What impressed me most with Raya yesterday was when he went to collect crosses. Pretty sure he had a 100 % success rate when claiming them and there were a few he had to deal with.
Raya joins Arsenal
Yup no panicked punching. Everything claimed and calmed. Clear upgrade for me. Glad he's settling in nicely now.
he has huge hands, catching is probably his best feature.
6 days later
His distribution wound me up more than anything else, but looks like there’s been an instruction more recently to get the ball out as quickly as possible.
Mistakes and nerves seem to be gone. Only missing link really is the ability to make match winning saves.
Raya did well in a match where we faced 0.2 xG and the opposition got 5 touches in our area (or whatever).
You could've had the proverbial inanimate carbon rod in goal and we still would've won 5–1.
Anyway, he's not doing badly and there's been some spectacular high-paced long throws recently. But for mine I'm happy to wait till it's more than a week since our last unforgiveable defensive bollocks-up to crown him.
Ramsdale would surely have done fairly well this season with the more defensive approach we've taken.
- Edited
As discussed previously, last week was much more on Saliba than Raya.
This is predictable though, I knew when Raya started doing better there will be little to no chat. Anyway let him go under the radar and prove you guys wrong.
Why do you talk as if it's some grand prediction that Raya won't be talked about when we're not facing shots? 
If we conceded a single goal yesterday, Raya would've conceded 0,8 more goals than expected.
Looks a lot more assured and confident, has settled right in now. Happy to have him starting ahead of Ramsdale, definitely an upgrade.
Sicario2 - Tier 1 Utterly preposterous, but on brand. 
Just like Ramsdale, huh...
Sicario2 - Tier 1 I don't get it. There's plenty of Ramsdale compilations that look good. In fact this one of Raya makes it seem like he almost never faces pressure?
7 days later
- Edited
Passing ability with feet. Improved.
Starting position to sweep up behind defence. Much Improved.
Cross collection. Very much Improved. I don't think I've actually seen him punch one out in the past month.
Counter initiation/ choice of throw or long kick out accuracy to sustain attacking impetus. Improved.
Clean sheet percentage is probably going to end up improved as well come end of season.
Perhaps the only metric where Ramsdale is superior is spectacular shot stopping. But we literally face almost zero shots on goal these days.
My verdict: Raya's definitely an upgrade. Provides peace of mind for both players and fans (myself) alike.
He's definitely looking the part in recent games. Claiming catches is so helpful to relieve pressure on the defence.
Posting compilations of Raya catching easy balls under zero pressure 
I watched about half that video above and I couldn't see a single time he'd claimed a cross under real pressure. Zero duels or even bumps. We're facing 0.1 or 0.2 xG each match for now.
- Edited
Yeah, I'm somewhere in the middle. His catching is great and he's definitely less ponderous when distributing the ball (which was what I expected from the start, but maybe he needed time to get used to his teammates) and that in itself has really contributed to our attack in recent weeks.
As per Burnsy though, I'm still skeptical about some of the more traditional goalkeeping attributes (eg. save ability). Let's also not forget him letting in a cross from Mudryk because of his weird positioning. I think I'll feel more comfortable when I see him perform in a game where we're really under the kosh.
So in summary, really positive improvements in the last few weeks as he's settled but I still see a negligible/questionable upgrade versus peak Ramsdale. I can't help but feel if we were going to upgrade GK, this was not the guy to bring in to raise the ceiling.
I'm not sure exactly what mistake we're supposed to imagine Ramsdale having made since the New Year.