**[West Ham](https://www.whufc.com/news/offering-value-both-and-pitch-lukasz-fabianski-analysed) welcomed back Łukasz Fabianski earlier this week, and a group of West Ham fans at [_Analytics United_](https://analyticsunited.co.uk/) have been looking into the goalkeepers stats at West Ham.**
After an absolutely woeful start to Mads Hermansen’s West Ham career and constant critique of Alphonse Areola, like the whole club at the moment, West Ham’s goalkeeping department is a disaster.
Łukasz Fabianski was brought back to the club to be third choice goalkeeper after Wes Foderingham made a switch to Cyprus, however, there are already calls for him to start next week against Palace, and to be honest it’s hard to disagree.
In my opinion, Fabianski is the best goalkeeper we’ve had in a very very long time and the statistics back that up completely.
Fabiański, who joined from Swansea, replaced former fan-favourite Adrián and loanee Joe Hart as the duo struggled for form all season throughout 2017/18. Hart ranked bottom for performance against post-shot-expected goals (PSxG) faced per 90 (-0.33), a metric that allows you to look directly into shot-stopping performance by factoring shot placement within the goal, whilst Adrián also ranked below zero (-0.01).
However, the Pole arrived off the back of a player of the year win with the Swans, he performed very well, ranking third in the Premier League for PSxG performance (+0.14) and joint-fourth for overall save rate (72.1%).
Fabianski immediately improved those stats in a Hammers shirt, he upped his save rate to 74.2% and managed the second-best PSxG performance in the division with (+0.23), preventing an incredible 8.7 expected goals by the end of the season.
The former Arsenal keeper wouldn’t maintain these amazing shot-stopping numbers across his entire West Ham career where he only dipped below a 70% save rate in one season, the only campaign in which he played fewer than 1,000 minutes.
You might think Fabianski’s numbers declined towards the end of his Hammers career because of his age, but you’d be completely wrong.
Fabiański boasted the second-best save percentage across the division with 74.6%. Only Chelsea’s Robert Sánchez could beat this figure (76.4%) and Fabiański comfortably outranked first choices for Brazil and Argentina, Alisson (72%) and Emiliano Martínez (69%). Not only that is PSxG performance, Fabiański finished fourth amongst Premier League goalkeepers with +0.12.
ŁukasS obviously isn’t in the same mould as the new modern goalkeepers who get involved in the build up and are like an extra cents back in possession, but from what we’ve seen from Hermansen he’s not very good at that either.
Fabianski’s long ball distribution is far from bad however, Across the eight Premier League seasons in which this data has been recorded, Fabiański has averaged 44.7% success with his longer passes, ahead of other seasoned Premier League campaigners like Bernd Leno (43.4%) and Pickford (41.6%). In Hermansen’s one Premier League season at Leicester last season, Hermansen had a 27% long ball accuracy.
So, why not start the goalkeeper who’s better at actually being a goalkeeper, because Mads Hermansen has been shocking in his early West Ham career so far and has to be dropped or were going to keep conceding silly and avoidable goals.