Saves, distribution and leadership – why Dubravka should come in for Darlow

It is decision time for Steve Bruce — has the moment arrived for him to drop arguably Newcastle United’s most consistent performer in Karl Darlow?

To even consider removing Darlow, who has played every minute of the 2020-21 campaign so far, seems harsh but, with a fully fit Martin Dubravka sitting impatiently on the bench and 17th-placed Newcastle in increasingly grave peril, Bruce cannot allow a sense of fairness to cloud his judgement.

As Bruce seriously ponders making this crucial change for a potentially season-defining match against Wolverhampton Wanderers on Saturday, The Athletic compares the pair’s respective statistical performances and considers elements beyond the metrics to explain which of Darlow or Dubravka is best-placed to aid Newcastle’s survival cause.

General goalkeeping

“He’s taken goalkeeping here to another level.”

When Rob Elliot, one of his direct competitors for a starting place, was heaping such praise on Dubravka in 2019, it emphasises just how impactful the Slovakia international has been at Newcastle.

It is perhaps unsurprising then that when Dubravka’s 88-match unbroken run in the Premier League was curtailed due to an injury suffered during pre-season, panic set in among Newcastle supporters, who were convinced Darlow was not an able replacement.

But, as far as core goalkeeping skills are concerned, Darlow has exceeded expectations. Rather than cost Newcastle points, as some feared he might, he has received a series of man-of-the-match accolades, most notably when making 11 saves during the 1-1 draw at Tottenham Hotspur in September.

How, though, does his form this season compare with Dubravka’s in 2019-20?

A crude metric to consider is save percentage and there is little difference between Dubravka (71 per cent in 2019-20) and Darlow (69 per cent in 2020-21). However, this statistic fails to account for the quality of shots faced.

For that, we can look at expected goals on target (xGOT). This model considers where a shot is aimed within the goalmouth, the angle from which it is struck and various other factor to deduce whether a goalkeeper should have reasonably been expected to save the effort.

Here, Dubravka stands out. He faced non-penalty shots worth 62.7 xGOT last season but conceded just 56 goals. If the two own goals scored past him are removed (they have an xGOT of zero as, technically, they are not shots) he prevented 8.7 goals more than average.

Darlow, on the other hand, has faced shots worth 33.6 xGOT this season but has conceded 40 goals. After stripping out two own goals, he has conceded 4.4 goals more than expected, which is the fifth-worst in the top flight.

Looking at a more basic metric, Dubravka kept 11 clean sheets across 2019-20 but Darlow has managed just four from 25 matches. Of course, this does not account for the general defensive performance of the team at a given time, however.

Interestingly, though, Darlow does not make as many errors leading to goals. While Dubravka made five last season — including allowing the ball to squirm underneath his body when rushing out to try to prevent Sadio Mane from scoring at Anfield — Darlow has not made any such costly mistakes, at least via Opta’s metric, in 2020-21.

Goalkeeping, like finishing, can be quite noisy. Keepers can go through patches of good and bad form, pulling off unbelievable saves one week and then struggling with those efforts of lesser-quality the next. The graphic below looks to approximate goalkeeper form, showing when a keeper is playing better than average and conceding less than expected, and also when they are playing below average and conceding more than expected.

To do this, we take a rolling sum of the past 50 shots, considering how many goals have been conceded and what the quality of attempts were in that time, and the difference between the two. Then, we plot that rolling sum over time to see if there are any trends in peaks and troughs in performance.

For Darlow and Dubravka, it’s quite illuminating. Since 2017-18, Darlow has only really played significant minutes this season and notably, at the start of the season, was well above-average for Newcastle when he was top of Europe’s charts for saves made.

Since then, though, his form has dropped off. He has struggled at times and conceded more than you would expect given the quality of attempts he has faced. The last 50 shots Darlow has faced have been worth 15.1 xGOT but he has conceded 18 goals. For example, against Manchester United last weekend, Marcus Rashford’s opener — shown below — appeared preventable, and Bruce even described it as a “cardinal sin to let one in at the near post”.

Dubravka faced similar lows in late 2018-19, such as when a Son Heung-min shot crept under his body, although he rebounded strongly, having a fine 2019-20 season. Looking at his goals prevented — the difference between his xGOT faced and goals conceded — he was third in the top flight overall, conceding 8.6 goals fewer than expected. His last 50 shots faced in 2019-20 were worth 16.9 goals on average, yet he conceded only 16.

Beyond saving shots, Dubravka is also the more dependable of the pair when it comes to claiming crosses.

In 2019-20, Dubravka faced an average of 23 crosses per 90 minutes, and had a 100 per cent success rate for either safely claiming the ball or punching it. That success rate does not factor the crosses Dubravka did not attempt to meet, however, and instead only reflects those he tried to claim.

Darlow, on the other hand, has faced an average of 21 crosses per 90 this season and, while Darlow’s success rate at dealing with crosses appears high at 90 per cent, it is the second-lowest for all goalkeepers to have played 500 or more minutes (only Sheffield United’s Aaron Ramsdale fares worse).

Given that Newcastle allow their opponents to make such a significant number of crosses — only West Bromwich Albion’s Sam Johnstone and Burnley’s Nick Pope deal with more balls aerially per match than Darlow — Dubravka’s superior ability in the air would be beneficial.

Allied with Darlow’s drop-off in form, the case to recall Dubravka based on general goalkeeping alone appears strong.

Distribution

In recent weeks, Newcastle have, as Bruce has repeatedly stressed, “tried to play a different way”.

Part of that has seen a greater willingness to build from the back and, while Darlow’s distribution has improved following intensive work on the training ground, it is still a weakness.

For the most part, rather than play short, Darlow opts to kick long. This is partly tactical — Newcastle have predominantly gone long from their goalkeeper under Bruce — but it may be exacerbated by the 30-year-old’s reluctance to pass out.

The graphic below shows the eight most common open-play passes Darlow makes (goal kicks are not included), using a model with groups together the start and end locations of various passes. Pass group 48 represents the most common pass Darlow attempts, down to 44, which is the eighth-most common pass.

With 68 per cent of Darlow’s open-play passes in groups 48 and 28 — from a goalkeeper to either wing positions inside the opposition half — this highlights just how often he kicks the ball long.

Dubravka also often opted to kick long in 2019-20, with 57 per cent of his open-play passes falling into groups 28 and 48 as well (shown below).

But, with 25 per cent of his passes in groups 39 and 36 — from a goalkeeper to both full-back positions — Dubravka is more willing to play short.

Both play a higher percentage of long passes than the average for top-flight goalkeepers, emphasising the direct nature of Bruce’s side, but Dubravka is the more accurate.

Darlow’s expected pass completion is just 47 per cent, the fourth-lowest of the 34 goalkeepers with enough minutes since the start of last season. His actual pass completion rate is 45 per cent, which places him sixth-lowest of the 34. However, this shows that he actually completes fewer passes than he is expected to, which suggests his technique has been lacking.

As for Dubravka, his expected completion is 52 per cent but he actually completes 55 per cent of his passes. One caveat is that Dubravka attempted slightly less speculative passes than Darlow but the former is 24th out of the 34 keepers, so he is better at distributing with his feet than his rival.

What’s more, with Callum Wilson unavailable, there is no longer a centre-forward in the side who can regularly compete to win those long balls forward. Although Darlow has often gone long — seemingly on instruction, just as Dubravka did last season — that does not appear to be as viable any more, unless Andy Carroll is recalled.

Instead, if Bruce gives his goalkeeper greater licence to play it out from the back, then Dubravka is the natural choice to start. He offered a fresh dimension to Newcastle when he arrived in January 2017 because he was so much more comfortable on the ball than their other goalkeepers, and that remains the case now.

Leadership and influence

While some elements of goalkeeping can be measured, others are unquantifiable.

Perhaps the most compelling argument for restoring Dubravka, beyond his all-round goalkeeping, is his influence on the Newcastle side: both in terms of the confidence he instils in his defence and the vocal leadership he provides.

For Rafa Benitez, Dubravka was “an important player, not just because of the saves he makes but because of his character and attitude”.

Newcastle are a quiet team. With Matt Ritchie out of favour and Wilson unavailable, beyond Jamaal Lascelles, there are too few voices — marshalling, directing and questioning — out on the pitch.

While Dubravka, who Benitez described as a “key voice in the dressing room”, has been on the sidelines, his absence has been felt.

Just weeks after Dubravka joined in January 2018, Lascelles revealed that the goalkeeper offered his opinions during team meetings. A former team-mate also admitted that Dubravka “will dish out bollockings to players on the pitch if they need it”, something which may prove beneficial given the volume of preventable goals Newcastle are conceding right now.

Following Project Restart, Dubravka’s communication with his team-mates was evident. Inside empty stadia during the final nine games of last season, his shouts echoed around. Darlow is less of an outspoken personality; he is not as easily heard because he does not bellow in the same way.

Karl Darlow has played 26 times for Newcastle so far this season (Photo: Robbie Jay Barratt – AMA/Getty Images)

At a time when Newcastle desperately need on-field leadership, that is simply not the type of character that Darlow is. He can produce a string of wonder saves and inspire his team-mates with his own actions, but he does not gee them up and organise his defence as commandingly as others. Dubravka, meanwhile, is a reassuring presence; someone who organises from deep and can dictate play from his own box.

Privately, Benitez referred to him as the “brain” of his side, in much the same way Reina had been at Liverpool and Napoli, but he was also part of the on-field leadership group. Dubravka’s in-game “intelligence” and authority were cited as a “key factor” by Benitez in helping Newcastle’s form improve dramatically during the second half of the 2017-18 campaign. It also vindicated the Spaniard’s determination to sign a new goalkeeper even if many questioned the need to, given the shot-stoppers they already had in the squad.

Dubravka made such a positive impact when he first arrived at Newcastle because he brought more than just traditional goalkeeping attributes. His influence extended far beyond his saves, and that could prove crucial once again.

Verdict

Darlow is not the problem at Newcastle — quite the opposite.

Without him, Newcastle may well already be in the bottom three but that does not mean that he should remain in the team regardless.

Bruce insisted earlier this month that Darlow “deserved” to retain the jersey but, at Newcastle’s training ground, there is a growing expectation that a change is likely to be made for Wolves. There is also a feeling that it perhaps should have come a little sooner.

Newcastle are blessed with strength in depth in goal and Darlow has proven that he can help to win points for the team, but Dubravka’s all-round goalkeeping, his distribution skills and his leadership warrant the starting spot.

It is time to restore Dubravka — not because Darlow deserves to be dropped but because the Slovakia international can improve a flailing team.

(Top photo: Stu Forster/Getty Images)