‘‘But the stats show he’s better than Ramsdale!!!’’

I guess people watch stats instead of football matches

People stare themselves so blind on stats its unreal. While they also don’t consider the context of those stats. People will just throw stats around like ‘‘passing accuracy’’ but won’t take into account against which opponents it was and how those opponents played (like did they pressure the passer a lot or not?).

Player X gets room to pass the ball around. The opponents don’t bother to pressure him much because they are worrying more about another player for example. Their managers gave them the task to stop that other player in this scenario.

Meanwhile player Y doesn’t get that same wiggle room to pass the ball around. In his case the opposing players do get the assignment to pressure him more.

Player X had a passing accuracy of 90%! wow so good

Player Y had a passing accuracy of 85%! see player X HAS to be better

Meanwhile Player Y did amazingly well with tremendous pressure put on him. He kept turning and twisting his opponents and still finding his teammates perfectly 85% of all the passes he gave. Only made a couple slight errors while under pressure. While Player X had free room to pass around at his hearts desire while he made 1 big error while there was no pressure on him whatsoever.

Stat junkies will tell you Player X is the superior player. His stats show that! While people that actually watch the matches know that Player Y is the better player and can do much more when there’s pressure put on him.

Prepare to be surprised. 

I think he’s more likely to dig his heels in and back Raya. Mudryk’s fluke sliced cross wasn’t Raya’s fault. The annoying part is that Raya isn’t an obvious upgrade to Ramsdale, he’s better at some things but worse at others. I know Arteta didn’t like how inconsistent Ramsdale had become with his long distribution but we’re now less press resistant when we’re playing out from the back because Raya’s pass selection is not optimal to beat the opponents’ press.

Arteta should have backed 1 keeper and gone on from there. He’s created this scenario where every keeper mistake will be over analysed by the media and creates uncertainty and extra pressure on the keepers.

If he stays with Raya every mistake will continue to be magnified. If he starts playing Ramsdale he’ll come under the same pressure.

The only thing he can do is release a statement saying “I had mentioned alternating keepers, but I feel Raya has shown enough to be named number 1 keeper. Mistakes can happens we need to back him etc.”

Unai Simon undisputed keeper for Spain. The Pl fans once again wrong saying that Raya was the best option for Spain.