Two fantastic saves against Southampton, and the one that got us points against MOL Vidi in the Europa League. Obviously he will need time to settle down, but overall in the long term an excellent addition and hopefully at the club for many years to come.

3 hours ago, big blue said:

Looking really good. He is making some great saves, and his distribution now compared to his 1st 2 games is fantastic, he keeps calm, and if he does need to go long, he is very accurate, and he is mastering that chipped out ball to the flanks.

 

The only game he deserves criticism for is Arsenal, apart from that game he's been fine to brilliant.

On 09/08/2018 at 08:29, zes said:

Oh right so I read he's 6'2 ft,  got the cm wrong. Thanks for the correction. 

6'2FT? Hmmm.

Hard to tell but he doesn't look that tall - looks like he's added 2-3 inches there (who doesn't? )

You would think having spent a record £71M on a keeper we would have got a bit more for our money! Just jesting of course, don't really care how tall he is as long as he's a top keeper and so far so good and he's a whole letter better personality wise than Courtois (not that I've been out with him socially).

 

 

 

"He Kepa, you knooooooow, 

He's better than f**king Teebo!"

I don't know if his shot stopping really is worse than Tibos. Kepa gets to the ground much quicker, I don't remember against who it was but there was a good example of this in a recent game. Granted Tibo would probably have gotten his fingertips to the Sturridge shot. Tibo being better with shots going into top corners and Kepa's ability to get down quicker isn't really surprising considering the height difference between them.

19 hours ago, CFCholland said:

I don't know if his shot stopping really is worse than Tibos. Kepa gets to the ground much quicker, I don't remember against who it was but there was a good example of this in a recent game. Granted Tibo would probably have gotten his fingertips to the Sturridge shot. Tibo being better with shots going into top corners and Kepa's ability to get down quicker isn't really surprising considering the height difference between them.

Courtois might have saved sturridge's shot, but there's no chance he would've saved the one from mane!

Kepa reminds me of cudicini.

21 hours ago, CFCholland said:

I don't know if his shot stopping really is worse than Tibos. Kepa gets to the ground much quicker, I don't remember against who it was but there was a good example of this in a recent game. Granted Tibo would probably have gotten his fingertips to the Sturridge shot. Tibo being better with shots going into top corners and Kepa's ability to get down quicker isn't really surprising considering the height difference between them.

It isn't, I don't even rate Courtois that highly when it comes to making saves. Courtois strengths come from set pieces and command of his area, the rest of his game isn't that great.

23 minutes ago, Scott Harris said:

It isn't, I don't even rate Courtois that highly when it comes to making saves. Courtois strengths come from set pieces and command of his area, the rest of his game isn't that great.

Yep.  Courtois is probably the best in the world at corners and set pieces simply because due to his height he can come and punch or catch balls that most keepers cannot.  He also will pull off spectacular looking saves when he has time to adjust his positioning and track the ball because of his enormous frame.  But outside of that, if we are talking pure shot stopping, he's not that great.  And terrible with his feet.  

2 hours ago, big blue said:

Courtois might have saved sturridge's shot, but there's no chance he would've saved the one from mane!

Kepa reminds me of cudicini.

A better version i hope, i love Carlo but he wasn't close to world class level as an overall keeper, his acrobatic saves gave the impression he was better than he actually was.

37 minutes ago, Scott Harris said:

It isn't, I don't even rate Courtois that highly when it comes to making saves. Courtois strengths come from set pieces and command of his area, the rest of his game isn't that great.

He's tall and has excellent initial positioning, that combination means you seldom need to make eyecatching saves.

44 minutes ago, TheChelsRVA said:

Yep.  Courtois is probably the best in the world at corners and set pieces simply because due to his height he can come and punch or catch balls that most keepers cannot.  He also will pull off spectacular looking saves when he has time to adjust his positioning and track the ball because of his enormous frame.  But outside of that, if we are talking pure shot stopping, he's not that great.  And terrible with his feet.  

Not as good as big Pete.

54 minutes ago, Argo said:

A better version i hope, i love Carlo but he wasn't close to world class level as an overall keeper, his acrobatic saves gave the impression he was better than he actually was.

I'm going to pretend you didn't write this.

38 minutes ago, Valerie said:

I'm going to pretend you didn't write this.

Haha sorry Val  I probably over egged it a bit by saying not even close, but i felt he could be quite phrone to a mistake (he made high profile errors in back to back seasons at both Highbury and OT) and his concentration levels when dormant were lacking and that what (in my opinion) puts him a step below Cech, Courtois and hopefully Kepa.

Although i would back him over the others if we were getting battered and needed our keeper to single handedly get us a result, he was the bits at that.

lovely stuff to read right there - maybe Tibo did us a favor

5 hours ago, Argo said:

He's tall and has excellent initial positioning, that combination means you seldom need to make eyecatching saves.

I disagree. I think Courtois was needed to make those saves quite often in his time with us but rarely did it. He was actually quite easy to score against once you got the shot away, especially when it was at his near post.

On 20/08/2018 at 07:43, ForeverCarefree said:

I dunno, Courtois often struggled to get down to his near post quickly and that's how he was often beaten. 

Kepa probably should have kept it out, got a hand to it but not strong enough to keep it out. 

I'm sure he's only going to get better though given game time to build his confidence. 

Agree with your point about his passing and distribution though, that side of his game already looks quite good.... Looks a lot more comfortable with the ball at his feet than Courtois ever did. 

I actually remember this goal distinctly because my reaction was an optimistic "well, at least he got a hand to it"....such is my recollection of how easily those types of shot have been conceded last few years whilst TC essentially just stood looking.

On 09/10/2018 at 13:19, mclovin83 said:

"He Kepa, you knooooooow, 

He's better than f**king Teebo!"

Not directed at you mate but we Brits do have the most god damn awful chants/songs in football across the globe.

Boring, mundane, in some cases proper full scale juvenile.

One chant used by 96 teams in the football league and adapted as player and club name dictates.

Like I said not targeted at you but reminded me of this which has always been on my mind.

6 hours ago, abister1 said:

Not directed at you mate but we Brits do have the most god damn awful chants/songs in football across the globe.

Boring, mundane, in some cases proper full scale juvenile.

One chant used by 96 teams in the football league and adapted as player and club name dictates.

Like I said not targeted at you but reminded me of this which has always been on my mind.

I completely agree, it's one of my pet peeves about football. Sometimes the original song, if not exactly clever, is at least in some way fitting or amusing (or they at least sound onomatopoetically similar). 

When the Arsenal fans started singing 'Hey Jude' but with Giroud's name in there it was relatively funny, and made sense phonetically. Now everyone shoves any two-syllable word in there and it's horrendous. 

Another one that bothers me is anyone other than Southampton (and St Mirren I suppose) singing to the tune of 'When the saints go marching in'. 

One thing I do find is that you can generally tell how much a set of fans cares about a particular player (i.e. enough to sing his name but not enough to put even one iota of original thought into it) by who gets assigned the 'Seven Nation Army' song - (Belletti, Pedro... at Leicester it was Islam Slimani). That song is truly terrible and its close intertwining with football over the past decade is symbolic of everything wrong with the modern fan, but that's another issue...

I always like Zola's chant to the tune of The Kinks' Lola. 

This cookie cutter rehashing of the same chants over and over is a bit sh*t. 

7 hours ago, abister1 said:

Not directed at you mate but we Brits do have the most god damn awful chants/songs in football across the globe.

Boring, mundane, in some cases proper full scale juvenile.

One chant used by 96 teams in the football league and adapted as player and club name dictates.

Like I said not targeted at you but reminded me of this which has always been on my mind.

I am normally very critical myself, but this actually sounded mint when the whole away end was blasting it out at Southampton. 

It's better than just chanting a players/managers first name over and over again which has become very popular these days!

49 minutes ago, mclovin83 said:

I am normally very critical myself, but this actually sounded mint when the whole away end was blasting it out at Southampton. 

It's better than just chanting a players/managers first name over and over again which has become very popular these days!

Yeah to be fair for all my snobbery it's not like I don't still belt it out with full gusto when I'm actually there!

It's only a bit of fun - everyone loves a bit of a sing-song!

I'll be honest, Arrizabalaga is a lot better a lot faster than I thought he would be. I figured he would be good, but didn't expect him to be as good as he has been. I'm was downright amazed at how quickly he got down to his right on the Mane shot against Liverpool at the bridge. He has really great quickness and his positioning is typically really good as well. The Sturridge shot, I'm not sure any keeper saves that shot.

Honestly, I'm just thrilled to see a keeper not get beat constantly between his damn legs.

I remember a few saying give Bulka a shot 

Kepa talking like he’s going to be here for majority of his career. A nice change from Tibo!

Classy Kepa 

 

He really is very good. Upgrade on Tbo.