This is interesting and just playing around with some numbers I might have to readjust my valuation of goalkeepers on the whole.

Using numbers from the 09/10 La Liga season home teams allowed on average 3.89 shots on target per game while away teams allowed 5.14 for an overall average of 4.51 shots on target per game. The league wide conversion rate (shots on target/goal) was 0.29 for both home and away teams.

So if you had a goalkeeper who saved 75% of shots on target he would be worth 0.18 goals per game or 4.48 league points per 38 game season relative to the average goalkeeper (71%). A goalkeeper who saved 80% of shots on target would be worth 10 league points relative to the average goalkeeper. That's a lot. I estimated/guessed in a previous post that the average player in the league (using 09/10 Premier League numbers) is worth c. 2.5 league points per season.

This is weird. My smell test fail-o-meter is going off like crazy. There might be less than ten outfield players in the world who are worth more than 10 league points per 38 game season. It seems impossible that goalkeepers would be that valuable. Further study is needed.

For reference the goalkeeper save percentages through 26.1.11 from the 10/11 EPL season:

No prob. It's a really cool blog/the only one I've found that offers some advanced insight into football. If any of you know of any others, I'd love to subscribe!

GMs generally get things wrong, but I agree with you - looking at salary information is one (stable) perspective about the value of each player. It's far from perfect (fairly inefficient) but that doesn't mean it doesn't have value!

This is only true because there are far fewer shots in soccer than in hockey. From the top of my head it's like ~45 to ~15. But, there are also twice as many field players in soccer than football. If I had to guess, and this is simple, I'd say a keeper in soccer is worth about 2/3 that of hockey. Which means the best keeper in the world is probably a little less valuable than the best field player in the world, but the margin isn't as great as you all think?

I wasn't making a stink about it at all. I don't think the list is bad at all. I do think keepers should be included though.

http://www.soccermetricsblog.com/ - often very technical
http://analyticalfootball.blogspot.com/ - JaredL's no longer updated blog, lots of good stuff though
http://www.plainsoccer.com/ - just stumbled upon this when looking for the save percentage numbers. looks interesting but I haven't read anything from it yet.

I'm sure there are other things a keeper can do that are positives on the field, like Kevin21 pointed out, too. But if we limit it to just goal stopping - which I feel everyone can agree is the priority (hah), we're probably better served looking at a larger sample than just last year.

Basically, if you find the variance of goal save%, you can then essentially put a number on being 1 or 2 std>the mean. If you believe the very best are about 2std above (which is probably true), w/o any real stats work I'd agree with:

Yeah, my hunch is that a goalie who is 2 std above is on par with a top 10 or top 20 list.


Ideally there are shots attempted tied to this, because then we can at least do a little more work w this sample.

If we take this for face value, and say the disparity between the best and worst is 15% conversion, (we'll say jose reina, marcus heinemann, and tim krul are exactly replacement value) on 4.5 shots on target/g, that means the very best keepers are about +.68 goals above replacement a game. That's obviously a huge number. (The "average" goalie, which isn't as important, probably has a ~72 save% or so, being +.34 above replacement).

How much better is Messi over a replacement field player? Add Messi to a team who used a platoon of players in the EPL for example, and over 38 games, what is the expectation of goal differential change?

It's tough to assign an APM to each player, but looking at betting lines and how they change when a player is reported as hurt is a good place to start.

cool thanks, I'll start reading through these

Har de har har. What I meant is their role in the team and the actual playing of the sport, is for them as different from other positions as it is to people playing completely different sports. That makes it very difficult to compare their ability to an outfielders in a direct way. Analysis of contribution to a team would require quite complex staistical analysis and even then that wouldn't necessarily tell us that much. Basically Bjorns decision to leave out goalkeepers makes his task of rating the players easier by an order of magnitude. He could make a seperate best goalkeepers list and I have no problem with it whatsoever.

I am not sure why you thought my opinion about Bjorn's decision wrt his list could somehow be extrapolated to my opinion about the value of goalkeepers in general. I think they are absolutely hugely valuable. Much more than most fans. I argued the case for someone in the dynasty draft who took Casillas early that it was nowhere near as bad a decision as most made out given how important a player he could be. On multiple occassions their is no doubt in my mind Casillas was Real Madrid's most valuable contributor in league winning seasons. Including one mindblowing season where he was the most shot at goalkeeper in the whole league but conceded the least goals. I am sure kit could do some statistical wizardry and make an attempt to quantify just how incredibly valuable that contribution was.

There are quite a few more advanced blogs popping up which is a great thing. You would be hard pressed to find any intelligent analysis outside a select handful of journos just a few years ago.

Zonal Marking, the Swiss Ramble are a few off the top of my head worth checking out. I am sure others can suggest more.

Goalkeepers ideally would be included. I think Bjorn would agree, however his decision was made for logistical and convenience based reasons. It was just so much easier for him to make the list whilst not taking almost anything away from it, as you can simply rank goalkeepers seperately.

Is there PBP for soccer?

Not sure what that is.

Oops, correction: Those figures are from the 05/06, 06/07, 07/08, 08/09 and 09/10 La Liga seasons. I had the wrong tab of my spreadsheet open.

Ra_Z,

PBP = play by play.

Also- thanks for clarifying the stuff about goalies, especially that stat about Casillas. I know less than you guys, but for me I still find it important to know their relative value on the field. For example, many QPR fans are convinced that Paddy Kenny has been the second best player on the team this year. In my head, I want to know if this claim is outlandish or accurate.

I ask again-- is there any consolidated, accurate, known site for soccer player salaries?

AFAIK all of that stuff is kept pretty private so Id have to say no.

Ah Fat Pat. Not a bad auld spud tbh.

Futebol Finance publishes a list every year but I don't know where they get their figures from and since clubs don't have to release the information it's all unofficial as far as I know. The list from February 2010 (for the 09/10 season):

1 Cristiano Ronaldo (Real Madrid, £11.3million)
2 Zlatan Ibrahimovic (Barcelona, £10.4million)
3 Lionel Messi (Barcelona, £9.1million)
4 Samuel Eto'o (Internazionale, £9.1million)
5 Kaka (Real Madrid, £8.7million)
6 Emmanuel Adebayor (Manchester City, £7.4million)
7 Karim Benzema (Real Madrid, £7.4million)
8 Carlos Tevez (Manchester City, £7million)
9 John Terry (Chelsea, £6.5million)
10 Frank Lampard (Chelsea, £6.5million)

11 Thierry Henry (Barcelona, £6.5million)
12 Xavi (Barcelona, £6.5million)
13 Ronaldinho (AC Milan, £6.5million)
14 Steven Gerrard (Liverpool, £6.5million)
15 Daniel Alves (Barcelona, £6.1million)
16 Michael Ballack (Chelsea, £5.6million)
17 Raul (Real Madrid, £5.6million)
18 Rio Ferdinand (Manchester United, £5.6million)
19 Kolo Toure (Manchester City, £5.6million)
20 Wayne Rooney (Manchester United, £5.2million)

21 Robinho (Manchester City, £5.2million)
22 Iker Casillas (Real Madrid, £5.2million)
23 Victor Valdez (Barcelona, £5.2million)
24 Frederic Kanoute (Sevilla, £5.2million)
25 Deco (Chelsea, £5.2million)
26 Didier Drogba (Chelsea, £4.8million)
27 Gianluigi Buffon (Juventus, £4.8million)
28 Francesco Totti (Roma, £4.8million)
29 Luca Toni (Roma, £4.8million)
30 David Villa (Valencia, £4.8million)

31 Arjen Robben (Bayern Munich, £4.8million)
32 Bastian Schweinsteiger (Bayern Munich, £4.8million)
33 Ashley Cole (Chelsea, £4.8million)
34 Fernando Torres (Liverpool, £4.8million)
35 Gareth Barry (Manchester City, £4.8million)
36 Patrick Vieira (Internazionale, £4.8million)
37 Charles Puyol (Barcelona, £4.3million)
38 Andres Iniesta (Barcelona, £4.3million)
39 Sergio Aguero (Atletico Madrid, £4.3million)
40 Andreas Pirlo (AC Milan, £4.3million)

41 Willy Sagnol (Bayern Munich, £4.3million)
42 Frank Ribery (Bayern Munich, £4.3million)
43 David Beckham (AC Milan, £4.3million)
44 Wayne Bridge (Manchester City, £4.3million)
45 Lassana Diarra (Real Madrid, £4.3million)
46 Dimitar Berbatov (Manchester United £4.1million)
47 Andrei Arshavin (Arsenal, £4.1million)
48 Nicolas Anelka (Chelsea, £4.1million)
49 Ryan Giggs (Manchester United £4.1million)
50 Alessandro Del Piero (Juventus, £4.1million)

The big players earn more from external sources than their wages also.

Not to derail the thead, but these are my football bookmarks:

http://www.holdingmidfield.com/
http://upper90magazine.wordpress.com/
http://inbedwithmaradona.com/
http://swissramble.blogspot.com/
http://www.zonalmarking.net/
http://www.tomwfootball.com/
http://www.runofplay.com/
http://iainmacintosh.wordpress.com/
http://backpagefootball.com/
http://onefootinthegame.com/
http://mr-renoog-videos.blogspot.com/

Some are obv more analytical than others.