Chelsea ‘weigh up’ idea of replacing Kepa with the one man worse on all the stats than Kepa — report

Being a football fan is a largely frustrating experience, with long periods of heartache and disappointment punctuated by gleeful schadenfreude and, if we’re lucky, bits of unbridled joy. Sometimes, those things happen in quick succession, even, such as the ending to last night’s game.

But every once in a while, football’s also just flat out hilarious.

Take Kepa Arrizabalaga, for example, who hopefully doesn’t read his own press lest he lose whatever last shred of confidence in he may have left. Since it’s been decided that he’s the Worst Goalkeeper™, calls for Chelsea to replace him have been growing in number and volume.

Unfortunately for those voices, since we bet the farm on Kepa and have backed him up only with old men way past their best-by dates (Caballero, Green) or even younger and rawer options (Jamie Cumming), any such drastic change, if even possible, will have to wait until the summer.

Fortunately for those voices, a report from “Football Insider for Bleacher Report” Dean Jones claims that Chelsea are “working on potential replacements” as we weigh up cutting our losses on the world’s most expensive goalkeeper (that qualifier is certainly indisputable fact).

Here comes the hilarious part: the first name mentioned as a potential replacement is ... drumroll please ... Nick Pope!

Guess who’s the ONLY goalkeeper in the Premier League WORSE than Kepa in PSxG?

That’s right, Nick Pope! He’s literally the worst at (-6.4) compared to Kepa’s (-4.3), and the gap is even worse as a per-90 stat since Pope has played one fewer game (-0.18) vs. (-0.28).

Genius!

FBRef

(Nick Pope was very good at this stat two seasons ago, when he was just behind David de Gea. But like De Gea, Pope’s not doing too hot these days...)