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.