Nahh, tbf even the eye test confirms it… The guy simply doesn’t watch the games either.
I expected him to be shaky on the crosses and in the air in general, kinda like Reina was (a monster shot stopper, an amateur in the air).
He had maybe a couple of weak interventions throughout the season, but in general has been super reliable there and has surprised me in that area long ago.
Extremely aggressive and confident on the crosses and long balls, something you wouldn’t expect from a smaller GK. Obviously he has specially worked on it throughout the career.
He could work on his on the ball qualities though. That’s where he usually gets overrated a bit.
Raya is elite at defending crosses. It takes a very confident and intelligent keeper to be so good at catching / punching crosses away. His anticipation of ball flight, knowing whether there is adequate space in front of him to move forward and jump etc. I truly think he’s peerless in today’s game in this specific area.
There is a bit of a chicken and egg debate whether Raya has only won the golden glove because of Saliba / Gabriel, or whether Raya should take big credit for our great defensive record. And we also have Rice now which skews our defensive performance upwards.
I’ll take us back to Ramsdale at the beginning of this season. Started the first 4 games, 3 of which were at the Emirates. Conceded 4 with only one clean sheet. Not great numbers.
Raya has now achieved 15 clean sheets in 32 games. And that’s while adapting to a completely new team, being thrown in without any pre-season.
I don’t recall us being this solid under Ramsdale. This defensively resolute. I do think Raya has a big role to play in that. I don’t think we perform this well defensively with Ramsdale who is a better shot stopper, but not as commanding.
I can say after almost a complete season that we have upgraded on Ramsdale here.
and there’s also the fact that we’ve gifted so many goals through individual error. If it wasn’t for our defensive brain farts, I think Raya would have 20+ cleasheets by now, not kidding.
He was excellent today. Whatever weird impulse control issue he had that caused him to act a fool against Bayern seems to be gone. Felt totally at ease with him back there.
He’s obviously gonna make errors again in the future.
It comes with the territory when we play with the risk we are at the back.
However, he brings a lot of calmness at the back and he doesn’t seem to be affected when something goes bad. Just from a few interviews and the way he carries himself you can see he’s got a top mentality a great understanding of what the team needs from him.
Ramsdale got just 2 chances against Brentford, but he didn’t give a good account of himself in those games, and while treated a bit unfairly (and while I think he would have had a similar season to Raya), Ramsdale has rightly lost the no. 1 shirt to Raya’s now.
That’s where he usually gets overrated a bit.