First things first, let’s get it out there and said – Marco Silvestri is a fantastic goalkeeper and a great buy for Leeds United.

I wrote a piece way back in July and included the phrase “Silvestri can be seen to be a reliable shot stopper“. After 10 games of this season, it seems that I may be justified in saying just that. Sometimes it feels good to be a little right, it’s rare in my house.

So far this season, Marco Silvestri has made 29 saves and this sees him being ranked as the #3 goalkeeper in the Championship when talking about saves made. Saves are the bread and butter of a goalkeeper’s trade and to have a good ‘keeper is reassuring, to have a great ‘keeper is better. What I noted is that Silvestri is great in one aspect, that of a shot-stopper; just how great is he though?

Marco Silvestri’s performance (home)

Silvestri home

He’s this good. At home he has conceded only 2 goals whilst making 11 saves and keeping 4 cleans sheets. Put another way (and this will be the only ‘fancy stat’ that I will use) Silvestri has a ‘saves to goal ratio’ of 0.85 which means that at Elland Road he’s saved 85% of total shots on target. That’s impressive, an 85% stop rate – better than my local speed camera.

Marco Silvestri’s performance (away)

Silvestri away

As you can instantly see, Silvestri’s net has bulged 10 times on Leeds’ travels. That could be due to many things, granted I accept that. Still, the 18 saves ‘on his travels’ is still good enough to give Marco Silvestri the #1 Championship ranking for ‘away saves’. Of course his ‘saves to goal ratio’ suffers somewhat away from home due to the 10 goals conceded and ends up with 0.64 ratio meaning that he stops 64% of total shots on target – still a respectably high figure but not on a par with his home performance.

I have written elsewhere about Silvestri (in more flowery prose) and I do feel that, in Marco Silvestri, we have a good, reliable keeper and one that hopefully can go on to improve even more.