Can Arsenal’s Aaron Ramsdale stave off David Raya’s challenge for the No.1 shirt?
Arsenal this week completed the signing of goalkeeper Raya from Brentford. The deal, initially a £3 million loan with a £27m option to buy next summer, not only strengthens the goalkeeping department at the club but also intensifies the competition for the No.1 spot.
The Gunners were in the market for a new shot-stopper after allowing Matt Turner to leave for Nottingham Forest earlier in the summer. Their pursuit of Raya was heavily influenced by Arsenal goalkeeping coach Inaka Cana, who previously served as the goalkeeping coach at Brentford and played a significant role in Raya's signing for the Bees in 2019.
Raya's form in West London in the four years since suggests that he now has the capacity to pose a real threat to Ramsdale's No.1 position.
Ramsdale quickly displaced former teammate Bernd Leno to become the regular starter at the club shortly after his arrival at the Emirates in 2021. He has largely performed consistently and at a high level in the two years since. However, under Technical Director Edu, Arsenal aim to implement a recruitment strategy that maximizes competition for starting spots within the squad and boosts the team's overall performance.
Raya has been a key part of Brentford’s relative success in recent years and was one of just four Premier League players to feature in all 3420 minutes of competitive action last season. In that campaign, no goalkeeper faced more shots (197) or made more saves (154). While his performance in terms of Post-Shot Expected Goals Against (PSxG) also ranked at the top end of the division.
A reminder that PSxG is similar to regular xG but with a difference. xG is a metric that determines just how good a shooting opportunity is, considering a range of factors, including the distance from the goal, the angle of the shot, the pace of the effort and how it was assisted. This is done by utilising historical shot data, with 0.01 being the lowest shot value, and 0.99 the highest.
PSxG, though, analyses the quality of the finish from the shooter by taking into account the shot's placement in the goal. If the effort goes wide or over, the PSxG is zero. This makes it the best current metric for analysing a goalkeeper’s performance from a shot-stopping perspective.
Notably last season, Raya racked up an overperformance of +5.0 according to Opta's model. In basic terms, that effectively means that thanks to his form, Brentford conceded five fewer goals than would have been expected. Only two goalkeepers could better that overperformance last season.
In that same department and from the 27 Premier League goalkeepers who played 500+ minutes, Ramsdale ranked 14th with an underperformance of -2.0. Raya also bettered his rival in terms of making more defensive actions outside the penalty area per 90 at 1.43 to Ramsadale’s 1.13.
It’s not just the bread and butter of shot-stopping but also his excellent distribution skills that make Raya a well-rounded threat to Ramsdale's position.
As a teenager, he was known to play a lot of futsal and that helped him to hone a real comfort with the ball at his feet. Although not carbon copies, there are plenty of similarities between the way Arsenal aim to build their attacks out from the back, and how the Bees do it too.
In such a system, Raya thrives. At the end of the 2020/21 Championship season, he completed 300 more passes than any of the other second-tier shot-stoppers. While last season, no goalkeeper made more combined passes or registered more touches.
Overall, this new intra-squad battle is going to be an intriguing one to watch unfold. While Ramsdale faces a real fight to keep his new rival at bay, Arsenal fans will hope the tussle can help propel the club closer to their ambitions of securing their first Premier League title in 20 years.
