention the whole WC campaign), who handled an Anfield occasion in which Liverpool needed a goal, with 15 minutes of extra time, hostile crowd, bad ref, and a pumped up Liverpool players with straight A.

The amount of self belief and cockery rarely seen in goalkeepers.

Yes he'll feck up.
Yes, he's not as good a shot stopper.
Yes he's annoying as feck.

Still probably just the thing we need. And i mean badly need.

Not to mention the Martinez - Martinez - Garnacho thing....if the kid is really gonna make it here, and the signs are there, he'd benefit greatly out of two senior shithousing countryman.

Too many + and too few - not to make him a priority.

Can't tell about the price or availability, but if the chance presents itself, we should jump in head first.

 

[mitchmouse]

Didn't realise DDG hadn't agreed a new contract - papers seem to say it was done. If he doesn't like the terms, (just as so many here said it about Rooney and others): if you don't want play for United, feck off somewhere else. Sorry but the "golden gloves" mean nothing to me. He simply he no longer a good enough all-round keeper to be our first choice. Stuff the stupid testimonial. There are lots of better options out there.

martinez is the man for me - he's a whole different character

 

[mitchmouse]

To be honest, haven't watched a full game of football with Costa on goal.

Just seen the highlights. Don't know how he carries himself in a game of football, how he reacts under pressure, how well he controls hostile crowds or agressive players....

Yesterday, i saw a Villa keeper (not to mention the whole WC campaign), who handled an Anfield occasion in which Liverpool needed a goal, with 15 minutes of extra time, hostile crowd, bad ref, and a pumped up Liverpool players with straight A.

The amount of self belief and cockery rarely seen in goalkeepers.

Yes he'll feck up.
Yes, he's not as good a shot stopper.
Yes he's annoying as feck.

Still probably just the thing we need. And i mean badly need.

Not to mention the Martinez - Martinez - Garnacho thing....if the kid is really gonna make it here, and the signs are there, he'd benefit greatly out of two senior shithousing countryman.

Too many + and too few - not to make him a priority.

Can't tell about the price or availability, but if the chance presents itself, we should jump in head first.

Agree with this and have been saying so for a long time. But, I'm not sure he's not equally as a good a shot-stopper as DDG in that he cuts out the danger before it arises by actually coming for crosses, dominating his area and yelling at his defenders as Peter S did

 

[croadyman]

Didn't realise DDG hadn't agreed a new contract - papers seem to say it was done. If he doesn't like the terms, (just as so many here said it about Rooney and others): if you don't want play for United, feck off somewhere else. Sorry but the "golden gloves" mean nothing to me. He simply he no longer a good enough all-round keeper to be our first choice. Stuff the stupid testimonial. There are lots of better options out there.

martinez is the man for me - he's a whole different character

He certainly has the confidence to be our number one,however does he fit the right profile for Erik

 

[croadyman]

To be honest, haven't watched a full game of football with Costa on goal.

Just seen the highlights. Don't know how he carries himself in a game of football, how he reacts under pressure, how well he controls hostile crowds or agressive players....

Yesterday, i saw a Villa keeper (not to mention the whole WC campaign), who handled an Anfield occasion in which Liverpool needed a goal, with 15 minutes of extra time, hostile crowd, bad ref, and a pumped up Liverpool players with straight A.

The amount of self belief and cockery rarely seen in goalkeepers.

Yes he'll feck up.
Yes, he's not as good a shot stopper.
Yes he's annoying as feck.

Still probably just the thing we need. And i mean badly need.

Not to mention the Martinez - Martinez - Garnacho thing....if the kid is really gonna make it here, and the signs are there, he'd benefit greatly out of two senior shithousing countryman.

Too many + and too few - not to make him a priority.

Can't tell about the price or availability, but if the chance presents itself, we should jump in head first.

Let's get Lautaro and make it a trio

 

[sifi36]

Given that it is now clear to almost everyone that De Gea is now actively costing us games and trophies with shot stopping errors as well as his woeful distribution, replacing him with even a “cheap” option would not be a downgrade.

Even if they make errors due to an inability to handle the pressure, our current goalkeeper can’t handle it anyway but at least a replacement wouldn’t be one of the worst goalkeepers in Europe at sweeping and claiming crosses. It’s also trivial to find one who doesn’t punt it upfield every time a striker even hints at pressing him.

 

[rpitchfo]

I’ve always been in the “he needs replacing but it’s not a priority” camp. And that the money could be spent on other things.

I got that wrong. Id pretty much take any replacement right now.

 

[Castia]

Costa from Porto will be World class. I’d be paying his buyout as we speak he should be the first player signed this summer.

 

[ayushreddevil9]

I’ve always been in the “he needs replacing but it’s not a priority” camp. And that the money could be spent on other things.

I got that wrong. Id pretty much take any replacement right now.

I hope you understand why. Its not just him fecking up in important games, it has more to do with how we play.

 

[ayushreddevil9]

Costa from Porto will be World class. I’d be paying his buyout as we speak he should be the first player signed this summer.

We are lacking in the funds department but hopefully we can make some sales to offset one crucial signing- DM, CF or the GK

 

[Castia]

We are lacking in the funds department but hopefully we can make some sales to offset one crucial signing- DM, CF or the GK

It’s a rumoured 100m + sales. I’d generally be paying the 60m right now.

Leaves us 40m+ sales for a striker which should be plenty (Henderson going to Forrest for around 30m for a start)

 

[cheekybackheel]

I've never understood why clubs have 2 or 3 keepers then barely use 2 of them.

We've got Butland sitting on the bench, why don't we just use him for a season while we prioritise other positions?

He can't be any worse than De Gea, that guy is finished at the top level.

 

[Skills]

We are lacking in the funds department but hopefully we can make some sales to offset one crucial signing- DM, CF or the GK

Yeah the problem is cash.

Honestly, just get Raya this summer. Hopefully he'll see us through a couple of seasons as an upgrade on DDG while we can invest elsewhere.

 

[ayushreddevil9]

I've never understood why clubs have 2 or 3 keepers then barely use 2 of them.

We've got Butland sitting on the bench, why don't we just use him for a season while we prioritise other positions?

He can't be any worse than De Gea, that guy is finished at the top level.

Why Butland? Might as well use Heaton or get Ben Foster back at the club.

 

[ayushreddevil9]

It’s a rumoured 100m + sales. I’d generally be paying the 60m right now.

Leaves us 40m+ sales for a striker which should be plenty (Henderson going to Forrest for around 30m for a start)

You're getting a bit too optimistic trusting in our selling capabilities but hopefully some cash is raised.

 

[Skills]

I've never understood why clubs have 2 or 3 keepers then barely use 2 of them.

We've got Butland sitting on the bench, why don't we just use him for a season while we prioritise other positions?

He can't be any worse than De Gea, that guy is finished at the top level.

Because Butland's barely PL quality. You may as well stick with DDG then

 

[The Oracle]

I would take David Raya in a heartbeat:
- Premier League proven
- Comfortable with the ball at his feet
- Available for a reasonable fee with 1 year left on his contract, thus freeing up more funds for a striker and a midfielder

Win win win, in my opinion.

 

[cheekybackheel]

Because Butland's barely PL quality. You may as well stick with DDG then

If he's not Prem quality then why is he our main keeper substitute?

 

[Skills]

I would take David Raya in a heartbeat:
- Premier League proven
- Comfortable with the ball at his feet
- Available for a reasonable fee with 1 year left on his contract, thus freeing up more funds for a striker and a midfielder

Win win win, in my opinion.

Yup. You gotta work with what's available on the market and that's probably the best option with our constraints.

That £50m we overspent on Antony would be pretty useful about now

 

[DRJosh]

I miss how it felt when we had The Great Dane in goal - when you just knew that you had a keeper you could trust as the last line of defence. With DDG we have a keeper who appears risk averse but ends up putting himself and his defenders in stressful predicaments especially when the ball is at his feet. He plays with fear and it shows.

If ETH persists with DDG next season, then I'm afraid he deserves blame should we miss out on the CL or a trophy run.

 

[Skills]

If he's not Prem quality then why is he our main keeper substitute?

That's precisely we he's accepted a role in which he's never going to see daylight. If he was PL quality he'd be starting elsewhere - see Dean Henderson.

Jack Butland has played 10 PL games in the last 4 years.

 

[DRJosh]

Yup. You gotta work with what's available on the market and that's probably the best option with our constraints.

That £50m we overspent on Antony would be pretty useful about now

I'm still holding hope we re-coup some of that as Antony grows into this team and continues showing that hunger for those 50-50 balls.

 

[bucky]

Andrew, from Gil Vicente, who is rumoured to be Diogo Costa's replacement, could be another option. Unfortunately not included in this analysis, but statistically and from the limited amount I've seen, he's a promising player.

 

[wolvored]

We are lacking in the funds department but hopefully we can make some sales to offset one crucial signing- DM, CF or the GK

We will spend big this summer, new owner (eventually) and all that. Can see £200 mill plus sales. Ch lge qualification has added to our FFP level of spending.
Costa should be our priority with Raya as backup if we miss out. De Gea should just be told that we are not going to sign off on an extention and let leave. £375 a week straight off the wage bill.

 

[cheekybackheel]

That's precisely we he's accepted a role in which he's never going to see daylight. If he was PL quality he'd be starting elsewhere - see Dean Henderson.

Jack Butland has played 10 PL games in the last 4 years.

Fair enough.

De Gea still has to go though. Should have gone a few seasons ago imo.

 

[Eric_the_Red99]

I’ve always been in the “he needs replacing but it’s not a priority” camp. And that the money could be spent on other things.

I got that wrong. Id pretty much take any replacement right now.

‘Take any replacement’ is where I’ve been for some time. Feck it, I’d have Butland in goal next season if it meant we’d have an extra £50m to spend on a striker. Signing a ‘world class’ GK is truly not necessary.

 

[M16Red]

Top of the list in the OP.

 

[Lentwood]

I've been analysing the goalkeeper data available through FBRef as I think goalkeeping is the easiest of all positions to analyse statistically.

I've taken some of the provided ones and come up with a few transformations to create a list of metrics to score goalkeepers from the top five leagues on their league performances over this season and the previous two to create reasonable size samples.

Metric	Definition	Limitations
Stopped Crosses %	Crosses Stopped divided by Crosses Faced	Doesn't take into account how "stoppable" a cross is, or failed cross claims
Distance Swept /90	Number of sweeping actions multiplied by average sweeping distance, divided by 90s played	doesn’t take into account failed sweeps which usually result in high scores quality chances
Shot Stopping	Post-shot xG faced minus goals against, divided by post-shot xG faced	FBRef post-shot xG model doesn't take into account shot location or power
Bad Touches /90	Miscontrols plus dispossessions per 90 played
Bad Touch Ratio	Miscontrols plus dispossessions divided by total touches
Outside Area Touches	Touches Outside penalty area divided by total touches
Outside Area Touches /90	Touches Outside penalty area per 90 played
Short and Medium Passes /90		Somewhat team style dependent
Short and Medium Share	A ratio of short and medium passes relative to total passes	Somewhat team style dependent
Short Accuracy	Completion percentage of short passes
Medium Accuracy	Completion percentage of medium passes
Long Accuracy	Completion percentage of long passes
Passing Tendancies	An average of the percentile rank of "Short and Medium Passes /90" and "Short and Medium Share"
Passing Accuracy	An average of the percentile rank of "Short Accuracy", "Medium Accuracy" and "Long Accuracy"
On Ball Comfort	An average of the percentile rank of "Bad Touches /90", "Bad Touch Ratio", "Outside Area Touches" and "Outside Area Touches /90"
Crosses	Percentile rank of "Stopped Crosses %"
Sweeping	Percentile rank of "Distance Swept /90"
Shot Stopping	Percentile rank of "Shot Stopping"
OVERALL SCORE UNWEIGHTED	An Average of each of the six above
OVERALL SCORE WEIGHTED	As above but each category is weighted by the amount specified

That then gives us the below table for the top 50 overall (Costa is highlighted as he doesn't play in a top five league and thus his data may or may not be comparable):

Lots of names you would expect, but also quite a few that I hadn't heard of: Casteels (contract expires 2024 and valued at 8m Euros on TransferMarkt), Samba (10m Euros) and Diouf (5m Euros) look very well balanced, with none of the six metrics being below average. Diogo Costa, Pau Lopez and to a lesser extent David Raya also look like good options for United.

David De Gea - 78th out of 90 goalkeepers that have played at least 50 games' worth of minutes:

If you're more of a traditionalist and value shot-stopping and command of area uber-alles, quadrupling the weight of those two metrics gives the following top 50

For a visual comparison of some we've been linked to and others we should be considering:

Conclusions

• David De Gea is either average or poor at everything a goalkeeper is required to do
• Upgrading on him can be done in an inexpensive manner
• Obviously scouting/eye-test and personality assessment would also be required before signing any of the above

You can download the Excel file from the link below and add your own weightings for each category in the first sheet ("Scoreboard"), I'd recommend filtering "90s" to at least 30 if not 50 to ensure the goalkeepers being looked at have reasonable sample sizes. The second ("Comparison Charts") allows you to create your own radar comparison chart for up to five of the goalkeepers included in the analysis.

Link to File

Love this, great post. The OP would be worth sticking in the DDG thread.

I got absolute pelters for saying DDG was the worst GK in the league about 18 months ago but your stats show he is basically exactly that.

 

[Enigma_87]

If ETH persists with DDG next season, then I'm afraid he deserves blame should we miss out on the CL or a trophy run.

It’s pretty obvious that ETH wants to replace him. ST and CM department however need addressing. Whether he will have the funds to fill all positions is another matter

 

[BorisManUtd]

Henderson seems to be rated by lower PL sides so hopefully we can sell him for decent fee and use it for a GK.

 

[Acquire Me]

Top of the list in the OP.

Never seen him play a full match, but get him the feck in.

I love DDG, but everything comes to an end. If he stay he needs to get a quality keeper to challenge him.

 

[Oscar Bonavena]

I’ve always been in the “he needs replacing but it’s not a priority” camp. And that the money could be spent on other things.

I got that wrong. Id pretty much take any replacement right now.

Same here, mate. I've come round in the last number of months.

I thought, "he's still a great shot stopper". He's not. He's deficient in almost every way as a top level keeper now.

We're trying to build a formula one car, but insist on driving it with the handbrake on.

 

[redcucumber]

Sell Henderson, release De Gea and sign Diogo Costa. Don't overcomplicate it.