Giorgi Mamardashvili and Winning on Your Own

Liverpool are on the verge of agreeing a deal for Valencia's Giorgi Mamardashvili.

So we’ve addressed a whole host of different topics since I launched this Substack, from managers to sporting directors to playing styles to footedness. We even talked about feelings at one point.

*vomits*

In this post, we’re going to open up a new box. This week, it’s time to talk about the most undervalued position on the pitch. The man between the sticks. The goalkeeper.

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Back when I launched this Substack, I tried to find a replacement for Jürgen Klopp using numbers, and while producing that series, I touched on the model for success in football in very basic terms.

So simply put, football is about scoring goals. To score goals, you need to generate shots, ideally from healthy locations. To generate shots from healthy locations, you need to be reaching the penalty box often. To reach the penalty box often, you need to progress the ball from deeper areas.

Football is also about not conceding goals. To not concede goals, you need to prevent shots from healthy locations. To prevent shots from healthy locations, you need to restrict entries into your penalty box. To restrict entries into your penalty box, you need to stop your opponents from progressing the ball from deeper areas.

Thus, the general objective that most top teams are aiming to establish nowadays is dominance. In essence, seeing lots of the ball and creating lots of good shots, without giving away much at the opposite end.

If you create 15 shots every week and your opponents only create five, you’ll win most of the time. The same logic applies to me against you in your local park, and this is why we put so much weight on xG, because the metric offers an insight into probability.

By establishing dominance, you’re getting the odds in your favour. You’re taking care of the result as best you can. Many isolated incidents can impact the course of a match, but the very least you can do is make it so that you deserved to win.

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Now, football doesn’t always work like that, and that’s why it’s such a psychotic sport. As much as I hate to admit it, the best-performing team doesn’t always win. Penalties, red cards, referees, luck. There are just tons of factors that can decide a result in an instant, regardless of whether you created 15 shots or not.

But here’s the thing: you can control some of those factors, with one of them being goalkeepers. Your goalkeeper doesn’t have much of an influence on your performance. For the most part, he just stands there as your ten outfielders create shots while trying to restrict their opponents from having much joy.

For that reason, goalkeepers are often an afterthought. Does anybody really care about them? It doesn’t feel like it. They even tend to train seperately from the rest of their teammates. But that old-fashioned mindset is very flawed.

While your goalkeeper might not have much of an influence on whether you dominate proceedings, he will have a huge say on whether you win the game or not.

If your goalkeeper isn’t very good at saving shots, it won’t matter whether you create 15 efforts on goal or 30, because he’ll concede from the few that he faces. Jürgen Klopp experienced this on repeat before Alisson Becker joined in 2018.

You can work as much as you want on your performance. Everything can be perfect. Your manager can spend all week doing his homework. Your outfielders can spend 90 minutes executing the plan. But you only end up with a draw because your goalkeeper got beaten from 30 yards just before the final whistle.

If you want to improve your performance level, sign an good outfielder. If you want to improve your results, sign a good goalkeeper.

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In that sense, goalies are cheat codes. They can mask the weaknesses of their respective teams by delivering undeserved results, almost singlehandedly. José Mourinho benefited from this in 2017/18.

During that season, Manchester United placed eighth for shots faced in the Premier League, and fifth for xG faced. Mourinho’s defence really wasn’t anything special, yet somehow, they ended up finishing second.

No team kept more clean sheets than United, and they conceded the same amount of non-penalty goals as Manchester City, who became the first side in the history of the competition to accumulate 100 points.

So what happened? David de Gea, that’s what. The Spaniard had a monster season between the sticks. He should have shipped about 39 goals based on the shots on target that United faced, yet he conceded just 26 times, excluding own goals.

De Gea overperformed the norm by 12.5 goals, which is just daft. For context, the next-best goalkeeper in the Premier League was Nick Pope, having overperformed expectation by 8.5 goals for Burnley.

Below, you’ll see each goalkeeper who amassed over 1,350 minutes in the Premier League during that season. You can see what each man was expected to concede, and you can see what he actually conceded.

Liverpool, who persisted with Simon Mignolet and Loris Karius, actually conceded about two goals more than expected. That means Klopp’s goalies essentially worked against him. They made it harder for the Reds to pick up wins.

So United finished second, and Mourinho was portrayed like a hero. But guess what? He got sacked in the season that followed, because his team’s performance level remained the same — not great — but De Gea stopped delivering superhuman shot-stopping displays, so results normalised and they found their rightful place in the table.

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Given that, you can imagine what a top goalkeeper can do for a team who are already pretty great. You end up getting all-time good. You end up winning everything on offer.

That’s what happened when Liverpool landed Alisson in 2018. During his time at AS Roma, the South American painted himself as an elite stopper with sweeping and ball-playing qualities, too. Below, you can see his numbers from his final campaign in Italy.

Klopp had coached an absolute machine with the Reds only facing about 7.3 shots per match in England. So the defence was already excellent, and then you added a cheat code on top of that.

In the campaign that followed, Liverpool lost just once in 38 games. Alisson saved 5.2 goals above expectation in his debut season. In simple terms, if Mignolet had still been in goal, the Reds would have probably conceded about five goals more. Not much, but still a massive difference.

Indeed, since Liverpool signed Alisson, he’s saved 29.1 goals above expectation in the Premier League and Champions League. So if an ordinary goalkeeper had played in his place over that period, we would have probably witnessed the Reds concede about 29 times more than they actually have.

Alisson is the best goalkeeper in the world once you consider his overall package. And when it comes to the art of making saves, Jan Oblak is the only real rival who has stood up over the past few years.

With the Brazilian number one now aged 31, it is imperative that Richard Hughes prepares for his eventual departure, because as an individual in a team sport, he’s had a serious impact on Liverpool’s ability to accumulate points.

If Alisson was replaced by a perfectly average stopper next summer, the Reds could deliver the exact same performances next season, yet end up with ten points less than usual, simply because more opposition shots found the net.

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This is where Giorgi Mamardashvili enters the conversation. Liverpool seem to be on the verge of agreeing a curious deal for him which would involve the Georgian international remaining at Valencia until Alisson basically decides he’s bored of English football.

I understand why some supporters aren’t that excited about such a transfer, but make no mistake about it, this would be a very sensible move. Once Alisson leaves, his exit should — in theory — make it harder for Liverpool to pick up results.

How do you prevent that from happening? You source another goalkeeper who is just as special at keeping the ball out of the net. Those are rare, but Mamardashvili could be the answer, hence the Reds moving fast.

He hasn’t been on the scene for very long at all, but based on the evidence he’s produced so far, he might be another special case. Mamardashvili has really exploded over the past year, and that’s captured by his numbers.

Below, you’ll see each goalkeeper who amassed over 1,350 minutes in La Liga last season, ranked according to their shot-stopping performance against xG.