Southampton’s season has reached the ten-game point, and a number of the first-team squad have played prominent roles so far. One of these is goalkeeper Fraser Forster.
Forster has been Saints’ first-choice keeper since he signed for the club back in 2014, but missed a year of football through injury. Since arriving at Saints, he has also received regular England senior call-ups.
After suffering from his major injury though, Forster has been subject to some criticism from Saints fans and pundits after some mistakes and inconsistent displays in the past year.
The stats behind Forster’s start to the season
(stats from premierleague.com)
Forster has been ever-present for Saints this season, playing every minute of his team’s nine Premier League games and Carabao Cup loss at home to Wolves. This equates to 900 minutes of football.
From his ten games, Forster has kept four Premier League clean sheets; this puts him-joint third in the race for the golden glove early on. He and his teammates will be hoping that this number continues to grow over the season, with clean sheets so key picking up points and ultimately winning matches.
This decent tally of clean sheets has contributed to Forster conceding just nine Premier League goals so far, although two more came in a poor team performance in the cup against Wolves. At this stage of the campaign, nine conceded Premier League goals sees Forster well ahead of the league high of 20 conceded by Stoke City’s Jack Butland.
However good the team is in front of them, a goalkeeper will have to make simple or more complex saves at some stage to keep the ball out of their net.
Forster has made 28 saves in the Premier League this season, making him the joint-fifth busiest goalkeeper in the division. This proves Forster’s shot saving abilities, and also hints at him being left exposed by his defence on occasions too.
One of the weaker sides of Forster’s game is coming to claim the ball from crosses and balls into his area. His speed out from his goal and judgement of the ball could be improved, which in turn would lead to less opportunities for opposition forwards and less work for him and his defence. According to premierleague.com, Forster is yet to make a punch away from goal and has only made four claims from crosses.
How has Forster performed in matches this season?
Forster’s performances have largely been good, and he has made a number of saves to keep Southampton in the game. For example, Saints would not have won at Crystal Palace if he hadn’t made a couple of great reaction stops, and his penalty save at Stoke was very good even though his team would come away with nothing.
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On some occasions he has been unlucky. Great reaction saves from Javier Hernandez and Romelu Lukaku against West Ham and Manchester United respectively both led to goals because of slow reacting defenders.
Close range saves are his strength, but they’re only valuable if everyone in front of him is alert.
His lack of confidence when claiming the ball has been a negative however. He has twice almost gifted opponents with a chance to score when dropping the ball from a cross; once against Huddersfield and once last weekend against West Brom. Forster needs help to improve this aspect of his game, because it could cost him and his team.
This help doesn’t seem to have been forthcoming yet though, so a mixture of coaching and confidence boosting can only help him perform better.
Next: Saints 1-0 WBA: Match takeaways
He is also susceptible to low shots into the corners, and opponents seem to have been looking to exploit that this season. Ayoze Perez’ goal in the 2-2 draw against Newcastle came from a low shot which Forster didn’t deal with well, and although his defenders didn’t help him either, he was then beaten at his near post by the striker’s second strike.
For Forster to return to the form that he showed in his early Southampton career, these weaknesses need to be ironed out or at least reduced in some way because the team will suffer from his potential mishaps.
He will also suffer mentally having already lost his England squad place to three other keepers who deserve to be there ahead of him. Quality goalkeeping competition brought in behind him could also force him to work on his technique harder too in order to retain his place.