Exactly. People point to stats but don't look past their nose, nor watch what he actually does
Alisson Becker | Budding Target Man
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Ridiculous revisionist nonsense. We don’t win the Champions League or Premier League without him. He’s one of the best keepers in the league.He's been shite the whole time. He just didn't have anything to do. Literally the only reason people rate him is because he had a good clean sheet record, which was because Liverpool were playing so well. People can't look past a simple stat. He didn't even have to make decent saves. We were told this was because his positioning is just so good
As for one bad day. He's made a load of very daft errors since they stopped playing so well, especially when he didn't have his great defence, which was supposedly so great because he was so good at organising it.
You can’t see much else? He has literally everything you could want from a keeper. If you’re deliberately ignoring all the stats then use your fecking eyes!
He's generally quite good by the best metrics we have for shot-stopping? Also at sweeping? And is overall a net positive in the air?
I honestly don’t see him make much saves. I think he’s a great sweeper keeper but little else that really stands out
He’s brilliant one on one, mops up everything behind the back four, decisive on high balls into the box, very rarely beaten with long range shots (can’t actually remember one this season?) and comfortable with the ball at his feet. I don’t think there are any other keepers better than him. His stats are insanely good too. Which really just backs up my opinion here.
I said he was overrated then too. What did he do? He had a team playing blinding football in front of him. I always ask for examples of him doing what people say he apparently does. No one can ever give any other than out of context stats.
If you watch the football he never had to make a decent save for multiple seasons. You'll say that's silly, I'll ask for any example. No one has ever been able to give one.
He's good at coming off his line, yeah. Doesn't change that he's overrated though.
He's literally lost the ball trying to overplay it with his feet and cost them a goal, and the exact same thing nearly happened again shortly after. He also just got lobbed from a corner. A one off you may say, but he's made a load of 'one off' blunders now. How many good long range efforts has he had to save? Not many. His list of quality saves is very short.
Whenever we lose you get the odd poster come out with all this revisionist stuff as though previous seasons haven’t happened. Trent was never that good, Van Dijk was overhyped, Alisson was never a good keeper. It’s fair to criticise a bad performance but there seems to be a need to rewrite history after a bad game.
Maybe it’s just a symptom of modern football and the social media era. Everyone is knee jerk nowadays.
He doesn’t have to make spectacular saves because his positioning is so good. It’s why he’s very difficult to score past in a 1v1 where the odds suggest the attacker should score. He made one of those saves against Atletico and won us a point against Brighton. Look at our defensive record pre and post Alisson. Keepers don’t have to make blinding saves all the time to be top class.
Also you said he was shite, not overrated.
not again. If that's the case he must be super humanly good, because no other world class keeper has ever gotten away with not having to make great saves. Not even SchmeichelSurely you understand how important positioning is for a keeper? De Gea is really good at it. Mignolet had terrible positioning. His starting shape was always off as well.
I just told you I've said it the whole time. We've even had this discussion before. It's not knee jerk, it's just that it's extra obvious again today. It's quite normal to talk about it in that case.
De Gea makes great saves though?
Would say this was a decent save. Perhaps no one has responded because it's a bit silly to suggest that he isn't really called into action?
Yet is a worse shot-stopper by the metrics overall (not this year to be fair)? Why are you basing your evaluation solely on the degree of difficulty of the saves made? Or considering that Alisson's aggressive positioning helps circumvent dangerous situations before they can develop on a regular basis?
The whole point of +/- post-shot xG is to eliminate the impact of a defense - it's easily the most objective way to assess shot-stopping. A goalkeeper having to fling himself to make up for suboptimal positioning isn't really a mark of quality.
Yeah and if he hadn't scored at West Brom we probably wouldn't be playing CL this season either.
So in your mind then Alisson isn’t even in the top five keepers in the league? I don’t understand how you can ignore his impact on our fortunes. We won the Champions League and Premier League partly because Alisson is such a good keeper.
De Gea is a very good goal keeper. I’m not saying he’s not. But making ridiculous saves every week isn’t the only or main criteria for what makes a great keeper. You can laugh at the positioning point all you want, but there’s a reason Alisson makes saves in 1v1’s where other keepers don’t. He was our man of the match a week earlier against Brighton.
You can see from that video how good he is in a 1v1. He never over commits in those scenarios and knows when to go to ground.
Aha, that exact one was posted the last time I said this too. It's alright? And it's a rarity. If there's only one go to clip that tells you something.
As for the old great positioning meaning never having to fling himself anywhere, it's just senseless. No matter where a keeper is positioned, you can put the ball somewhere they'd need to fling themselves if you're not within a few metres. Liverpool had a ridiculous amount of energy if you remember. Players had to rush their shots and they often ended up straight at the keeper. That wasn't because of his incredible positioning. As mentioned below though, he is decent at closing down.
I never said that? He's a decent keeper, just very overrated. 'Shite' was an exaggeration, admittedly.
Your good fortunes coincided with more than just Alisson. I don't think great saves are the be all and end all. He is good at 1v1s, I never said he wasn't. He's definitely not as good with his feet as made out.
Yeah he's tremendous. This guy on twitter specialises in GK analysis - he's developed a model detailing the optimal way for GKs to approach 1v1s:
He consistently cites Alisson as the best around - but did say that today he was poor for the second goal:
I actually think his distribution is his biggest weakness personally. He’s sometimes lazy with passes out from the back and there’s evidence to back that up.
What’s your opinion on Ederson?
1st goal from Brighton?
I’ll have to follow that guy. I did think something was off with the second goal. It was easier for Fornals to score than it should’ve been.
I suppose I just don't understand how you can put players rushing their shots down to Liverpool's system (which oftentimes leaves 3v3s at the back given their pressing and fullbacks) but not down to Alisson's impact? And again, the whole point of post-shot xG is to eliminate the impact of defenders, so his positive impact there is down solely to his shot stopping. It purely looks at how often a shot is scored based on where it was shot - so he's clearly doing something beyond just relying on poor finishing.
Yeah it seems like the partial engage where the keeper comes only partway out is basically suboptimal in all situations but especially centrally - this makes sense to me at least as the angle probably isn't being cut down significantly enough to offset the reduced reaction time for the GK.
I've don't watch enough full City games for a fair comparison to be honest. I'd be going off highlights.
I watch Liverpool games because I've some close mates that are Liverpool fans.
Interesting thread. I have a blindspot when it comes to keepers, as I can't analyse their game the way I would an outfielder (at least outside of the basics), so it's cool to read stuff like this.
It's definitely difficult as there are almost inherently more variables to consider when evaluating performance and as well I think flashiness is most easily overrated at goalkeeper versus any other position.
The guy is a worthy twitter follow if you like PL statistical analysis - at least in my opinion. He does sometimes get a bit fixated in his own terminology but a lot of what he puts out there is in line with the eye test and for me is additive. He has some interesting work on dead ball situations as well.
Allison has 241 pl appearance with a combined total of 59 high claims and catches.
DDG, who doesn’t command his box and pussies out of challenges, has 961 pl games with a combined total of 302 high claims and catches. There isn’t much difference there percentage wise and that’s with Liverpool who play a high line and has the best defender at heading the ball in front of him.
It’s not that impressive. Again, that’s against David who is probably the worst PL keeper at commanding his box.
DDG has played almost 4x as many pl games and has 14 errors leading to a goal. Allison is on 7. That’s shocking especially when you consider how error prone David has become and I’m not even sure the premier league website has been updated since the West Ham game!
Going to copy/paste this to piss off a scouse mate, cheers! What's your source for the stats there? Thanks a lot
Premier league website
Can’t the lower claims and catches be explained by the fact that Liverpool under Klopp since Alisson arrived have mostly dominated games, so Alisson has less opportunities to claim/catch? De Gea has played under numerous managers and faced differing levels of pressure. He’d have probably faced less under Mourinho than Solskjaer for example, with the former being more conservative in his approach.
On the errors, Klopp requires Alisson to play short most of the time to one of the back four or a midfielder. His distribution is far from perfect and he’s made a number of errors leading to goals as a result (two against City last season and one early on against Leicester come to mind). De Gea either doesn’t have to distribute like Alisson does, or is less likely to make a mistake of that nature. De Gea’s mistakes seem to be more related to shot stopping.
Considering how much Alisson sees the ball, 7 errors doesn’t seem that bad to me. What’re Emerson’s numbers like? That’d be a good comparison to see how Alisson compares.
Ederson: 155 games, 6 errors = 1 error every 25,83 games
De Gea: 350 games, 14 errors = 1 error every 25 games
Alisson: 110 games, 7 errors = 1 error every 15,71 games
Kepa: 77 games, 3 errors = 1 error every 25,66 games
Not sure about other stats but De Gea 961 PL games doesn't sound right, same with Alisson's 241
Yeah, that'd be 25+ seasons of playing every game.
I only kept reading the thread to see when someone pointed that out, just an absolutely inconceivable set of numbers thrown at us.
It's really incredible. No one can give you anything aside from the stats, footage, individual awards, team trophies and personal opinion. I mean, what else do you need? Seriously, what argument can theoretically convince you? More so, the stats (including the ones at Roma, that was not a great team at the time) that you were presented were already taking in consideration the quality of the shots that he was facing, completely eliminating the aspect of defensive protection from other players. You won't get much xG from a non-threatening shot.
He's been brilliant — absolutely crucial for Liverpool in the first few seasons (probably just as influential as van Dijk was in their CL run), world-class for Roma and even arguably the best keeper in the world (although I still wouldn't put him first personally) for 2-3 seasons. Not lately though and especially not yesterday, which is good news for us.
It's interesting that you went with Schmeichel, one of the most eccentric goalkeepers (out of the all-time greats) with one of the most incredible portfolio of saves, when United had a way better example recently. Van der Sar was very much known for forcing the opposition into unfavourable situations in order to make an easier save (or even not to make one at all.
Yeah Alisson is class and very good GK with no weakness to his game. Brilliant signing for Liverpool.
You’ve got those stats badly wrong.
Change the B in his name into F. You're welcome.
Yeah I meant saves, not appearances but I kept going when rereading my post. Was a bit early in the morning to be fair!
Feck even then it makes it worse for Alisson.
350 appearances for David, 110 for Alisson. Stats show David shits over the Liverpool keeper in high balls etc.Does Alisson just not come for them? Still don’t se me what’s impressive? Where are these stats that he excels at?
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If only our keeper were as shite as Alisson the past few seasons we might have won some silverware in that time.