What Chelsea’s Sanchez transfer means for Kepa and the battle to be their No 1

Spare a thought for Kepa Arrizabalaga. One of those admirers was Brighton’s head coach at the time, Graham Potter, who explained his decision to elevate the Spaniard by saying: “If you think there is a player that can play in pretty much any football club in the world, has that potential, then you have to try and give them a pathway to play.” Another was Brighton’s goalkeeping coach Ben Roberts, who followed Potter to Chelsea to do the same job early last season and has remained at the club in a new, Christophe Lollichon-esque role that encompasses goalkeeper scouting and recruitment as well as coaching the position across all age groups. “There’s a lot he can bring to the table that Chelsea haven’t had in a while in a goalkeeper,” Pyzdrowski says of Sanchez. Chelsea have had to endure even wilder shot-stopping extremes during Kepa’s time at the club, however, and the below graphic highlights that he has spent more time under-performing his xGOT than over-performing it since being signed from Athletic Bilbao five years ago — with his individual nadir, in 2019-20, prompting the purchase of Mendy from French club Rennes the following September: It is, however, far from clear whether Sanchez would be able to provide an upgrade on Kepa as a shot-stopper. In the below graphic you can see that a higher proportion of Sanchez’s passes last season were directed short into central areas, in accordance with De Zerbi’s style: Kepa, meanwhile, more often clipped the ball out to the flanks last term under Potter, caretaker manager Bruno Saltor and interim boss Frank Lampard : Pochettino will not ask his goalkeepers to do precisely the same things on the ball as De Zerbi.