Hart's distribution worst in Premier League so far

WEST HAM's Joe Hart has the worst distribution performance of any goalkeeper in the Premier League this season, according to exclusive analysis conducted by the World in Motion agency.

Brazilian Ederson - the man who has replaced Hart at his parent club, Manchester City - tops the table, which you can see in full below.

City boss Pep Guardiola moved Hart out on loan last summer because his distribution was not deemed good enough for the Spaniard’s attacking style of play.

Distribution is becoming an increasingly important facet for keepers in the Premier League, yet Sam Jackson, World in Motion’s Head of Research & Analytics, says there has not been an accurate way to analyse it up to now.

“Typically-used methods for rating goalkeeper distribution lack context,” Jackson told TGG. “Pass accuracy percentage rewarded keepers who played short, easy passes, while long pass accuracy percentage was skewed in favour of those who had target men to hit.

“Pressure and different types of distribution have generally been ignored.”

So Jackson looked at clips of each distribution by keepers in the Premier League this season and broke them down into a risk v reward scenario of how many opponents were bypassed v accuracy.

To do this he counted the number of opponents bypassed by each distribution, recorded where the ball was heading (accuracy) on a five-point-scale and recorded the pressure the keeper was under at the time.

Ederson came top of the list, with a score of 0.4838, with Chelsea’s Thibaut Courtois a close second with 0.4825 and Liverpool’s Simon Mignolet third with 0.4780.

Hart was last, with Jack Butland of Stoke in 19th and Wayne Hennessey of Crystal Palace in 18th. The full table is at the bottom of the page.

Overall conclusions were that goal kicks were very inefficient in terms of output while thrown distribution was highly effective.