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Martin Dubravka has been the big difference since replacing Karl Darlow – The killer stats

3 years ago
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It took two months and eleven games on the bench before Martin Dubravka was restored to the Newcastle United Premier League first team.

With Newcastle continuing to struggle and looking more and more like relegation candidates, supporters left bemused that the club’s clear number one was being ignored.

Karl Darlow had done well overall BUT Martin Dubravka clearly on a different level to his stand-in.

The opening 25 Premier League matches saw Newcastle and Karl Darlow concede a massive 43 goals.

The last six PL games have seen NUFC and Martin Dubravka concede only eight goals.

Is it really as simple as this, when it comes to measuring the jobs the two goalkeepers have done, both admittedly in difficult circumstances (playing under Steve Bruce and his clueless tactics / management)?

Well, delving deeper, there are other underlying stats to consider.

An updated table has been published on Thursday (15 April 2021) by ‘The Other 14’ (who specialise on stats/tables etc on the 14 clubs who aren’t the ‘Big Six’) which shows the save percentages of Premier League goalkeepers:

As you can see, Karl Darlow fourteenth on the list with a save percentage of 67.5%, whilst Martin Dubravka is third on the list with a 74.1 ratio of shots saved (we got in touch with the Other14 and they explained that when Ciaran Clark scored an own goal in the 1-1 draw with Villa, for the purposes of calculating save percentage stats, own goals aren’t included).

Another relevant table was published last week by the Other14 when it came to Premier League goalkeepers, this table covering all PL matches this season so far, up until last weekend:

As you can see, Martin Dubravka doing far better than Karl Darlow when it comes to the expected goals stats, compared to how many goals actually conceded.

Karl Darlow didn’t let anybody down this season BUT simple fact is, Martin Dubravka is a top class keeper.

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