25 | Gianluigi Donnarumma - 2025/26

Also immediately after the mistake all our defenders had no issue passing back to him, they have very confidence in him.
Guehi doesn't seem to trust him,

Few times he could/ should have passed to his keeper but chose another player

 
Stupid throw in from Nunes, throw it up the pitch, we never really throw it back to the GK from that position. It left him needing to have a perfect first touch...he couldn't turn back towards the touch line because the throw was too far towards the goal and heading away to the other side...it took too long to get to him. and gave Havartz too much time to chase GK down.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to defend Donnarumma as it was essentially his feck up but the angle of the throw and distance did him no favours. He had to have a perfect 1st touch and there was so little margin for error with his touch.
Good save in the 2nd half and a great throw that led to the winner.

See that stat ? Nunes has taken 177 throw ins. That was the first one he ever threw back to Donnarumma
 
Yeah, but my point isn’t about our defenders or confidence, it’s that he needs to be more careful not to kick the ball in the same direction as a player running toward him to block it, because this is a basic goalkeeping lesson and he shouldn’t do it again in the final minute like that or in the next few games though.
Fair comment. Let’s hope an error makes him think twice plus the coaches help with it!
 
Guehi doesn't seem to trust him,

Few times he could/ should have passed to his keeper but chose another player


Guehi who is also new to the team. Got to remember we’ve come from a really established team where the players know each other as well as you can to a set of new players. I don’t like the term rebuild but Guehi, Khusanov, Donna are all fairly new to playing with each other.

Nunes on the other hand thank has played for city a few years now and used to have a lunatic in goal that thrived in those situations.

I’m really confident with more time (not much more) we will be flowing like we used to.
 
A neutral at work made a great point. He said yesterday shows why he’s world class. Making an absolute clanger like that, in a high stakes game, but then putting in a fantastic 2nd half, when lesser keepers would have collapsed.

We even saw it with Alisson when we won 4-1 at Anfield during lockdown. After his first mistake he kept making them and had a mental block for the rest of the game.

He's mint. I personally love the guy and wouldn't swap him for any other keeper in world football. PSG tried doing that and the guy they brought in to replace him has been benched for weeks/months!

He's been at elite clubs since he was 16 and under pressure his whole career because of his age, experience and supposed vulnerabilities yet still - season after season - proves himself to be one of, if not the, best in the world in his position.

His mentality is ridiculous and worth its weight in gold. The same way Bernie's mentality is. Same with Rodri. They're winners and don't get overawed by any occasion or any mistake they make.
 
Nunes should have gone down the line. His throw to Gigi was bouncing and lacked pace, which gave Havertz the chance to close down quickly. Gigi should though have whacked the ball hard, first time in the direction of the other touchline rather than taking a touch. In that situation, you go safety first and consolidate your lead.

Technically the error said very little about Gigi’s ability with his feet and was simply a misjudgment of how quickly Havertz was closing in.

I have not spent ages analysing the quality of Gigi’s passes but a simple fact is that he has a very high pass completion for a goalkeeper, it was 77% overall yesterday in a game where he made 44 passes of which 20 were long ball's on which his completion dropped to 50%. Oh, and his pass completion across the season is better than Trafford’s.
Not really arsed which keeper we play in future, both are top class, but I think pass completion is a misleading stat in terms of what a keeper offers to build up. Gigi tends to make more short and simple passes which end up meaning his completion is higher, quite often though, these passes aren't placed in a way to make it easy for the CBs or FBs to play the ball forward and end up putting them under pressure.

I think that the drop off in build up is definitely a trade off as we're less press resistant and more susceptible to a man-to-man press than ever. However, this is a tactical puzzle that can be solved so I'm interested in what Pep does going into next season. Not sure I'm a fan of splitting the CBs and dropping Rodri and Bernie deeper though as this gives us less progressive options up the pitch. Losing Josko hasn't made this any easier either imo
 
Not really arsed which keeper we play in future, both are top class, but I think pass completion is a misleading stat in terms of what a keeper offers to build up. Gigi tends to make more short and simple passes which end up meaning his completion is higher, quite often though, these passes aren't placed in a way to make it easy for the CBs or FBs to play the ball forward and end up putting them under pressure.

I think that the drop off in build up is definitely a trade off as we're less press resistant and more susceptible to a man-to-man press than ever. However, this is a tactical puzzle that can be solved so I'm interested in what Pep does going into next season. Not sure I'm a fan of splitting the CBs and dropping Rodri and Bernie deeper though as this gives us less progressive options up the pitch. Losing Josko hasn't made this any easier either imo

I’ve not spent time analysing Gigi’s passes but I don’t recall seeing lots of passes that have made me go, that’s a poor pass and, especially at the Etihad, I am constantly thinking about where the player on the ball should pass it. That comes from having been a goalkeeper myself (albeit purely recreational level) when I would keep myself involved in matches by constantly telling team mates where to pass etc (not that they listened or necessarily heard me).

I have so far watched the first half of the Arsenal game TV coverage and am making a point of watching Gigi’s distribution carefully and it was fine. His error was not about him being poor with his feet but about taking a touch when he needed to just clear it. He sent 3 or 4 good balls up to Erl.

I have no issue with him playing short passes predominantly.
 
Fantastic few saves. Shit from the corner that led to their second goal. But every keeper is nowadays because they’re crowded in.
 
A couple big saves tbf to him.

Dodgy on the corner but at the same time was quite a good header. Wouldn’t blame the draw on him
 
Piss poor for the corner, he wasn't even penned in but still got absolutely nowhere near, majority of other keepers in the league get to that and they're nearly all smaller than him.

Criminal how bad he is dealing with crosses. Logically, it should be his biggest strength.

Couple of potentially important saves second half but they were all bog standard saves really from some poor finishing. The one in the first half from the cross that he got a touch on was very good.

Did let out a little dark laugh when he came up for the corner, if he can't get his hands to crosses into our box, what chance did he have of getting his head on to one?
 

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