Almunia vs Schwarzer: A Statistical Comparison

With all the transfer rumors surrounding Arsenal and Mark Schwarzer, it's time to take a look at Arsenal's current number one and his potential replacement. All data comes from a variety of public sources, but it is ultimately tracked by Opta.

Almunia vs Schwarzer
2009 Season
	Almunia		Schwarzer
Minutes	2610		3330
Shots/ 90 min	3.3		4.6
Save % In Box	55.6%		64.4%
Save % Out of Box	90.9%		92.9%
Catch %	66.2%		70.6%
Punch %	24.6%		22.2%
Drop %	9.2%		7.1%

Using the 2009 season to gauge the difference between Schwarzer and Almunia, we see that Schwarzer bettered Almunia in every above statistic. Schwarzer faced about a shot and a half more per game than Almunia while also having a better save percentage. While these numbers don't tell us everything we need to know, such as shot quality and type of scoring chances, we can make general assumptions based on the above numbers.

Almunia saved just 55.6% of the shots he faced in the box compared to 64.4% by Schwarzer. Almunia’s save percentage would rank 17th out of 21 keepers who played at least 1000 minutes last year while Schwarzer ranked ninth. Marcus Hahnemann of Wolves was tops in the league with an in box save percentage of 72.2% and David James was worst at 51.2%.

The final three stats, Catch %, Punch % and Drop % all deal with crosses. Almunia dropped 9.2% of the crosses he faced, the second worst for keepers with at least 1000 minutes in the premier league last year. While drops are nothing new for Almunia, he dropped just 4.8% of the crosses in 2008 compared to 3.6% by Schwarzer in the same campaign. Over the last two seasons, the average drop percentage in the Premier League is 4.6%.