Jason Steele or Bart Verbruggen? To say the decision making taken by Roberto De Zerbi over which of his goalkeepers starts for Brighton has been interesting so far this season would be a slight understatement.
When De Zerbi said before the start of the campaign that Steele and Verbruggen would receive a 50-50 split of matches across all competitions, a few eyebrows were raised.
De Zerbi could consider himself lucky he received such a muted reaction. Mikel Arteta announcing he would be rotating between David Raya and Aaron Ramsdale depending on who Arsenal were playing sent the football went into genuine meltdown.
Arteta’s logic was that you select different outfield players with different attributes based on those best suited to overcome the opposition. Why not do the same with goalkeepers? The Gunners boss even suggested he wanted to normalise substituting his goalkeepers during the game.
Fans, television pundits, journalists, radio hosts, former players, the cast of Hollyoaks… you name it, they lined up to slam the plan.
Everyone had an opinion to the point that it was somewhat surprising King Charles III did not make an emergency broadcast to the nation, stating why Arteta should settle on either Raya or Ramsdale as first choice.
Without any prompting from Buckingham Palace, Arteta quietly dropped the idea. Raya now appears to be his Premier League number one with Ramsdale nominated cup goalkeeper.
A few weeks ago, it appeared as though De Zerbi had done likewise. Steele started five out of six games from the end of September through October.
De Zerbi seemed to suggest the days of Brighton rotating their goalkeepers was over by highlighting how important Steele was and how Verbruggen was young and still learning. Steele then signed a new Brighton contract.
All this naturally meant within a week of those comments, Verbruggen was back in the XI for games against Everton and Ajax. Steele then returned for the 1-1 draw at home to Sheffield United.
Why goalkeepers should not be rotated has been done to death thanks to Arterta publicly musing as to whether it should be thing. Playing in goal is a unique challenge whereby a run of games develops form and confidence.
A goalkeeper needs strong relationships with those playing in front of them. These are much harder to develop when the person between the posts is changing on a fortnightly basis. Likewise, defenders get used to the way a goalkeeper plays.
There is probably a reason why even the most innovative managers in the history of football have never gone so far as to rotate goalkeepers.
Pep Guardiola tried to rewrite the rules of the sport by winning titles without a striker. But swap goalkeepers from fixture to fixture? Too mad even for Guardiola.
One could argue the reason Brighton are yet to keep a Premier League clean sheet this season is because of the uncertainty caused by switching goalkeepers frequently.
Recording shutouts was not so much of a problem in 2022-23, Robert Sanchez keeping five clean sheets after De Zerbi replaced Glow Up Graham Potter and Steele six.
The issue of who should be current number one for the Albion has been brought into renewed focus over the international break by Ronald Koeman confirming Verbruggen is now first choice for the Netherlands.
If Verbruggen is considered good enough to be going to Euro 2024 as number one for one of the best nations on the continent, then surely he should be playing every week for Brighton?
Fan opinion would appear to back this up. A poll on the WAB Twitter page last week showed that 67.9 percent of Albion supporters believed Verbruggen should be Albion first choice. 32.1 percent opted for Steele.
As already mentioned, one reason De Zerbi has cited for this rotation of Brighton goalkeepers is that Verbruggen is still learning the unique demands of DeZerbiBall.
Steele remains the better goalkeeper with the ball at his feet, which ultimately is the reason he surprisingly replaced Sanchez in March.
All those now labelling Steele as rubbish would do well to remember that he played a major part in helping the Albion finish sixth in the Premier League table last season.
So much so that there was talk of an England call up. Scotland were even said to be investigating if any of Steele’s family had ever owned a kilt or tossed a caber to see if there were grounds for fast tracking him into the Tartan Army squad.
But what of the current campaign? As Peter Finn said in these parts when looking at Brighton players out on loan, neither Steele or Verbruggen have covered themselves in glory this season – certainly not compared to goalkeepers like Kjell Scherpen, Carl Rushworth and James Beadle, all of whom are earning rave reviews elsewhere.
Steele shipped six goals at Aston Villa and it often feels like anything which is not straight at him has a strong chance of hitting the back of the net.
Verbruggen has found himself in a total mess trying to play out from the back, leading to some high profile errors. He was directly responsible for Plucky Little Bournemouth taking the lead at the Amex before being fortunate his woefully inadequate pass to Pascal Gross did not lead to Der Kaiser seeing red against Liverpool.
Steele and Verbruggen only have only one clean sheet apiece, both kept against Ajax in the Europa League. Shutting out a team who were hovering above the Eredivisie relegation zone at the time is hardly something to be shouting about.
Clean sheets are of course only one way of measuring the performance of a goalkeeper. Steele has saved 60.5 percent of shots faced in 2023-24; Verbruggen 69.6 percent.
Goals prevented (GP) measures the number of goals conceded against the goals expected from the quality of chances based on xG. The bigger the figure, the more goals a goalkeeper is keeping out.
Steele has a worrying GP of so far this season of -3.9, meaning he has let in nearly four goals which he is expected to save. Verbruggen sits on -1.0 GP. Both goalkeepers are struggling when it comes to shot stopping.
Interestingly, all these numbers suggest that Steele and Verbruggen’s performances have dipped in the current campaign from last season.
Verbruggen recorded a superb GP of +6.7 for Anderlecht in the admittedly inferior Jupiler Pro League in 2022-23. Steele meanwhile sat on -1.5 GP. Still not great, but better than the -2.8 of Sanchez in a Brighton shirt.
Neither Albion goalkeeper is anywhere near their clean sheet percentage of 2022-23. Steele recorded shutouts in 40 percent of his appearances. For Verbruggen, it was 33.3 percent.
Want to know how Sanchez fared in that metric? Go on then, his clean sheet percentage was 26.1. At Chelsea in the current campaign, Sanchez has a clean sheet percentage of 25 percent.
As for save percentage, Steele kept out 61.4 percent of shots and Verbruggen 76.6 percent. Sanchez in an Albion shirt fared between the two on 66.2 percent.
To go back to the argument that squad rotation negatively impacts on goalkeepers, there is undoubtedly a debate to be had over whether De Zerbi’s current selection policy is the reason both Steele and Verbruggen are not playing as well as in the previous campaign.
Given how important playing out from the back is to DeZerbiBall, arguably the most important figure to the Brighton head coach when it comes to deciding between goalkeepers is pass completion.
Steele leads in this area so far in 2023-24 but only by the thinnest of margins, completing 86.5 percent of his passes compared to 87.4 for Verbruggen.
What does all this mean? Verbruggen is essentially the better goalkeeper when it comes to shot stopping. Steele is the better option for the purpose of luring an opposition press and building attacks. But only just.
Whichever role you consider the most important for a goalkeeper – keeping out the opposition or being a playmaker – is the main factor in deciding who you think should be number one.
De Zerbi does not at this moment in time want to decide between the two. And after everything he has done since becoming Brighton manager, he has earned the right to have the trust of Albion fans when it comes to trying out radical ideas like rotating goalkeepers.
The jury, however, remains out on whether it is working.
