Leeds United goalkeeper Illan Meslier may only be 20 years old and still proving himself in top-level football, but there can be few doubts over his mentality.
Having impressed for Carlos Corberan’s Under-23s last term, his Whites debut came in front of 58,000 fans in the FA Cup third round away at Arsenal.
Leeds exited the competition that night following a 1-0 defeat, but the youngster, then just 19, made an immediate impression, as much for his long-range distribution into the channels as his shot-stopping.
He had to be patient but took his opportunity with both hands when first-choice goalkeeper Kiko Casilla was handed an eight-match suspension from the FA, coming into the most high-pressure of scenarios as Leeds closed in on the promotion run-in.
From 10 appearances in the Championship last term, Meslier was on the winning team on eight occasions, keeping six clean sheets and conceding just four goals, none of which he could have reasonably deemed in any way culpable for.
The France Under-21 international had evidently done enough to please Marcelo Bielsa and keep his trust going into the Premier League season, playing every minute of the campaign so far.
Meslier has already shown impressive signs of development, with his passing accuracy making a considerable leap from 74.7% last season to 82.7% in the top flight.
His distribution remains one of his standout attributes: no Premier League side has a better passing accuracy from goal kicks over a 40-yard distance so far this season (53.3% - via Stats Bomb data on FBref.com )
Only Chelsea’s Edouard Mendy has kept more clean sheets, only four goalkeepers have made more saves than his tally of 31, while only three have completed more passes (via WhoScored.com ).
Meslier has now made as many appearances in the Premier League as he did in the Championship last term (10). He’s conceded considerably more goals; more than four times as many, in fact, with 17 goals shipped compared to four last term.
But that’s a natural part of the step-up in quality, and facing prolific, proven forwards like Jamie Vardy and Mohamed Salah. He’s certainly been given a lot more to do, having already made 10 more saves (31) than he did from the same number of minutes last season, with 18 more shots on target faced (43 compared to 25 last term).
There have been no outright errors, though, while there have only been the odd minor question mark. Some have suggested he might have been quicker to get down and stop Helder Costa’s unfortunate own goal away at Crystal Palace, for example.
Perhaps the most impressive thing about Meslier this term has been his ability to produce two of his best performances to date after suffering successive 4-1 defeats to Leicester and Crystal Palace.
Older and more experienced goalkeepers will certainly have suffered knocks to their confidence after conceding eight goals in two games, but that doesn’t appear to be the case with Meslier, who maintains the same steely exterior as he did on his Emirates debut and the intense promotion chase last season.
He’s kept back-to-back clean sheets against Arsenal and Everton, making eye-catching stops in both outings, doing especially well to get in the way of a Bukayo Saka effort as the 10-man Gunners played on the counter at Elland Road.
Particularly vital in picking up three points at Goodison Park, he was the youngest goalkeeper to make eight saves in one match since a 20-year-old Joe Hart - who would go on to win two Premier League titles with Man City and make 75 appearances for England - did so back in January 2008 ( via Jonny Cooper of Opta).
In terms of the post-shot expected goal (PSxG) metric, which uses an algorithm with thousands of data points to determine how likely a shot is to go in after being struck, Everton registered 1.2xG ( via FBref.com ) -–namely good enough efforts to have scored at least one goal – but were denied time and again by Meslier.
The young Leeds keeper has been thrown into the deep end and has had to endure some challenging moments, but he’s demonstrated an unerring ability to step up to the plate.
There have been several outstanding performers so far this season, but Meslier deserves to belong in any conversation with the very best of them, having made the step-up seamlessly.
