Illan Meslier’s return to form is symptomatic of Daniel Farke’s Leeds reset — The Athletic 8/11/23

By Phil Hay and Mark Carey

In the week Leeds United decided Daniel Farke was their man, Illan Meslier was on holiday in Miami with no clear idea of what was left for him at Elland Road.

News of Farke’s impending appointment had not reached the squad by then. Leeds were in the market for another goalkeeper and Meslier, for the first time in three seasons, was no longer assured of his first-choice status. The smart money was on him leaving unless pre-season altered the picture around him.

But Meslier impressed his new coach straight away. Leeds would still buy another goalkeeper, a more hardened one than him, but Meslier went into the Championship season with the message that the gloves were his.

It was part of the process of re-establishing Meslier’s confidence, which spiked again on Friday night with a fine stoppage-time save that protected a 1-0 advantage at leaders Leicester City. Leeds had played well all night at the King Power Stadium, deserving of a big result, but it was the 23-year-old goalkeeper to whom Farke’s outfield players ran at full time.

His save, clawing out Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall’s header from underneath the crossbar, was the difference between three points and one and reacquainted Meslier with that sensation of being the decisive line of defence.

Last season was the nadir of Meslier’s career. Collectively, Leeds were dreadful, but while Meslier had the mitigation of a poor and vacant defence in front of him, the data behind his performances was deeply unflattering.

Sam Allardyce took charge of United’s last four games and dropped him immediately. The former England manager had all the evidence he needed to justify the change. Leeds were conceding at will. Meslier was not helping. He was not a busted flush but there was a feeling he was trapped in an unproductive cycle and that his time at Elland Road had run its course.

To a certain extent, circumstances altered that perception after Farke’s arrival as manager in July. Leeds were fairly slow in recruiting another ‘keeper and, having looked at Bayern Munich’s Alexander Nubel without making a deal happen, they did not finalise the signing of Karl Darlow from Newcastle United until eight days before the start of their season.

Even if Farke had privately considered Darlow as a first choice in waiting, he had not trained enough in Farke’s system to be seriously considered for the opening fixture. Meslier, on that Sunday against Cardiff City, was the only sensible option.

But other factors created a different outlook, too: a lower division, a change of goalkeeping coach and a tactical shuffle that, over the past three months, has made Leeds far less of a defensive worry.

On the contrary, Farke’s side are organised at the back and, based on Opta’s expected goals against (xGA) model, have the second-best defensive record in the league, just behind Leicester. Leeds went 22 games without a clean sheet before the first weekend of September. Since then, they have registered six. Like so much in Farke’s strategy, the numbers are vindicating his decisions.

On Friday, with Meslier’s fingertip save from Dewsbury-Hall fresh in his mind, Farke said the decision to stick with him this season had largely come down to potential. “He can be any goalkeeper,” Farke said. “He’s still unbelievably young.”

That chimed with the message Meslier had long been receiving from Leeds: that in comparison to other ‘keepers of his age and experience across Europe, few were vastly superior. For a while, he was regarded as the asset most likely to be sold for a big fee and a big profit, following on from Raphinha and Kalvin Phillips, but form diminished his value.

“It’s not a decision against Karl, who’s an outstanding character and a proven goalkeeper at this level,” Farke said. “I’m so happy to have both of them but the potential of Illan is just massive. When you have a diamond like him, you have to back him. If I judge his games so far, he is excellent and the best goalkeeper in the league.”

That Meslier has quality saves up his sleeve is not in dispute — Leeds have seen them repeatedly over the years — but occasionally displaying impressive reactions is not the same as putting together sustained high-quality displays. That is what Meslier was striving for under Farke and what his reputation depended on.

Immediate relief has come from Leeds’ drop into the Championship, with a lower level of football easing the hail of bullets fired at the former France Under-21 international.

Last season, he was facing an average of 4.65 shots on target per game, forever busy and under pressure. This season, that number has fallen to 2.73, a figure that also shows how much better Farke’s defensive plan is working. After 15 matches, Meslier has been asked to deal with only 41 efforts in total in a side who have conceded 15 times.

On that basis, his form was likely to improve, but analysing Meslier’s contribution is more complicated than framing it around the quality of Leeds’ defending as a whole.

In simple terms, Meslier’s quality is not purely linked to the performance of the outfield players and last season’s data showed that while United were horribly porous at the back, Meslier conceded at a much higher rate than he should have done.

The expected goals on target (xGOT) metric is used to assess how well a ‘keeper is performing individually when it comes to the core skill of shot-stopping. Analysis through that lens looks at the quality of the shots faced by a ‘keeper — factoring in the angle of attempts and where in the goal they are aimed — to work out how difficult an effort is to stop.

The collated data gives a ‘goals prevented’ score, which demonstrates how well or otherwise a ‘keeper is saving shots.

Over the 2022-23 campaign, Meslier was way below par. He conceded 63 goals (without including penalties) in 34 Premier League appearances, but his xGOT calculation indicated he should have shipped around 51, creating a negative difference of 12.

So whereas someone like Bernd Leno at Fulham was making a tangible difference (graphic, below), helping Fulham finish 10th in the Premier League, Meslier was performing worse than the average goalkeeper. Allardyce replacing him with Joel Robles did not stop United from going down, but the switch was worth a try considering how much Meslier was struggling.

This season, without producing outstanding figures, Meslier has moved back towards parity or thereabouts.

Again, other Championship goalkeepers are outperforming him on xGOT. Vaclav Hladky at second-placed Ipswich Town has conceded almost seven goals fewer than the numbers suggest he ought to have done and Leicester are getting decent value from Mads Hermansen.

Meslier is still in negative territory, but his xGOT figure of minus 0.78 shows he has returned to a position where he is being beaten roughly as often as he should be.

He might not be defying the odds for Leeds time and time again, but on shot-stopping alone, he has been worth his place and offered a much more steady presence.

As with virtually every ‘keeper these days, there is more to Farke’s demands of Meslier than reaction saves and athletic dives. His tally of 38.6 passes per 90 minutes is at the higher end of the scale in the league and only a fifth of his passes fall under the ‘long balls’ category (passes covering 40 yards or more).

Meslier is a big part of Farke’s strategy of working possession out from the back, with short passes to the centre-backs and Pascal Struijk in particular. But even so, Meslier’s stats through the 2022-23 term required definite individual improvement and more consistent resistance against opposition attacks, irrespective of the extent to which he was being peppered in the Premier League.

Throughout his career at Elland Road, Meslier has had a tendency to fall on the wrong side of xGOT — sometimes by a wide margin. The graph above shows the periods in which he has scored well on that metric, in blue, and the much longer periods, in red, where he failed to hit or exceed par.

The 23-year-old is still trying to work himself into a prolonged spell where his shot-stopping makes him the star of the show more regularly, but he is young in goalkeeping terms.

Farke is not the first coach to think Meslier has something special about him. Together with his staff, Farke has done with Meslier what he is doing with Leeds: clearing the air and steadying the ship.