The remarkable Alisson stat that places him as Premier League’s No. 1

Alisson has confessed he “could be” in career-best form and his numbers in the Premier League would certainly support that fact, with his all-round game placing him at No. 1.

The Brazilian has been instrumental for Liverpool this season, pulling out the big stops and saving his team’s blushes during what has been a testing campaign so far.

It’s far from ideal to have to sing the praises of your goalkeeper on a consistent basis as Alisson shouldn’t be required as much as he has been.

But in the words of Jurgen Klopp, “we have Alisson to thank” for a number of results – namely in the Premier League.

He may only have four clean sheets in the league from 14 appearances but his post-shot XG minus goals conceded is +7.6, which essentially means he has saved 7.6 goals more than expected this season.

Goalkeeping analyst John Harrison furthers this with his own data, with Alisson ranked as the top ‘keeper in the Premier League based on an overall value ranking.

How has your team’s GK performed in the #PremierLeague?#LFC’s #Alisson is the #PL’s number 1!

Good signs for #England going into the #WorldCup as both #Pickford & #Pope have been class#MUFC’s #DeGea had the worst form of any Spanish GK!#Sa #Travers & #Bazunu are struggling pic.twitter.com/NVjc16Mdr2

— John Harrison (@Jhdharrison1) November 19, 2022

It pits each Premier League goalkeeper against the other with the total value of all actions in goals vs. the average Premier League goalkeeper.

Alisson sits top with +4.83 in this metric, 0.46 ahead of West Ham‘s Lukasz Fabianski.

The ranking is based on a GK xG model which “looks at every shot faced, cross faced, through ball faced and distribution attempted and calculates the probability of a goal occurring for and against the GK’s team before the event and after the event occurs.”

It means that every goalkeeper action is measured, evaluated and fairly compared, with the overall table measuring “the GK’s value to their side vs. if their side had a league average goalkeeper.”

Alisson (+4.83) heads the list of ‘above Premier League average’ goalkeepers which includes Fabianski (+4.36), Jordan Pickford (+4.22), Nick Pope (+4.19), David Raya (+3.86), Emiliano Martinez (3.14), Bernd Leno (2.58), Ederson (1.98), Vicente Guaita (1.46) and Aaron Ramsdale (+0.91).

They don’t make them much better than Alisson.