The Week in Stats: More signs of Manuel Neuer’s decline

This week we look at save percentages, Europe’s penalty specialists and the teams that can give their goalkeepers the day off.

Keeping in mind

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As pointed out last week, while Tottenham goalkeeper Hugo Lloris is undoubtedly prone to making individual errors, his shot-stopping in general terms is good. This was underlined by the Frenchman’s penalty save against Manchester City on Tuesday.

Although Lloris’ Spurs side don’t quite make it into the top eight clubs listed below for save percentage, they nonetheless rank at a respectable 12th out of the 78 teams measured.

There are some obvious takeaways here. It’s hardly news anymore, of course, but Jan Oblak really is extraordinarily good. Meanwhile, although Manuel Neuer had been remarkably good for a number of years, the criticism that’s been directed at him this season isn’t just due to a slight dip from his previously high levels. In contrast, his shot-stopping has been poor by the standards of any top league.

And former Liverpool goalkeeper Peter Gulacsi, now playing for Leipzig after spending five years at Anfield without ever making a senior appearance, might just be having an even better season than Alisson.

Moving on to look at the percentages of shots conceded by teams that are on target, there’s a big surprise.

The shock here is Dortmund’s 39.3 percent, and the reason it’s so unexpected is that in the past, Lucien Favre has been renowned for restricting opponents to low-quality attempts on goal.

During Favre’s three seasons at Borussia Moenchengladbach, for example, his sides had a 31.6 percent average and twice finished with one of the two lowest figures in the Bundesliga.

By plotting together the Premier League percentages for shots on target conceded and saves, it isn’t hard to see why Bournemouth have just become the second team ever to let in 60 goals during four consecutive Premier League campaigns.

Fulham look doomed, meanwhile, and Burnley’s trick over the past few seasons of combining unusually high volumes of shots conceded with unusually high save percentages has at last deserted them.

Finally, Spurs are conceding close to the average number of shots on target, but are saving those attempts at a rate far above the league average. Although Lloris has missed four Premier League games this season due to injury, these figures still support the narrative that he’s is a superior shot-stopper overall despite being prone to high-profile howlers.

Pen pushers

Against Newcastle on Saturday, Luka Milivojevic scored his 10th penalty of the league season for Crystal Palace. The Serbian midfielder not only has more penalty goals than any other player in the big European leagues, but he’s also on the cusp of equaling the record for the most penalties scored in a single Premier League campaign. Don’t expect that to stop Palace manager Roy Hodgson from bemoaning his side’s alleged lack of luck on at least a few more occasions before the season’s end, though.

The second-highest total this season is eight by Lille’s Nicolas Pepe, while that Premier League record is the 11 netted during the 2004-05 campaign by Andrew Johnson, who fittingly was also playing for Palace at the time.

Over the course of the past decade, in fact, only two other Premier League players have managed to match Milivojevic’s haul of 10 penalty goals. They were Chelsea’s Frank Lampard in 2009-10 Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard in 2013-14.

Just one individual has bettered that total over the course of those 10 years: Cristiano Ronaldo during the 2011-12 season.

No Bundesliga players have managed more than eight in a single campaign. The men in question were Sejad Salihovic of Hoffenheim in 2013-14 and Ingolstadt’s Moritz Hartmann in 2015-16.

Target run

Kai Havertz’s brace for Leverkusen on Saturday, the second of which you can see below, were the first league goals that Leipzig had conceded in 438 minutes of play.

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Before we move on to the stats behind that run, we should quickly look at Matheus Cunha’s goal in the same match, which secured a 2-4 win for Leipzig.

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That sequence of close to five Bundesliga hours without conceding certainly wasn’t a fluke. No other side in Europe’s top four leagues has prevented their opponents from having even a single shot on target in a game more often than Leipzig this season.

The much-vaunted defenses of Atletico Madrid and Liverpool have managed this feat only twice and once respectively. Barcelona and Bayern have both done so on two occasions apiece, while Real Madrid haven’t managed it all this term.