So apparently EVERY goalkeeper playing under Lampard has posted the lowest or near lowest save % of his career. He is the destroyer of goalkeepers. Some timely stats from Jonathan Wilson:
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The temptation is to conclude that Arrizabalaga simply was never that good, that Chelsea were sold a pup when they paid £71.6m for a 23-year-old two summers ago. And perhaps there is some truth to that. Arrizabalaga is still young for a goalkeeper. He certainly wouldn’t be the first to find the transition from La Liga to the Premier League difficult.
Yet Arrizabalaga’s first season was fine. His shots‑on‑target saved percentage was 67.5%, roughly in line with the 68.2% he recorded over two seasons in La Liga at Athletic Bilbao. So why would it suddenly drop?
Caballero made five league starts last season. In those games, his shots-on-target saved percentage was scarcely better than Arrizabalaga’s at 56.3%. It’s a small sample size but it is at the very least worth noting that is significantly below his career average: 71.0% over six seasons at Elche, 74% over four seasons at Málaga, 72.6% over three seasons at Manchester City. In his other five league starts for Chelsea, over the previous two seasons, he had managed 78.2%.
Scott Carson was Derby’s first choice in the Championship in 2018-19. His shots-on-target saved percentage was 66% – nowhere near as low as Arrizabalaga or Caballero last season but the fourth-worst season of his career and significantly below his overall average of 71.5%.
A pattern begins to emerge. The data set is not huge, so there must be caveats, but it appears that when Frank Lampard is in charge goalkeepers save fewer shots. There may be all kinds of reasons for that to do with coaching and man-management but there is also a basic problem to do with how his sides play. Lampard teams concede a disproportionate number of two particular types of goal: crossed set plays and counterattacks. Both leave a goalkeeper exposed, both yield chances that are relatively easier for the attacking player to convert – close-range headers and one‑on‑ones. Not all shots are equal.
The problem then magnifies itself. A keeper becomes aware he is letting in a lot of goals and making very few saves, so his confidence dips, diminishing his aura of authority and making him less likely to save the next shot, and so on. It’s hard to project the self-assurance, the arrogance, Arrizabalaga did at Wembley if almost half the shots hit at you fly in.
That Arrizabalaga needs a break, needs to reset and readjust, is obvious but there is a deeper concern. The structural problems that led Chelsea last season to let in more goals than they had in any campaign for 23 years remain to be resolved and the wider ramifications of those deficiencies continue to be felt. Chelsea is not an easy place to be a goalkeeper.
