23 Feb 2018 05:31:41
Not a stats guy at all, and wouldn't even know how to find out. But, I'd love if someone could work out how many points De Gea has saved for ManU this season. What I mean by that is, if they had any other keeper in the league, can you generally look at a game and say "with Migs or anyone else, they'd have lost/ drawn that game? "
I'm sure you could look at a save, or string of them, that have got them a point or 3, and put that down to the man between the sticks.
My guess is that if you swapped DDG for Migs/ Karius, we'd be maybe 6 points ahead of them.
Clearly I'm bored. Someone do the numbers (subjective i know) and brighten my day :)


1.) 23 Feb 2018
23 Feb 2018 08:12:55
It is a relatively pointless debate though. We'd be much lower without Salah, but it's irrelevant because we have Salah. Every team has a best player who digs them out. For Man U, that just happens to be their goal keeper.

He is probably worth 20 point a season to them at least, but what is Salah worth to us? What is De Bruyne worth to City? Kane to Spurs? Kante to Chelsea? Maybe De Gea is worth even more than most other star players because he is the best shot stopper in the world and United concede a lot of shots due to a weak midfield (Pogba, Carrick, Herrera, Fellaini etc) shocking full backs (Young, Darmian, Shaw and Valencia) and a few very average centre backs in Smalling, Rojo and Lindelof.

Matic doesn't have the legs to do it by himself, and Jones and Bailly are forever injured nowadays. Therefore De Gea is propping up the base of the entire team. So yeah, he probably is the most vital player to his particular team in the whole division. But the fact is, he plays for Man U right now and it's his job to save them points. Hopefully he goes to Real Madrid in the summer though because I'm bored of hearing how good United are, and i think it'll all come crashing down without him. Their argument would be, that they could reinvest his transfer fee and salary to improve the team overall though. So it's impossible to say they will definitely struggle without him.


2.) 23 Feb 2018
23 Feb 2018 08:30:00
According to the premier leagues official numbers Salah's goals has given Liverpool an extra 14 points so far this season, compared to 12 because of Harry Kane's goals and only 7 points for Aguero's goals.

In my opinion any team would struggle a bit in the start if they lose the best goalkeeper in the world! My opinion about de Gea has nothing to do with the Sevilla game because de Gea has been pulling off unbelievable saves for 5 years now consistently and makes very very few mistakes.

Real Madrid are looking at Courtois too, but if i was a Real Madrid scout there is no chance i would say Courtois is of a similar level to de Gea because he clearly isn't even close and has a few howlers in him. If de Gea leaves Manchester United they will probably be like 8-10 points off if the don't replace him with Alisson or Oblak. Every goalkeeper is supposed to save a lot of the shots he faces, it's their job but the difference is de Gea saves shots fans and players already started celebrating a goal in their minds. He is unbelievable! What makes me think he is so good is also probably aided by the fact Mignolet have been costing us 8-10 points a season for 4-5 years now so its tough thinking a Manchester United player is this good. heh.


3.) 23 Feb 2018
23 Feb 2018 10:13:55
Nostradamus, i agree with most of what you say, but the Premier Leagues official numbers literally only factor in goals though. They don't factor in that World class bit of skill that lifts the whole stadium, or the goal created or started by their magic, or the space their team mates had because 3 players were marking the star man.

There are too many subjectivities and variables to accurately put into numbers how many points a player is worth to a team. You can only speculate or guess. From what I've seen of De Gea for example, he has kept Man U in the game multiple times at a single goal ahead. That will only be measured as him saving them 2 points. But if that one goal had gone in, it might've given the other team the confidence to score again costing United all 3 points. Then there is the confidence that he gives his defenders, which reduces the mistakes they make by panicking. How do you measure that? Or what about the saves he makes at 0-0 that stop a team from being able to defend a lead? If United go on to win that game 3-0 they might say he hasn't saved them any points because Man U would've won 3-1 anyway. That isn't how football works though. That miracle save at 0-0 might have been worth all 3 points.

You can't measure how much an individual is worth with statistics. You can only take a stab in the dark hence why I'm saying this debate is irrelevant and we should just accept that every team has a star man who is important to them. De Gea is United's most important player and i THINK he's worth 20+ points a season with all the subjectivities and variables factored in. That is a total guess though. Statistically he's probably only worth 10 points a season. Salah statistically is probably worth 15, but I'd say he is also worth more like 20+. The thing is though, this is all based on the assumption that the player who replaced them would have no positive impact of their own. If you then deduct the amount of points a slightly lesser quality replacement would be worth, the very best players are probably only worth an EXTRA 5 points (individually) over a whole season. But football is all about fine margins. 5 points can be the difference that turns you from top half to top 6, from top 6 to top 4, from top 4 to title challenger, or challenger to victor.

So regardless of what the Premier League website says, you simply cannot put a definitive points total on what these individuals are worth. You can only guess and everyone's guess will be different. There is too much going on in the background that cannot be quantified.


4.) 23 Feb 2018
23 Feb 2018 10:34:29
This is just a wish fulfillment exercise to have a dig at Utd and Mourinho. The only thing that counts is that they are, currently, doing better than us. We can make all the excuses we want (transfer spending, DDG etc) but we're behind them.

The good news is that it's within our power to change that in the next month or so.


5.) 23 Feb 2018
23 Feb 2018 10:50:08
Agree with your points as well, MK and Nostradamus. It is fundamentally, a pointless debate. The PL stats say what they say BUT it lacks any form of nuance and perspective, things that are being shown in both of you's posts and that pints to the fact that no one knows how we would fair w/ o Salah or how Utd would fair w/ o DDG precisely, none of which can be weighted. It is all based on assumptions, things that lack nuance and that can be debunked by making other assumptions.


6.) 23 Feb 2018
23 Feb 2018 12:52:02
Statistically he has saved 18.36 points, rounded down to 18. Not a bad return.