FireSide

Sanchez is Truly Mediocre

Yesterday, I was penning an article on why the emotional fan base hate for Sanchez is extreme and based on initial mistakes resulting from pressure to adapt to Maresca's demands.

My initial reasoning was that the demand of our style of play made him vulnerable before perfection and that he was bound to make mistakes.

Then I went ahead to look for stats for goals expected to concede but prevented, errors leading to goal the first half of the season and then the second half of the season (which was even worse). shot save percentage... These alone kicked me in the balls.

So I went ahead and checked the pass success rate. 31% when Ederson was 90%, Raya 74%, Allison 74%, Dubravka 74, Sels 46% and Martinez 80%. (These are the top seven teams goalkeepers).

Then I ended up realizing that some of his wonder saves in some matches may have instead biased my judgement of his abilities. His stats on everything is just too poor and backing him is purely emotional based on nothing instead.

FireSide

#BottomLine

I am sure we all hoped to see Petrovic given a chance as blues 1. We all agreed he had merited drastic improvements during his loan spell.

But also agree that not a single person can hold the team hostage by self entitlement. His demand to be guaranteed first team spot was poor judgement on his side.

My initial objection to paying expensively for Maignan was because I thought we had Petrovic this season who had almost similar numbers and even better numbers than Maignan in goal prevention.

Now if Penders doesn't turn up, Or Jorgensen doesn't man up... We may have to go back in especially that now it seems Maresca had drawn a line on Petrovic

Note errors to goal for Maignan is 1 not 10

For last season

Enzo Maresca said he prefers to have four players scoring at least 10 goals each, than a striker getting 40.