Stoke City new keeper ‘could be worth extra 12 points a season’
Stoke City new keeper ‘could be worth extra 12 points a season’
Mark Travers could be worth an extra 10 or 12 points a season, believes Alex Neil, as the new Stoke City number one marked a relatively quiet afternoon with a game-changing save to help secure a win over Watford.
Stoke were defending a 1-0 lead when Travers, who is with Stoke on a long-term loan from Bournemouth, made a superb stop to deny Yaser Asprilla on a dash into the area and managed to expertly push the ball away from lurking forwards too.
The Potters have chopped and changed in goal over the last three years while having an unhelpfully high ratio of shots conceded being goals – and a dreadful record of turning tight games into wins.
Neil said: “I think having a really good goalkeeper and a really good centre-forward in particular (is massive). A really good centre-forward gets you 10 to 12 points you probably don’t deserve because they’ll find a way of nicking a goal when you need one.
“And I think a really good goalie does the same at the other end.
“How often did we talk about being poor in that box and poor in that box last season? That was, that was like a weekly conversation.
“Whereas I thought you could see today we were good in both boxes in terms of that final strike to get us a goal and when we needed Trav the other way, he made a great save.
“I thought the centre-backs were good. I don’t think that they got a lot of change out of us in terms of opportunities. That was probably the only time that Trav got called upon.”
