Fair enough if thats your opinion. But again these are qualitative rather than qualitative and as such boil down basically to your personal opinions which I just don't understand as it seems there are very few people that seem to consider him a weak link at Reading. Athletically limited how? What bad errors? How many saves is enough? He's made 156 saves this year and given up 31 goals. Friedel has made 134 saves and given up 31 also. Does he make enough saves? van der Saar has made 91 saves and given up 16 goals. Paul Robinson has made 88 saves at Tottenham. Who should I be comparing him against as a "premiership quality keeper"? As for the games I've seen - he's seemed as capable as all but maybe the top few keepers in the league. Maybe it's a definition thing. I assume there are probably 3-4 keepers in the league that are the best I assume there are probably 2-3 keepers that are in over their head I assume the rest are just fine. So to me, I think there are maybe 2-3 starting keepers in the EPL that maybe dont have what it takes to be there and I can't imagine Marcus is one of the worst 3 keepers in the league. Any help? I really don't see why you have that opinion, but maybe I just have to accept that ... there may be no solid numbers and it's just the way you see it.
Not sure it is any crazier to question Robinson's positioning on these goals than Howard's on Matthew Taylor's goal, which was widely debated here. If Howard were Robinson in this example the line would be that he was leaning to the near post on the Butt goal because he lost confidence after being megged on the first goal.
Can't wait to see SFS' response to this, though, the way of admitting defeat on BS is usually just silence. ( I hate that about these boards.)
What exactly is not included in "may" that requires "may not" ? that one always makes me laugh. And I thought the Brits knew the language better than we.
So Moyes made his recent statements about Howard because of the people on the Big Soccer Yanks Abroad board? back atcha
Well see what Coppell and Hammond do by the time this transfer window ends. He's slow and a poor jumper. His reaction time isn't very good either. Vs. Everton, vs. Chelsea, vs. Blackburn, et cetera et cetera. he needs to save some shots that are currently going in. Friedel makes more difficult saves and is a top level GK. How many saveable shots and gotten-able crosses (pardon my mangled English) has v.d. Sar allowed lately? Yes and had a horrible year. Lehmann, v.d. Sar, Cech, Carson, Niemi, Given, Foster, James, Cudicini, Schwarzer, Reina, Friedel, Green. And I think he is. It's very difficult to judge the GK's based on a number of saves without having a distribution of saves and even making a qualitative judgement what was a difficult save and what was a gimme. We went through this last week with Howard spilling a ball that I thought was very manageable. Others disagreed. FWIW, I'd thought Marcus was a Colaship GK at best since his return to the Nats about a year and a half ago.
As opposed to every other national teams goalkeeper not named Buffon or Cech. Watching a few highlight shows each week, it is amazing the number of 'bad' decisions that these big time keepers make with only a split second to make a decision.
Because he is England's #1 with lots of hope and promise. Replacing such outstanding recent performances of David James and over-the-hill David Seaman. By the way, Given is so underrated on Newcastle.
There is no way they are bringing in another goalkeeper to take over the starting job from Marcus this season. If they do, I will fully admit that you were right and Marcus was not Premiership quality I disagree with you, I think that's your perception of him as oppposed to solid comparison with other keepers You don't get it, you can't just name games. You have to give EXAMPLES. What happened in these. Were they howlers? Were they just soft goals? Were they bad positioning or lousy technique? What are the bad errors you mentioned. You have to EXPLAIN if you want me to take it seriously. Ah, save the shots that are going in - wouldn't have thought of that. That's why I listed the number of saves he has and compared them to other keepers. Marcus has made a LOT of saves this year. Reading have given up a lot of goals (31) but from the numbers he's saved quite a few. Could this possibly mean that Reading's defense are giving up a lot of shots? I listed two other keepers who have given up 31 goals and had less saves. Newcastle's 2 keepers (including Given) have given up 30 goals and saved 134. Sheffield United's have given up 30 and saved about 120. You said he doesn't save enough shots - I think I've shown you that as a percentage of shots faced - HE DOES. So now we're changing your criterion to difficult saves? Yet he's still arguably the best keeper in the league. So 13 keepers of 20 EPL teams are good enough to play in the leauge (which is what Premiership quality means). Lets take a look at these. Foster has fewer saves per game than Hahnemann. Niemi has only 97 saves and given up more goals. Green of West Ham??? Charlton's Carson? He has 118 saves this year - fewer than Marcus and given up 43 goals! You're argument of not making enough saves is looking .... You honestly and truly think Marcus is one of the worst 2-3 goalies in the league. Well if that's true I wasted some good time this morning trying to show you otherwise. Making enough saves was YOUR criterion - not mine. The same time that Marcus was one of the best if not the best GK in the Championship. You obviously don't rate Marcus as a keeper. You are entitled to your opinion but it seems you more of a personal valuation rather than an objective one.
edwin van der sar david james jose reina jussi jaaskelainen marcus hahnemann The top 5 keepers on actim.
Moyes says, "We were deliberately deep." Your line about "not that deep" is something you've concocted in order to avoid admitting you were wrong. (But by all means, keep arguing -- you're only going to convince people that you're fixated on blaming Howard.) Getting back to the play, Moyes talks about poor defensive execution, which considering they left Hunt wide open directly in front of the goal is completely obvious and would've been a serious problem no matter where the offside line was. And when Moyes talks about "filling our goal line with players," he sure as heck isn't implying the defense was too deep. The defenders were carrying out a strategy they had worked on in training. They knew where they were supposed to be; you sure as heck didn't. But it's pretty clear that Tim Howard was right where he was supposed to be ... on this play, he did well on everything we're in position to judge.
The commentators blamed Howard as the Goalkeeper is the one in charge back there and by any traditional measure the defenders were too deep. Now if Moyes had worked on something else and indeed wanted his players that deep then he was going against any conventional and traditional wisdom and he may want to re-think this revolutionary tactic in any similar situations as it obviously did not work. Howard would be exonerated and the blame placed on Moyes and his staff. Typically the manager would ask the GK what he felt comfortable with and where he wanted players placed, who should mark who etc in dangerous free kick situations. I would find it strange and again, against convention, if Howard said he was comfortable with his defenders being right on top of him in that situation.
That's a much more reasonable post, but all the same, going from "unconventional strategy" to "Howard at fault" is speculation, no matter whether it's you or a color commentator doing it. On this thread, we've already had a Reading supporter suggest that dropping bodies back was a reasonable tactic against Shorey's free kicks.
Obviously? Because Everton left a player appallingly unmarked and the linesman blew a call? The big problems on this play had little to do with moving the defense a few feet forward. For certain posters, I guess every goal is "obviously" Howard.
Guess I missing something. England, are you arguing that although Moyes told his players to line up deep Howard didn't line them up deep properly or that he should have defied Moyes? I'm confused.
Has Actim done anything to convince us that its ratings make sense? Are they somehow interpretable? Were van der Sar and James top-rated on their previous teams, or is their current stature a result of playing for winners? In a vacuum, soccer stats are not at all straightforward, so until they justify their approach, I'll be a skeptic. As an alternative, I'd prefer to base my interpretations upon the fundamentals. For instance, in its 23 games, Reading has scored 31 goals (avg is 27.6) and also allowed 31 (avg 27.6). So if I'm looking at that team, I want to know who deserves credit for a strong offense and who deserves blame for a weak defense. And obviously, if some defensive performances have been awful, I may still end up giving credit to other ones. That said, I haven't watched Reading closely enough to say whether Hahnemann has been one of the reasons for its subpar defense. Yesterday was obviously a bad day for him, and I remember a few other bad moments, e.g. getting beaten to a ball by Drogba, fumbling a ball into Kuyt's path. But over the course of a season, that stuff happens. Like sfs, I'm not convinced he's good enough to stick at this level (which is an awfully high level), but I don't expect to convince anybody else whether I'm right.
nothing to be confused about...re-read the post...its all in there. The point is that NORMALLY a manager (Moyes) would consult with his Goalkeeper to make sure he was on board with any positioning of players in free kick situations.
From their website, it looks like total garbage. They don't justify what they're doing at all, and they don't lay out the formulas in a manner that can be dissected. EDIT to clarify: the justifications they offer are along the lines of "if you shoot more often, you're good," which is incredibly imprecise. If you hit a slow roller straight at the keeper, you get points. To me, that seems like exactly the opposite of what should happen -- in such a case your teammates deserve points for setting you up, and you should lose points for shooting poorly. And this leaves aside the really hard question of deciding how many points each kind of play is worth. Without real justification, the Actim Rating is nothing more than monkeys on keyboards.
Sure, but is unlikely to give them veto power. But if you aren't slagging Howard for the line-up of the backs we've got no tussle. It seemed that by quoting the on-air guys (who would not be aware of the Moyes quote, obviously) you were saying they were right.