Let’s talk about statistics…

By: Firezen | November 11th, 2009

Reading from Jan’s post “Fred Rutten re-invents PSV Eindhoven…”, it got me thinking about providing hard evidence to support his transformation.

You still remember me? Oh you’ve forgotten me already?

Under Huub Stevens, we conceded the same amount of goals Gomes conceded the previous season before the season was half way there… Now? My goalkeeper coach who used to play for the PSV A1 squad, but unfortunately retired very early due to an injury, kept dissing Andreas Isaksson about how crappy he was. My coach claimed he would do a better job than Isaksson anyday if he were to play between the post today (he said that a few months ago). After Isaksson heard my coach diss him, he went on to pull off a 7 game clean sheet streak before halting in Copenhagen…

FIFA claims PSV is 1 game short from breaking our club record (where they get that number from? Gome’s longest individual clean sheet streak is 956 minutes… that’s 10 games right there), but 7 game clean sheet streak is an achievement in itself. And despite his critics, I must say even with my mind influenced by my goalkeeper coache’s “biased” comments, I have been impressed with his performances. Shall we say, he is was in hot form (well not quite so after Copenhagen…).

And don’t get me wrong, cleansheets are rarely an individual efforts, it’s a joint effort. In the days of our successful runs in Europe (stupid AC Milan who barely beat us), the defence has always been our major strength, with Gomes just enjoying his time earning cleansheets 60% of the time.

Last season was such a hard season for us PSV fans to swallow, just because our defence looked so shabby… Fred Rutten came, he shuffled the defence around (where’d Timmy Simons go? Anyone?), and formed the twin towers of Mexico in front of Isaksson. Smart choice, cause afterall, Salcido enjoys playing centre back much more than left back. Also, Maza Rodriguez’s towering height of 1.91m (!) compared to Marcellis’ mere 1.81m, absolutely complements Salcido’s 1.75m body. Salcido and Marcellis are no Vermaelen (dang that boy can jump high), and if Salcido needed help to head a cross out of the box, he just needs to shout “¡auxilio!” (Spanish speakers, excuse my Spanish…) in his native tongue.

Another record that is going on at the moment is our undefeated streak. In my previous article, I said we have been undefeated since the beginning of the season. That statement is still true, but you can extend that statement all the way back until “8 months and 29 matches ago”.

Now, it would be nice if we could pull off an “invincible” season if we keep going on like this. Boeren!