Couldn’t have cared less about the result today, which is horrible for me to admit but the season was over after the countless inept home performances; take your pick as to which one did it for you, for me the nail in the coffin was Leeds but the writing was on the wall after Norwich. Looking forward to a few months of forgetting about football and wondering just what on earth next season will bring. Fully expect a 30 player turnover but as long as I get my Watford back I don’t care less how it goes. Well, except doing the double over those caravan dwelling lot up the road.
I watched us but on my phone while I had the city villa game on which showed the goals of the other games as they went in. Honestly never paid much attention to my phone. N the past I wouldn’t of ever done such a thing but like most of us I’m done with this season and glad it’s over. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
During GTs relegation season, the one who's points total we have just failed to beat, we played Newcastle at home and jeered Shearer for his non-performance in the England home defeat against Scotland the previous Wed. I believe the shocking chants were along the lines of "Where were you on Wed night?", all perfectly reasonable and fair commented. Booby Robson was apoplectic in the press conference afterwards, how dare we taunt the England captain, I lost alot of respect for him after that outburst. GT was also unimpressed with us. However, his 2 daughters put him right and said that what we had chanted was not unreasonable and for him to see it from our point of view. To the great man's credit he then apologised to us the following week and admitted he overreacted.
I'll be having sleepless nights about how Udinese will cope without the funnelling of that large lake of Premier League gravy that will now stop flowing. I also see that Granada just got relegated. Aitor Karanka is in charge of them. No one deserves that.
Yet Alan Shearer seems to hold no bitterness to us unlike other BBC football presenters/pundits. He probably found it funny and humorous too! These days you'd get much worse....
Even after the Norwich disaster there were plenty of games where we could have gained points - plus we were getting a new manager! Personally, I gave up during the second half of the Palace home game which came immediately after the win at Villa and the sort of performance and result Hodgson was aiming for. But it then became apparent that the bunch of players we had would never have the fight and backbone to get out of trouble. I spent no further money on buying away tickets after that.
Foster is miles better than Bachmann. I think most people underrate him because of our poor defence. I don't know who the best keeper in league is but De gea or Alisson will still look awful if they were in goal for us this season. Sent from my TECNO P701 using Tapatalk
He is better. And he’s still awful. Also don’t really agree with your last point - being in a poor side gives you plenty of action as a GK. And Foster hasn’t stood out whatsoever. I really don’t get this fantasy that Foster has been anywhere near decent this season.
Astonishingly, I've looked back at all the last minute goals we've conceded this season. It's 10 goals in the 90th minute, which directly cost us 5 points overall. 7 if you think Louza should have won us the game against Burnley, only for us to concede moments later. Ok, it wouldn't have made any difference in the end, but 30 points we could have attained, and been closer to the pack. We conceded 77 goals, but that would have reduced to 67, which is still bad, but more in line with other seasons we've had in the Premier League. It just shows how terrible we were at closing out games. On the reverse, we did score late at Newcastle, to give us a point. Scored against Everton, which made it 5-2, and got a brace against United, to secure a win. So we scored 4 90th minute goals which gave us 1 extra point overall. We can also look at poor decisions that went against us. Leeds away, scored a perfectly legitimate goal, but was bizarrely ruled out. Would have given us an extra point, even though it was undeserved. Arsenal away, and they score the only goal after the most blatant foul on Sarr. Another point lost because of that. Spurs at home. Clear penalty not awarded on a foul on Pedro. Score was 0-0 around 70 minutes. Not saying we'd have gone on to win, but the likely case would have been a win. So 3 points lost there. Norwich at home. A clear push on Samir. Norwich go on and score then we capitulate. Who knows how the game would have gone have Mike Dean awarded a foul. As demonstrated only 24 hours later. Kane pushes Silva before scoring, but this time the goal is disallowed in the Spurs v Chelsea game. Burnley away. A clear handball by Burnley and a penalty should have been awarded. But nothing doing and we lose out on anther potential 2 points there. Arsenal at home. Arteta comes running out of his technical area to throw the ball to one of his players and they score from the attack. I'm sure had that been the other way around the officials would have disallowed it. But because it was Arsenal, everyone laughs about it. At least another 8 points, had decisions been fair....... I'm not saying we deserved anything from this season, but I am saying, is had we been given a fair crack of the whip from officials and managed the end of games better, we'd have gone close to staying up.
Exactly the same in the 06/07 season. I think I remember a stat that if the game ended on 80 minutes we'd have finished in the top 10! It's mental weakness.
Maybe, maybe not. But, with all those managerial jobs under his belt, I would think he would struggle to muster the enthusiasm of a thirty year old first timer. But he has a lot of experience and it only recently did what was potentially a very poor Crystal Palace side a lot of good. I think abusing him was poor stuff. That is not to say I was impressed with a lot of what he did - I thought he made some bizarre choices and showed a lack of imagination. Then again, he was probably appalled by some of the quality he found in the squad.
I agree with a great deal of this however at the risk of repeating myself Hodgson had to do one of the following: Don't take a job if you can't find the energy, enthusiasm or nous to improve people or have the honesty to admit that there's nothing you can do. It appears to me that he came to the second conclusion but just went through the motions in the last ten games. Admittedly so did many players but someone has to make a stand. Keegan was castigated as England coach but at least he walked away when he realized his lack of impact.
I didn't stay in the ground that long but the little time I was there, Roy getting abused was the highlight of a **** 1st half.
As @Burnsy has been making the point of, he's statistically the absolute worst regularly-featured goalkeeper in the league this season. And it's nothing to do with the defence ahead of him - they're different points and statistics, @Forzainglese.
Why will anyone read much meaning to a Stat that proves Bachmann is better than Mendy and Martinez or Dubravka being better than Pope and Pickford? Sent from my AUM-L29 using Tapatalk
That's kind of a stupid question, no? It's literally a statistic that shows he has prevented the fewest goals of any goalkeeper in the league, and is the worst shot-stopper. Exactly what remit do you have to disregard it? And what claim are you making in doing so - that Foster actually is a good goalkeeper at this point, who performed well this season? Apart from anything else, obviously the much smaller sample size for Bachmann than most others is what helps explain his surprisingly high rating there (though 15th is hardly impressive).
I think it's fair to question it. I've softened my stance a little bit on the raft of stats that are used in the game these days but there are so many variables when a keeper is facing a shot, I don't think you can boil it down to any meaningful statistic and the total number of shots faced seems far too low to iron out anomalies. You can only give a value to things like position on the pitch the shot was taken from, not how good the connection was, how much pressure the striker was under when taking the shot, was the keeper unsighted, how much did it swerve, did the striker slip, how wet was the surface, how fast the pass into the attacker was etc, etc, etc.
Fairplay - I'd be interested to see if (the royal) we were able to conjure up any significant statistics/analyses to suggest that Foster wasn't among the very worst goalkeepers in the league, to add to/contend with this set, as well as our collective eye test.
Dubravka is a very good keeper, and Pickford, while he did do really well in the run-in, hasn't always been the best for Everton. Besides, Bachmann has a smaller sample size, and there are some things this post-shot expected goals metric can't measure, like how their tendency to rush out of their goalline affects their game
So Allison is second best and Ederson eighth. Pep and Klopp will be out looking for replacements. Maybe Bachmann could do a job?
Suspect you'd have to go through it goal by goal, focusing on what he did. What struck me this year (apart from the obvious rushes of blood to the head/kicking the ball straight to attackers) was how poor his positioning seemed to be. From memory, quite a few goals didn't really go in the corner.
Foster always had a clanger in him, but was a really good keeper, at 39 it's clear he's not as agile or competant as his best years. I think Bachmann was intended to be #1 with Ben back up, but it has not turned out like that. The stats are irrelevant when the defence part like the red sea and allow shot after shot.
Think you'll find your own standards significantly more exacting than Mr Kloppo himself if second best in the league is enough for you to set out searching for a replacement
Ederson isn't an outstanding shot-stopper, but when you're at Man City, that almost doesn't matter, it's his ability with his feet which gets him in the City team
Well, I've only just seen your post and Steve Leo and others have already answered it, really. But the table gives precise numbers to somewhat subjectively measured occasions. This gives the illusion of unanswerable statistics. False precision. I'm with the Duke of Wellington on the matter of statistics. Statistics certainly have their place, but you have to be very careful what you read into them. The table, I see, has the three goalkeepers with the three worst defences in the league, but is that cause or effect? I spent this unfortunate season watching Watford's terrible defending (and I don't just mean the defence in this) breaking down again and again. That must change the goalkeeper's behaviour as they lose faith and feel forced to make panic decisions they would not make in normal situations. Against Leicester recently Foster was beaten to the ball by Vardy. But Foster was desperately trying to cover for Cathcart allowing the ball to bounce over his head, with Vardy on his shoulder. But the clincher must be to see where other keepers are in the table: Bachmann a third of the way up the table, just two places behind Schmeichal and above Mendy? No, just no. (And don't tell me it is the stats of small numbers: It considers no fewer than 71 shots that he faced). I consider Foster to be one of the finest keepers we have ever had, on two separate stints, and I go back to before Pat Jennings. Whether he will turn out to be too old now is, of course, a valid worry - but not for us.
I mean, I’m as prone to misremembering as the next man, but that just isn’t what happened. From 1:22 in the video: Cathcart was tracking the flight of the ball and had it well within range until Foster shouts (you can hear it clearly, as well as see Cathcart’s reaction) and he slams the brakes on and braces for impact.
You are quite right, I was conflating it with the fifth goal, where the ball sailed, not bounced over Cathcart's head. So a bad example of the point I was making, which I'll stick by. That is that a goalkeeper's behaviour will be altered by the behaviour of the defending in front of him, when that behaviour (in the case of Watford the behaviour is being a lousy defence) has been going on for a long time. It is a team game, of course, and the rest of the defenders may turn round and say they have no faith in the keeper. It is a problem in a team game that when it falls apart, it can all fall apart.
About 3 years ago, Foster lost that critical bit of speed off his line that a lot of his madcap rushing-out challenges in 1-on-1's relied on....and, guess what, he started giving away stupid penalties or got stuck in no-man's land as the striker tapped it into an empty net. And this season, simply looking at his reactions to many long range shots, his eyesight seems to have deteriorated as well.
Well yes, presumably, as you say you've seen my post and that others have already answered it, you've also seen my responses to those 'answers'. You can't just dispel the fact that the sample size is an explanation with Bachmann because you don't like it. I find it a strange endeavour to desperately try and justify Foster's terrible performances this season entirely by blaming them on the defence in front of him. He, equally, would have had an effect on a defence's behaviour, as they lost faith in him and felt forced to make panicked decisions knowing they can't rely on the goalkeeper to be positioned properly, or make the correct decision. There's enough other evidence about from this thread, such as Reids' diagrams on his positioning, to tell you that he performed very poorly this season, and is not a good goalkeeper. Subjectively, as I have said already here, he also appears to have been terrible, so I don't really see what leg the refuting of statistics as binary has to stand on, to be honest.
I think this has been a weakness in his game throughout his career, going back to his initial loan spell with us. Back then it was that awful little bald shyte Andy Johnson beating Ben to the ball, rather than Vardy, but it happened enough to be a noticeable flaw.
Foster was a good goalkeeper. A decade ago when he won the FA Cup with Birmingham and Man Utd and was man of the match in both games. He was a decent keeper during his time with WBA and when he first rejoined in 18/19. He never had the best judgement and would make mistakes repeatedly. Hell, that cost him Van der Saar's job. If he had been more consistent he would have been Utd's number 1. Still though, his speed in coming for the ball, good reflexes and shot-stopping ability kept him a good goalkeeper. The problem is that he is old now. He is not fast and, as someone pointed out, can't really reach the player to smother the ball, leaving him in no-man's-land (Pukki's goal at Norwich comes to mind), or making him concede penalties. His reflexes aren't the best anymore, which is normal as he is 40. He has a very acrobatic diving technique, which is good when you are young and 25, but when you are 40 it means his diving has declined, and on occasion, it seems that he would rather concede and not dive. He also seems to have lost some eyesight because he seems to consistently dive late for long shots. All this with the added bonus of him making even more mistakes than when he was young. His positioning also seems to have gone down the hill. Realistically he should have been our second choice.
