He's just crap mate, end of.
- you might well be right
He's a goalie, surely there is only one way to play, and that is stop the ball going in to the net.
Surely not at the top level mate?
He is actually pretty good at stopping the ball going into the net - but you would expect a goalkeeper to be good at stopping shots at semi-pro level. When you get to international level keepers you would expect most of them to save the vast majority of shots hit at them. Mignolet probably saves a handful more than expected out of every hundred shots that go his way.
Since that aspect of their performance is pretty similar, keepers at this level are judged by quite afew other factors - probably the top three being how many mistakes they make, their distribution and their command of the area.
Getting high scores in all those aspects means you have found yourself a competent keeper but now you have to consider what style of keeper they are. Cech, for example, is great with crosses and plays in a solid, conservative way.
Pepe, at his best, was phenomenal with his feet and anticipating the play coming off his line. Playing Pepe instead of Cech therefore meant we could push the defence twenty yards up teh field and compress the space with the ability to launch quick counter attacks as required. N oway we could have done that with Cech who relies on the defence playing a low-block with midfield trackers.
Indeed, it was intersting to see Pepe play behind a poor man's version of Chelsea (which Steve Clarke had developed with Mourinho) substituting Carra for Terry, Lucas for Makalele, Gerrard for Lampard and Carroll for Drogba. It didn't end well.
The entire team is affected by the way the goalie plays.
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