Agree to disagree. As i said, he doesn't have time to react and there's nothing wrong with expecting his centre-half to do a better job. He could have bulldozed his way between Evans and Bentancur (and basically allow an easy tap in, that wasn't in the cards), but that's not the "proactive goalkeeping" top goalies are known for. It's something straight out of Pickford's handbook.
24
Season Average Rating
- Appearances
- 48
- Clean sheets
- 12
- Goals
- 0
- Assists
- 0
- Yellow cards
- 6
Maybe he still wanted to be there, in the dressing room, supporting his teammates ?
Go watch some Neur saves in his pomp. Close the angle and make your self big.
Onana shrinked like a Willy (not Caballero) under the cold shover.
Yes of course course we should expect our central defender to not be so easily beaten, but a keeper cannot assume everything will be ok in a 1v1 situation. Onana has to know that his 36 year defender is vulnerable to being beaten by a 26 year old attacking player. At the moment Onana and the rest of the world saw that Evans was struggling, Onana had to come out which in this case meant only two steps, not ten yards. Instead, Onana remained rooted to his line and once he froze on his line he had no chance of stopping the shot.
What makes Allison and Ederson, the standard by which Onana must be judged, elite keepers is their ability to see danger and proactively close the angle down. Both Alisson and Ederdon are elite shot stoppers and Onana, unfortunately for United, is not.
I have watched plenty of Neuer, thank you. Onana isn't that good, if that's what you're asking. I even mentioned a save Neuer made in a similar situation. It's a very difficult one to pull off. Sometimes a shot is good and goes in. It happens.
Again, Bentancur shoots the moment he creates separation from Evans. There's no time to react, and he has every right to make the choice he made because, with Evans committing himself, there's a 2v2 in front of our goal. He's made more than a few blunders in his short time at the club. The Forest goal where he laid down, for example, was comedy gold. There's no need to treat every goal we concede as his fault.
Not every goal is entirely his fault, but almost all of them are savable.
Every goal is saveable.
meh not everything is his fault, but at this point you can see his form/technique just isnt super great. Gonna cause more problems than it should and result in more goals than should be allowed overall. He needs to really buckle down and focus on it to make it as a top GK
Most shots are savable, if you overanalyze them. Yeah, he should have closed down a difficult angle and open up the chance for a cross and a possible tap in, for which he would have been crucified. I'm sure people would have blamed him, too, had the Spur's header gone in, although it was a 0.60xG attempt from point-blank range, because he was right under it. Just like some people dismissed his save from Haaland's header vs City for the same reason. He's made a lot of errors, costly ones at that. But some attempts are good and, believe it or not, they become goals. Bentancur took the only available option and smashed the ball at the far corner. It happens.
Last edited:
I do not fault Onana for the first goal, which was clearly on Dalot, so there’s no need to wheel out the straw man argument that I blame Onana for “every goal we concede”.
As for the point at hand, when a striker is inside the six yard box no keeper who has ever lived has the reflexes to stop a well placed shot. The only thing a keeper can do is to come off his line and attempt, however futile the attempt may be, to close fine the angle. If the keeper is beaten, so be it, but staying on your line and making yourself small is the very last thing a keeper should do in the situation Onana was in.
No goalkeeper coach would ever instruct his keeper to do what Onana did in that situation. What a top keeper does is what Allison and Ederson without fail, which is to close the angle down. Even if in the end you’re beaten, as a keeper your job is to make the chance as difficult as possible for the forward.
Van der sar is that you?
Unfortunately not, I wish I was even 1% as good as him.
But when you think about it, every shot on goal can potentially be saved, but there are so many factors at play in every in game sequence that not every shot will be saved.
Not every shot can be saved. Where does this idea even come from?
Can't believe what I am reading. It was Evans job to cut his shooting angle. Evans was easily beaten there and there was no time for Onana to come down. You stay on your line assuming defender will cut off that angle .
Talk about having an agenda .
We can all stipulate that Evans was beaten. But that indisputable fact hardly relieves Onana of any obligation to close down the angle and at least attempt to make the chance more difficult for Betancur.
If it becomes standard technique for United keepers to stay rooted to their line when a defender is beaten, which will happen from time to time, we can all kiss goodbye any hope of United lifting a major trophy in our and our children’s lifetimes.
That's an unstoppable penalty but the keeper has to do better for me - Michael Owen
I would advice to look up some GK training videos in YouTube. It would help you understand when to come up and when to stay back. Or look up some videos of Goal keepers to see what they do in such cases.
Nice quote!
Going back to the point, take the Richarlison goal off the corner kick. Dalot was entirely at fault leaving the back post after he was on the back post. So in that sense the shot should and could have been blocked by the defender, but only keepers can “save” a shot. In that situation, no keeper on the planet could have saved the header by Richarlison. It had pace and precision and was beyond the reach of Onana, who reasonably expected more from his defender whose job it was to protect the back post.
As for the second goal, if Onana’s decision to stay on his line in that situation is how it’s going to be until his contract runs down then we really can’t complain about dropping stupid points and falling out of trophy runs by November.
Yes, you should.
I don't look at the 'keepers in isolation but as part of the defence. We haven't had a stable defence this season so I'll cut him some slack plus it's his first season. Having said that, I'm bricking it everytime he touches the ball. He may be able to pass a ball but I don't think we have the players to play out from the back effectively. Every game is the same, especially at home. Teams will press us like crazy in the first 20 minutes knowing we are slow starters trying to force a mistake. Corners are still a weakness, both defending them and taking them for us. Back in the days of Schmeichel and Van de Sar, we also had a top class back four. I'm not convinced about the current back four although Martinez returning is a bonus.
Jesus fecking Christ. Only 3 out of those 20 named have faced more shots than the keeper at Manchester United. That's insane. This season is such a dumpster fire.
Trying to find a bright spot, Onana has actually got the third best save percentage in the prem, and not far from the top. I know he pushes it out a lot and I know his handling looks flappy but if his save percentage stays up there it might become time to say he's actually better than he looks.
https://fbref.com/en/comps/9/keepers/Premier-League-Stats
Is there a way to compute how much a GK reduced the xG of a shot through his actions? (A proxy for positioning, body shape etc.)
I think PSxG is useful but not enough to quantify GK performance.
I think PSxG is useful but not enough to quantify GK performance.
Why would you need that?
According to the table I quoted he’s been the third best shot stopper (statistically) in all of Europe’s top 5 leagues!
He just always looks like an accident is about to happen, and sometimes has, but I've decided I like him. If he gets his confidence I think he'll become quite a character.
Yeah, he doesn't inspire me with confidence either. His technique always look a bit off and the CL howlers are hard to forget. But I think this has all ended up with his overall contributions being seriously underrated.
To be a little pedantic, he has stopped the 3rd most shots faced but as being the 3rd best would be relative to the quality of shots faced.
Because Onana ranks pretty high on raw PSxG but for me his positioning, handling is still very suspect. I don't want the PSxG people to drown out the conversation around how good he is come end of season. For what it's worth, I have no agenda against him - I think he has almost Scholes-like passing ability from GK and I'm happy to have him around. I want a proper way to judge him w/o the noise from big errors / bogus stats.
Specifically this stuff:
Tweet
— Twitter API (@user) date
codified as a stat. https://goalkeeper.com/ seems to be the only account that deep dives into GK stats but no open data unfortunately.
To badmouth Onana, of course.
While I believe every player can and should improve, and Onana is no different, that table tells me that the back line protecting him is far more at fault for our Goals Against than he is. Based on some other things I've watched, EtH's tactics are forcing our squad to get too vertically stretched. Though it's all partly due to the injuries - the better players have been the ones out.
There’s only 5 teams named here who have conceded more goals. I don’t know what the intention was of the OP posting that table but it’s a bunch of rubbish. He’s only that high in the table because he’s faced so many shots. It does prove anything.
Eh, no. Looks like you don’t understand what the table is showing.
I mean, that's a funny way at looking at the table. It shows the goals that he has stopped from going in, in the last column. And is pretty high in that stat.
Looking a goals conceded is a very one dimensional way to judge a keeper. We have been completely ripped open by almost every team, and concede spme massive, clear cut chances.
That being said, he has made a bunch of mistakes, but I feel he can improve
You mean he could be even better than 3rd?
I'm just saying that if 95% of shots he saves are soft or straight at him it tells us more about how poor we are defensively rather than how good he's been. I feel like that's the case because I can remember very few saves that I thought were good and not just saves I'd except a semi-pro to save.
Keepers with high save percentages are normally those with tight defences in front of them that force attackers to shoot more from further out, as well as being a decent keeper of course. Pope was famous for that when at Burnley, Sean Dyche being so good at drilling his side defensively. I'm not saying that's the case with Onana, I don't think it is, just furthering the discussion.
98 shots faced, 26 goals conceded, that tells me that a team has 1:4 chance of scoring against him, not very good odds that, if you are a United fan.
I dont trust Onana and i see him as a downgrade from DDG. Whenver he needs to make a save im nervous and i fully expect him to do something stupid.