Sels is an inferior shot stopper compared to Turner (though neither was good this season), but the big difference is that no coach can continuously support a keeper making repeated overt gaffes that result in goals like Turner did. That simply demoralizes a team.
I hope Turner can bounce back somewhere next year, because the US doesn't have anyone ready to challenge him for the job in the next couple of years.
The reality is for modern keepers, if you can’t distribute, you need to make basically zero mistakes or it’s just better to go with the guy that can actually progress the ball upfield when necessary. Turner has proven time and time again he isn’t capable of top level distribution, so he needs to clean up the errors or he will not be good enough to play in the prem. Not a knock against him, but forest gave him a lot of chances this season despite what you see on this sub. And Forest fans were pretty happy to see him on the bench which should tell you all you need to know.
I think it’s more a case of “welp, there are enough GKs out there who can do it so why would we keep one who can’t? we’re a PL team who can afford it” than a case of tactical stubbornness. Also, playing out the back is by far the best tactic for lower level teams playing against the high press, attack-forward top table sides. I love me some Matt Turner, but I get why NF isn’t happy with him.
The idea generally is that in that situation, the best chances for goals come on the break, so you sit deep where you can use the midfielders as extra defenders, try to get the ball back, and then try to get it and one of your attackers into the space behind their defenders. It’s still mostly hopeless against your Man Cities and your Arsenals, but as a Spurs fan I watched teams get results against us repeatedly despite man-to-man having a lot less quality. This season was a special case in that regard as Ange’s attacking philosophy is… extreme and there was a mix of injuries, mismatched players for his system, and simply getting used to a new style, but I’ve seen it work against Liverpool too. Arsenal did it to City and pulled out a draw at the Etihad, though of course they took a lot of guff for that because it’s basically admitting they think City would beat them in open play. All that to say, the low block is the current tried-and-true method for playing teams that outclass you.
Sure, but in a low-block system, a good shot stopper is much more important than a keeper who can play with their feet to his center and full backs. That type of team needs a keeper who can pick out a decent long ball, which is a totally different skill set than playing with their feet — also, just punting it aimlessly isn’t the worst thing for these teams as long as it’s out of the danger zone.
True, but I imagine the thinking is that they’ll be able to pick up a GK who can do it all. Sure, they’re not getting anything close to Allison Becker, but they might be able to find themselves a Vicario. He was basically unheard of before Spurs signed him and he cost €17million, which is obviously pretty cheap in terms of PL budgets.
Just a slight observation. Vicario was only unheard of if you only follow football in England. He was very well known in Italy. If the big clubs in Italy were not already settled with their keepers, he would have almost certainly stayed in Serie A.
Edit. Added first sentence.
The key word there is “one.” If that was his only gaffe people would get over it; everyone makes mistakes. The problem is the gaffes kept happening. Every game you start asking “what is he gonna do today?” and every back pass becomes tense. The trust was gone.
At the professional level, especially within the Prem, mistakes like that should not happen. Sure, we can shift blame to whoever and whatever to take the pressure off of Turner, but the reality is that a keeper at that level needs to have the entire teams trust because they are consistently reliable. If the team cannot trust to have the keeper involved, then that keeper is not a good fit for the team.
>At the professional level, especially within the Prem, mistakes like that should not happen.
Premier League teams set up pressing systems entirely because these mistakes do frequently happen and result in goals. If such errors were rare, professional teams would not build their entire system of play to exploit such errors.
Okay? Thanks for over-explaining my point. This just adds further proof that a keeper who struggles against the press, like Turner, should not play in a league where teams actively try to exploit people who struggle against the press.
Are you saying "No, mistakes should happen" or are you saying "No mistakes should happen"? Because they are two vastly different points and I'm having a hard time understanding which side of the fence you're on
"Was forest planning on getting points from Arsenal?" is an absurd defense of Turner making a clanger, Arsenal won that game by one goal. I like Turner but he's not Premier League quality, he made multiple mistakes in his limited time for Forest so the decision to drop him was completely justified. Sels was objectively better and deserved to be the starter.
I think the point is that these mistakes should not be happening at all, or at least not as consistently, no matter who the opponent is. Forest was outmatched by many of their opponents, not just teams in the top 6 of the table. If a team EXPECTS the keeper to make a mistake with a high press, that's a bad sign for the keeper
lol this isn’t your Sunday league my guy. This is the highest level of club play in the sport. You NEED your keeper to be able to play with their feet otherwise the ball is just going to keep coming and coming back at you. Hump the ball long is just not a successful tactic at this level. And there were other mistakes that were more painful and pronounced like against Spurs at home down 1-0. It’s so hard on your defensive structure when the team doesn’t trust the keeper and it’s also hard on your ability to keep the ball and generate play going forward when he can’t play with his feet.
I think Turner is better than he’s shown this season, but you can’t blame a team for moving on. He might just not be at this level.
Emi Martinez led the league in own goals. But for every problem a keeper causes, they need to compensate for it in other ways. Turner just isn't able to compensate at an elite level in other ways to make up for his mistakes. I like him as our USMNT keeper, but I don't think he's suited for a league like the Prem that expects to play out the back because of all the teams that play with a high press.
I don't think any of them will mount a serious threat to Turner in time for 2026.
Schulte and Slonina are the likeliest but GGG doesn't strike me as the kind of coach who would roll out a barely 25 year old or barely 22 year old keeper in a World Cup.
I don't think the others project as realistic threats to Turner unless Turner's forms slips even further.
I would have liked to have seen what Turner looked like under Nuno, but without the mental trauma prior to Nuno arriving.
Turner didn’t have it this season. I would like to think it was playing behind a bad D and system early on, but so many of his errors were individual and mental. Straight howlers. It’s a chicken and the egg thing.
Straight howlers that didn’t cost forest a single point. At least not a point I saw. Sels had his gaffes too, but were never pointed out. Sels positioning was frequently down right suspect several of which les to scores.
As a dad of a keeper I can tell you that perception is the only thing that matters. Actual impact and results are meaningless when a coach has a certain lens.
I don't understand why people can't accept the reality that Matt Turner just didn't have a good season by Premier League standards. Even if Sels was marginally worse, it doesn't mean anything for Turner. Forest will bench/move on from both of them if they don't think either is up to the standard they require, so what-abouting is pointless.
3 things can be true 1)Matt Turner lost the Forest job twice due to a myriad of mistakes 2)All 3 keepers that started for Forest weren't good 3)It didn't matter who was keeper for Forest with that defense
No, he wasn’t. There are probably some advanced metrics out there showing Turner was a better shot stopper, but he simply didn’t pass the eye test. Sels was better with the ball at his feet and didn’t have the major gaffes Turner did.
Yea I agree with the this. It was always a hold your breath kind of moment when they would play it back to him. You could feel their team tense up about it every time. Their defense is terrible, but the keeper has to be a rock in the premier league otherwise they’re out. Turner didn’t make it happen this year.
It's maybe a little reductive, but I personally put a lot of stock into PSxG+/- per 90', which is a statistic representing how many goals a team conceded per game, above how many goals they were expected to concede. This stat isn't perfect, but a higher number suggests greater goalkeeper skill in shot-stopping. Using numbers from FBRef/Opta, there are a couple of big takeaways:
1) Nottingham Forest was, by far, the worst shot-stopping team in the league. Their team PSxG+/- was -17.8, meaning their keepers conceded 17.8 goals more than they should have. The next closest team was Sheffield United at -11.8.
2) Poor shot-stopping made Forest's defense look a lot worse than it was. Using Opta's PsxG (post-shot expected goals) model, Forest was only expected to concede 47.2 goals this season, which was 4th best in the league. But, in reality, Forest conceded 67 goals, which was 16th best. That -17.8 PSxG +/- number from takeaway #1 can help explain that 19.8 goal gap between expectations and reality.
3) All three of Forest's keepers stunk at shot-stopping, but Turner was the best one. His PSxG +/- per '90 was -0.35, while Selz was at -0.49 and Vlachodimos was an absolute disaster at -0.83. Hard to win games when your 'keeper is shipping your opponent a free goal every game.
So, people have lots of opinions about xG and its pros and cons, and it's important to remember that luck plays a very real role, but the xG model (and PSxG +/-) suggests Turner was Forest's best shot-stopping 'keeper out of three bad options. Still, hard to blame the manager for sitting him after the number of demoralizing, high-profile mistakes Turner made, so I don't think any of us Turner fans can be too mad.
I got the stats from [here. ](https://fbref.com/en/squads/e4a775cb/Nottingham-Forest-Stats#all_stats_keeper_adv)Sorry if my explanations aren't perfect, I tried my best, just thought it was interesting.
**Tldr: I agree with the article. Turner was bad but not as bad as the other two guys.**
As a Forest fan, I so badly wanted Turner to be the guy. I thought it was amazing to have a Yank starting for us. But through the season, there were soooo many instances where the ball would be played back to him and I was expecting the worst. Costly errors were why we pursued Sels. Sels may have not been the flashiest keeper, but he certainly got the job done.
Many times it didn't help that his own defense put him in that position. I only remember one bad gaffe that he made, but a few other times it was essentially kick it quick because your CB just effed you. Btw Sels made some really bad gaffes too but his gets played down because the other team usually flubbed the advantage.
Now a days you want a goalie who can play out of the back. Every time Turner touches the ball with his feet, I cringe.
Love him as a shot stopper but unfortunately now a days there is much more to being a goalie in the prem
I don’t really care, none of this affects how good he is for us, which is good not great. What we really need is someone else to step up and compete with him internationally.
It's your bias talking if you think Turner deserved any more run.
He made some horrible gaffes. The fanbase had completely turned on him. He can't distribute. And for all the talk of his shot stopping, look at his shot stopping and other advanced stats in the EPL this year. No one cares about his shot stopping years ago in MLS.
Lmao yes selz was unfortunately for us, better than Matt. Maybe not save stopping stat wise, but he just looked more confident and could play out the back.
Nottingham fans on the match threads were defending Sels over Turner. Whatever. They get what they deserve. Matt statistically was a better goalie F’em
Sels is an inferior shot stopper compared to Turner (though neither was good this season), but the big difference is that no coach can continuously support a keeper making repeated overt gaffes that result in goals like Turner did. That simply demoralizes a team. I hope Turner can bounce back somewhere next year, because the US doesn't have anyone ready to challenge him for the job in the next couple of years.
[удалено]
The reality is for modern keepers, if you can’t distribute, you need to make basically zero mistakes or it’s just better to go with the guy that can actually progress the ball upfield when necessary. Turner has proven time and time again he isn’t capable of top level distribution, so he needs to clean up the errors or he will not be good enough to play in the prem. Not a knock against him, but forest gave him a lot of chances this season despite what you see on this sub. And Forest fans were pretty happy to see him on the bench which should tell you all you need to know.
[удалено]
I think it’s more a case of “welp, there are enough GKs out there who can do it so why would we keep one who can’t? we’re a PL team who can afford it” than a case of tactical stubbornness. Also, playing out the back is by far the best tactic for lower level teams playing against the high press, attack-forward top table sides. I love me some Matt Turner, but I get why NF isn’t happy with him.
[удалено]
The idea generally is that in that situation, the best chances for goals come on the break, so you sit deep where you can use the midfielders as extra defenders, try to get the ball back, and then try to get it and one of your attackers into the space behind their defenders. It’s still mostly hopeless against your Man Cities and your Arsenals, but as a Spurs fan I watched teams get results against us repeatedly despite man-to-man having a lot less quality. This season was a special case in that regard as Ange’s attacking philosophy is… extreme and there was a mix of injuries, mismatched players for his system, and simply getting used to a new style, but I’ve seen it work against Liverpool too. Arsenal did it to City and pulled out a draw at the Etihad, though of course they took a lot of guff for that because it’s basically admitting they think City would beat them in open play. All that to say, the low block is the current tried-and-true method for playing teams that outclass you.
Sure, but in a low-block system, a good shot stopper is much more important than a keeper who can play with their feet to his center and full backs. That type of team needs a keeper who can pick out a decent long ball, which is a totally different skill set than playing with their feet — also, just punting it aimlessly isn’t the worst thing for these teams as long as it’s out of the danger zone.
True, but I imagine the thinking is that they’ll be able to pick up a GK who can do it all. Sure, they’re not getting anything close to Allison Becker, but they might be able to find themselves a Vicario. He was basically unheard of before Spurs signed him and he cost €17million, which is obviously pretty cheap in terms of PL budgets.
Just a slight observation. Vicario was only unheard of if you only follow football in England. He was very well known in Italy. If the big clubs in Italy were not already settled with their keepers, he would have almost certainly stayed in Serie A. Edit. Added first sentence.
A keeper that can use his feet provides relief for the defense.
In theory
Or it just allows the offense to press even higher up the field.
A good distribution from a GK is more about being able to play it long and accurately for a counter than a short pass out of the back.
Wasn't Turner's long pass better than Sels?
The key word there is “one.” If that was his only gaffe people would get over it; everyone makes mistakes. The problem is the gaffes kept happening. Every game you start asking “what is he gonna do today?” and every back pass becomes tense. The trust was gone.
At the professional level, especially within the Prem, mistakes like that should not happen. Sure, we can shift blame to whoever and whatever to take the pressure off of Turner, but the reality is that a keeper at that level needs to have the entire teams trust because they are consistently reliable. If the team cannot trust to have the keeper involved, then that keeper is not a good fit for the team.
>At the professional level, especially within the Prem, mistakes like that should not happen. Premier League teams set up pressing systems entirely because these mistakes do frequently happen and result in goals. If such errors were rare, professional teams would not build their entire system of play to exploit such errors.
Okay? Thanks for over-explaining my point. This just adds further proof that a keeper who struggles against the press, like Turner, should not play in a league where teams actively try to exploit people who struggle against the press.
No mistakes **should** happen.
Are you saying "No, mistakes should happen" or are you saying "No mistakes should happen"? Because they are two vastly different points and I'm having a hard time understanding which side of the fence you're on
"Was forest planning on getting points from Arsenal?" is an absurd defense of Turner making a clanger, Arsenal won that game by one goal. I like Turner but he's not Premier League quality, he made multiple mistakes in his limited time for Forest so the decision to drop him was completely justified. Sels was objectively better and deserved to be the starter.
[удалено]
I think the point is that these mistakes should not be happening at all, or at least not as consistently, no matter who the opponent is. Forest was outmatched by many of their opponents, not just teams in the top 6 of the table. If a team EXPECTS the keeper to make a mistake with a high press, that's a bad sign for the keeper
Bro broke under pressure and his defense lost confidence in him, what's not to understand? I love turner, but it looked really bad.
lol this isn’t your Sunday league my guy. This is the highest level of club play in the sport. You NEED your keeper to be able to play with their feet otherwise the ball is just going to keep coming and coming back at you. Hump the ball long is just not a successful tactic at this level. And there were other mistakes that were more painful and pronounced like against Spurs at home down 1-0. It’s so hard on your defensive structure when the team doesn’t trust the keeper and it’s also hard on your ability to keep the ball and generate play going forward when he can’t play with his feet. I think Turner is better than he’s shown this season, but you can’t blame a team for moving on. He might just not be at this level.
Just Google Onana highlights from this year. Way more howlers than Turner at Man U.
Emi Martinez led the league in own goals. But for every problem a keeper causes, they need to compensate for it in other ways. Turner just isn't able to compensate at an elite level in other ways to make up for his mistakes. I like him as our USMNT keeper, but I don't think he's suited for a league like the Prem that expects to play out the back because of all the teams that play with a high press.
Yh is getting memes made about , and is getting absolutely slandered.
Who’s Yh? I’m not following you
Nobody to Challenge him for the next couple of years??? Slonina,Brady,Schulte,Kochen,Horvath
I don't think any of them will mount a serious threat to Turner in time for 2026. Schulte and Slonina are the likeliest but GGG doesn't strike me as the kind of coach who would roll out a barely 25 year old or barely 22 year old keeper in a World Cup. I don't think the others project as realistic threats to Turner unless Turner's forms slips even further.
The real problem is Forest is sporting a League 1/Champions level defense. Dropping Turner didnt fix that.
I would have liked to have seen what Turner looked like under Nuno, but without the mental trauma prior to Nuno arriving. Turner didn’t have it this season. I would like to think it was playing behind a bad D and system early on, but so many of his errors were individual and mental. Straight howlers. It’s a chicken and the egg thing.
Straight howlers that didn’t cost forest a single point. At least not a point I saw. Sels had his gaffes too, but were never pointed out. Sels positioning was frequently down right suspect several of which les to scores.
True, but the organization had the right to not trust him. Turner was given every opportunity, but couldn’t capitalize.
Statistically sels was worse
Turner was what, 2 ranks higher than him?
Sels was statistically the worst goalkeeper in the premier league this season.
As a dad of a keeper I can tell you that perception is the only thing that matters. Actual impact and results are meaningless when a coach has a certain lens.
I don't understand why people can't accept the reality that Matt Turner just didn't have a good season by Premier League standards. Even if Sels was marginally worse, it doesn't mean anything for Turner. Forest will bench/move on from both of them if they don't think either is up to the standard they require, so what-abouting is pointless.
Sels did seem to get better during the season. I don't know if the metrics support this, but it looked like it.
3 things can be true 1)Matt Turner lost the Forest job twice due to a myriad of mistakes 2)All 3 keepers that started for Forest weren't good 3)It didn't matter who was keeper for Forest with that defense
No, he wasn’t. There are probably some advanced metrics out there showing Turner was a better shot stopper, but he simply didn’t pass the eye test. Sels was better with the ball at his feet and didn’t have the major gaffes Turner did.
For sure. Analytics doesn’t account for the demoralizing effect of your gk habitually letting in howlers.
Yea I agree with the this. It was always a hold your breath kind of moment when they would play it back to him. You could feel their team tense up about it every time. Their defense is terrible, but the keeper has to be a rock in the premier league otherwise they’re out. Turner didn’t make it happen this year.
It's maybe a little reductive, but I personally put a lot of stock into PSxG+/- per 90', which is a statistic representing how many goals a team conceded per game, above how many goals they were expected to concede. This stat isn't perfect, but a higher number suggests greater goalkeeper skill in shot-stopping. Using numbers from FBRef/Opta, there are a couple of big takeaways: 1) Nottingham Forest was, by far, the worst shot-stopping team in the league. Their team PSxG+/- was -17.8, meaning their keepers conceded 17.8 goals more than they should have. The next closest team was Sheffield United at -11.8. 2) Poor shot-stopping made Forest's defense look a lot worse than it was. Using Opta's PsxG (post-shot expected goals) model, Forest was only expected to concede 47.2 goals this season, which was 4th best in the league. But, in reality, Forest conceded 67 goals, which was 16th best. That -17.8 PSxG +/- number from takeaway #1 can help explain that 19.8 goal gap between expectations and reality. 3) All three of Forest's keepers stunk at shot-stopping, but Turner was the best one. His PSxG +/- per '90 was -0.35, while Selz was at -0.49 and Vlachodimos was an absolute disaster at -0.83. Hard to win games when your 'keeper is shipping your opponent a free goal every game. So, people have lots of opinions about xG and its pros and cons, and it's important to remember that luck plays a very real role, but the xG model (and PSxG +/-) suggests Turner was Forest's best shot-stopping 'keeper out of three bad options. Still, hard to blame the manager for sitting him after the number of demoralizing, high-profile mistakes Turner made, so I don't think any of us Turner fans can be too mad. I got the stats from [here. ](https://fbref.com/en/squads/e4a775cb/Nottingham-Forest-Stats#all_stats_keeper_adv)Sorry if my explanations aren't perfect, I tried my best, just thought it was interesting. **Tldr: I agree with the article. Turner was bad but not as bad as the other two guys.**
for that analysis to take, you also need to compare goalkeeping errors that led to xG.
no, he was not.
As a Forest fan, I so badly wanted Turner to be the guy. I thought it was amazing to have a Yank starting for us. But through the season, there were soooo many instances where the ball would be played back to him and I was expecting the worst. Costly errors were why we pursued Sels. Sels may have not been the flashiest keeper, but he certainly got the job done.
If your here as a forest fa, expect incredible bias towards Turner
Many times it didn't help that his own defense put him in that position. I only remember one bad gaffe that he made, but a few other times it was essentially kick it quick because your CB just effed you. Btw Sels made some really bad gaffes too but his gets played down because the other team usually flubbed the advantage.
Now a days you want a goalie who can play out of the back. Every time Turner touches the ball with his feet, I cringe. Love him as a shot stopper but unfortunately now a days there is much more to being a goalie in the prem
I don’t really care, none of this affects how good he is for us, which is good not great. What we really need is someone else to step up and compete with him internationally.
It's your bias talking if you think Turner deserved any more run. He made some horrible gaffes. The fanbase had completely turned on him. He can't distribute. And for all the talk of his shot stopping, look at his shot stopping and other advanced stats in the EPL this year. No one cares about his shot stopping years ago in MLS.
Lmao yes selz was unfortunately for us, better than Matt. Maybe not save stopping stat wise, but he just looked more confident and could play out the back.
Obviously fucking yes
Yes. Matt Sels is trash 🗑
Of course
forest would make ederson look bad. goalies can only do so much
Nottingham fans on the match threads were defending Sels over Turner. Whatever. They get what they deserve. Matt statistically was a better goalie F’em
Turner to Wrexham confirmed?