Clrnc

Everyone in the PL is very rich. United are paying a fortune for a 20 year old kid with basically no pedigree. Aston Villa spend like it's going out of fashion - they all do!

Having quality players competing with each other is what you've got to do if you want to be the best. And, whether it becomes reality or not, that is very much what Arteta and the guys running Arsenal are trying to do.

DiabyKungFu I agree, he isn't a top drawer keeper but is solid. Like you said we have a manager who is aspiring for the very top and this guy isn't it. Then again I'm not sure if Raya is either but I think he would be an improvement.

Clrnc When he first broke into our team after 6 months everyone was calling for him to be England's starting keeper. Over time though I think it is clear why he is third choice and the keepers who are ahead of him aren't exactly top drawer either.

Personally I think Ramsdale is very overrated by Arsenal fans. Even the top keepers make mistakes but not as many as him. Also some of the goals he lets in I always think a better keeper saves them.

Clrnc That would mean we have 2 of the best goalkeeping duo in the entire world. Not even Bayern, Barca, Madrid etc has a 2nd choice as good as Raya.

On the other hand, we won't have a first choice close to as good as theirs.

i don't like short keepers, but raya isn't being signed to back ramsdale up. sometimes it's like ramsdale isn't even there when people shoot at him. WTF man.

JazzG I think he makes too many mistakes for a top keeper

I think I've mentioned before, two of my besties are Brentford fans and I've seen quite a bit of Raya. Your statement absolutely applies to him too, he conceded an absolute howler at Wembley which cost Brentford promotion the season before they came up (and that was by no means the only blot in the copybook).

I know this isn't your argument, but the notion we'd be replacing Rammers with Raya and eradicating all the brain farts is just inaccurate.

    Clrnc

    And yet we saw Leno and Ramsdale with many of the variables controlled because they were in the same team playing the same way, and Ramsdale, at just 22, was clearly the better of the two.

    It's very hard to judge GK's stats because it is affected by so many things and the shot analysis stat is so subjective. Ederson's stats are absolutely horrible relative to his peers, yet many call him world class. I'm not his biggest fan myself (though he's obviously at the very least a good GK), but he's not helped by the fact that he plays in a team that is so dominant. He faces fewer shots, so the sample size is smaller - every mistake does more to lower the save percentage than it does for other GKs - and imo he more often faces counter-attack situations that are harder to stop, rather than shots from a position that favours the goalkeeper.

    We were also very dominant last season, and I think the same was true of Ramsdale (even if his stats were much better than Ederson's and stand up very well against everyone else). I'm also not surprised Leno does well at a club like Fulham. That's his food and drink because he's a good shot-stopper and he's facing a ton of shots.

    RocktheCasbah Interesting, I don't know too much about Raya but if that is the case then he shouldn't be the one replacing him.

    I'm wondering if the club thinks it can get a good deal due to 12 months on his contract and him being a Homegrown player.

      Even Alisson, probably the best keeper in the league for the last few years, makes a good number of mistakes. It's easy to think your own keeper is worse because you see every single one of them and miss many of every other team's mistakes.

      Here's a comparison between Raya and Alisson to show the comparisons aren't worth very much at all:

      https://www.squawka.com/en/comparison-matrix/?compare=pRaHvE6rXLF47Y5jhCVxS

        JazzG I mean, I'm usually the first one to say "trust the talent ID" and I also know my Brentford mates think quite highly of him, but I just don't think we'd be signing someone here who's going to walk in and transform the way we look at our goalkeepers. And for the money Brentford are likely to want, even with only a year left on his deal for an incremental improvement (if you believe it's an improvement at all), this deal doesn't make much sense to me.

        Put it this way, 33 years ago Bob Wilson told George Graham he had to go and get Dave Seaman, because he was "the best". He wouldn't be saying that about David Raya.

        Ricky1985

        The number of mistakes isn't meaningful in itself, because it doesn't tell you whether the rest of the saves make up for them so that the net is that he saves more goals than he 'should'. In Alisson's case, he's in the clear by a lot. Ramsdale isn't.

        Recon Mikel wants an improvement with distribution. Ramsdale started off very well on that front last season but seemed to lose it

        I wouldn't have said GK was a problem position for us at the start of the summer. Ramsdale's form can be streaky but he's got an incredibly high ceiling. Equally I can't imagine David Raya coming here to sit on the bench just as he's broken into the Spanish NT so I find this transfer odd. Best guess is that Arteta probably thinks Ramsdale needs constant pressure to deliver and Turner isn't going to provide that.

        Just healthy competition for places in my opinion. Let’s be honest, we’d be shitting it if Ramsdale got injured. Potentially season ending - because Ramsdale is so important to our style of play. Talk about mistakes are a red herring, this is absolutely about continuity and ability on the ball.

        Keepers usually don’t get rotated because there’s a big gap in quality. Otherwise I don’t see why not. In theory there’s 60 odd games a season potentially, you could conservatively play a second choice for 25 games.

        It’s also worth remembering when considering competition for places that the CL is being expanded next season. We will be playing twice a week - in major competitions.

          goon Let’s be honest, we’d be shitting it if Ramsdale got injured.

          Probably my hottest Arsenal take is that I don't really think Ramsdale is the best goalkeeper at Arsenal as it is.

            DiabyKungFu I don't disagree in that sense because Turner as a shot stopper is superior. Don't recall him letting us down when he played for us too