It’s emerged this week that Martin Dubravka has made a massive 102 saves this season – a tally that surpasses any other Premier League goalkeeper by quite a margin.
The Slovakian has been outstanding this season, with his save percentage only bettered by Sheffield United’s Dean Henderson (based on club’s outside the ‘big six’), but the fact he’s had to face so many shots tells us two things..
- A) He’s bailed us out on countless occasions this season.
- B) our defence hasn’t done enough to protect him this season.
Only FIVE Premier League clubs have more than the 7 clean sheets we’ve managed so far (Liverool, Sheffield Utd, Burnley, Leicester and Watford), yet that’s come via Martin Dubravka making more saves than any other Premier League goalkeeper:
As the above save table highlights, the likes of Norwich’s Tim Krul (81), Watford’s Ben Foster (79), Bournemouth’s Aaron Ramsdale (82) and Burnley’s Nick Pope (77) have all been forced to make considerably less saves than Martin Dubravka (102!).
We’ve rarely lacked heart and determination this season, with our clean sheets and results up until now proving how well Bruce has done to keep the spirit high following Benitez’s exit, but we’ve definitely got away with it at both ends of the pitch.
Take last Saturday’s 0-0 draw with Norwich as an example. Pukki got in behind our defence on countless occasions, we gave them TWO free headers from corners and could’ve conceded 2 or 3 on another day – but for Martin Dubravka.
Rain stops takeover talk lol.
Dubravka is doing a sterling job and we know our defence isn’t the best but the table is what we are interested in and as long as we don’t sit in 18th, 19th or 20th come May I will be happyish.
Dig up what ever negative stats you want. Sad macken ******.
Cocobear(Quote)
Wait a second..
So you’ll moan when we post takeover stories, but when we do an original piece looking at a fairly telling statistic, we’re ‘sad Mackem tossers’.
Have a day off mate. You don’t half read this blog a LOT for a man that constantly slates it 😆
Olly Hawkins(Quote)
Back to the Stat it could also be related to possession stats and tactics.
PremAndUp(Quote)
Your choice to use it to ask if our unsettled and injured defence has been performing well, when you have consistently given good marks to the defenders does make me ask what exactly is your agenda. This stat does highlight the quality of Dubravka and the workload he has been subjected to. The headline asks if highlights our defence but then does not answer it, so can easily be interpreted as a dig at them.
PremAndUp(Quote)
Re. ratings, how individuals perform is totally different to how many chances we concede collectively as a team.
Just look at the season we went down with Bassong at CB. He did very well himself, but the defence as a whole struggled to protect their goalkeeper.
It’s been nowhere near as bad this season, but the fact only five teams have more clean sheets than us this season is down to Dubravka – not the defence protecting him.
Olly Hawkins(Quote)