Raya hasn’t received that much love from the fans because he displaced fan favorite Ramsdale despite being better on nearly every metric. Even if you don’t compare them, Raya still deserves love from the fans for his great performances

  • TrashbatLondon@alien.topB
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    10 months ago

    Raya has played like 20x more passes per game than Ramsdale averages,

    This isn’t necessarily a good thing. From where I sit, it very much seems like Raya has trouble playing a pass into areas that allow defenders to progress, or breaking the press line and getting the ball to midfield. The increased number of passes seem to be from playing Saliba and Gabriel into trouble and needing extra attempts to get out of trouble.

    and is playing riskier with the ball than Ramsdale ever did.

    Do we notice any significant improvement to make this risk worth it? We’re player much poorer than we did last season, I don’t think anyone would deny. I appreciate that on paper a keeper taking more risks might achieve better results, but we aren’t actually seeing those results yet.

    If you’ve ever watched Man City over the last decade or Liverpool with Allison you will see these moments happen multiple times each season. It comes with the territory.

    Again, the theory is there, but is it happening In practice with Raya? The entire point of the post you were supposed to be counting is that the stats are redundant because Raya isn’t passing the eye test at all yet.

    His long distribution is also like 10x better than Ramsdales

    Ten times better? Hmmm. This narrative seems to come from the final minutes of the game against City where he pinged a few long ones against a defence we’d already mentally broken. Ramsdale had good long ball distribution, so this feels a bit revisionist. Perhaps Raya does edge him on this one, but claiming 10x is really silly and harms any argument you want to make.

    • GarfieldDaCat@alien.topB
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      10 months ago

      Raya has broken the press tons of times. And when you invite the press, it will always look far riskier than passing it instantly or hoofing it long.

      We haven’t clicked offensively yet mainly because we are playing with a striker at LCM.

      If we had a real midfielder there, Rice or a new signing, we would look far better