Arsenal have had a busy summer of incomings so far this window - capped off with last week's double swoop for Martin Odegaard and Sheffield United goalkeeper Aaron Ramsdale.
A deal for around £25million was agreed with the Championship side for the stopper, who has suffered back-to-back relegations from the Premier League.
Arsenal’s initial interest in the 23-year-old raised some eyebrows, particularly given that he was a key player in a poor Sheffield United side last year that were relegated having conceded 63 goals and accumulated just 23 points.
And although there were three sides who conceded more goals across the campaign, signing a keeper who conceded so many last season left a number of Arsenal fans uninspired.
However, judging a keeper based on goals conceded alone isn’t necessarily a fair method of assessment, especially in a poor side such as Sheffield United’s last season. This is because playing in such a team means you’ll tend to face more shots on average when compared to division rivals.
Last season, according to FBref, Ramsdale was facing approximately 5.39 shots per 90 - the second highest in the league. For comparison, Bernd Leno faced roughly 3.36 at Arsenal.
Facing more efforts on your goal which will inevitably lead to more goals against. As a result, different metrics have been created solely to better gauge a goalkeeper’s performance beyond goals against.
One of these is utilising post-shot Expected Goals against (PSxGA) data and comparing that to the number of goals conceded by a player. In recent times, xG has become prevalent within football and is basically a metric that measures the quality of a shot based on several variables such as assist type, shot angle and distance from goal.
However, PSxGA uses both that, but also information from after the shot has been hit right up until if it was to pass the goalkeeper. So this includes characteristics such as defensive pressure, speed and shot trajectory and tends to give a better overview of the quality of a shot.
Across both of last season and the one prior - in which Ramsdale again conceded 60+ goals en route to relegation with Bournemouth - the 23-year-old’s combined Premier League PSxGA was 123.6.
Across that same time period, he’s conceded 125 league goals. This means that from a fairly solid sample size within the Premier League, he’s performed at an on-par level and most likely would have conceded far fewer goals if playing behind a stronger defence.
Still in the infancy of his career, Arsenal are most likely banking on Ramsdale not only sustaining his current performance levels at the Emirates but also improving further as he develops, reaching a point where he’s able to outperform his PSxGA on a consistent basis.
Beyond his shot-stopping capabilities, Arsenal officials are also fans of Ramsdale’s distribution, as well as his bravery coming out of goal and off his line to claim crosses.
In the Premier League last season, only four keepers had a higher percentage of crosses that were successfully stopped than Ramsdale (9.5%).
Although he has likely arrived as Leno’s understudy initially, the evidence above does suggest that he could have the potential to one day become the club’s No.1, especially with Leno’s contract set to expire in 2023.
