Do West Ham need a New Keeper?
In any transfer window it is only natural that every single West Ham player is scrutinised and compared against potential transfer targets. One target this time for such scrutiny this time is keeper Adrian.
Adrian joined the club under Allardyce when Jussi Jääskeläinen was our No.1 keeper, and such was the Finn’s reliability the signing itself went rather unnoticed. As far as I can remember three was no clamour from the fans to see Adrian starting matches instead.
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However after Jussi got injured for a spell it was Adrian who stepped up to fill his boots. Despite two 3-1 losses in his first two matches Adrian soon earned his first clean sheet against Cardiff and then stole the headlines in fairly impressive fashion, keeping a clean sheet against a Chelsea side featuring Lampard, Hazard, Eto and Oscar at Stanford bridge.
He made 9 saves that day, winning that season’s West Ham Save of the Season award for a fingertip touch to safety from Oscar. He never really looked back, with his passion for the team winning over many fans, with the 5 penalty saves he has made in the premier league also helping. The fans’ love for him peaked when he scored the winning penalty after a thrilling match against Everton in the FA cup.
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But during last season the fans started to turn against him, a few mistakes and errors of judgment coupled with some strong performances from back-up keeper Randolph saw the pressure mount, with an awful display against Crystal Palace being the focal point.
Despite his passion for the club, fans were beginning to think they would prefer a more boring keeper if that meant fewer mistakes and more clean sheets, and there might be some truth to that.
So let’s look at the competition, does Adrian match up to other keepers in the league?
When we look at the most basic stat, clean sheets, Adrian comes in 5th when compared to Randolph, De Gea, Mignolet and Forster (per 90 mins played) which is obviously not good but has a lot of mitigating factors such as strength of defence etc.
When we look at goals conceded, saves per goal and distribution accuracy Adrian moves up to third in each category behind De Gea/Forster for the first two and De Gea/Mignolet for distribution. Randolph doesn’t even make half the number of saves per goal conceded.
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We can then move to the areas Adrian had the most complaints: Box control and errors leading to goals. Adrian comes out on top in number of punches per 90 minutes and second to Forster in catches per 90, so his influence over the box is good compared to his direct competition.
And then moving onto Errors leading to goals, the stat I thought would be massively against Adrian, shows we’ve been very harsh on our No.1. Adrian finishes with the second lowest on that count, with Randolph, Mignolet and Forster all making around twice as many errors leading to goals per 90 minutes.
I was willing to stand by Adrian anyway, but any comparison of stats shows that West Ham are in good shape with him as our No.1, with Randolph as a capable deputy.