Sunderland goalkeeper Robin Roefs has treated reported interest from Chelsea and Liverpool as flattering but unconfirmed. He told assembled media he had heard nothing concrete from his representatives and preferred to concentrate on his first Premier League season.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d Roefs sheepishly told assembled media when presented with theses connections to Chelsea and Liverpool . \u201cI don\u2019t know what to make of it. I don\u2019t hear anything from it from my agents. As long as I don\u2019t know anything about it, they can read or write what they want. I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, it\u2019s a compliment, I think, if people write it about you. I\u2019m really not into this. It\u2019s my first season in the Premier League, my first season here. I\u2019m really enjoying every single minute of it, so I\u2019m not thinking of anything else.\u201d<\/p>\n
Roefs joined Sunderland on a contract running until 2030 and has shown a composed adaptation to England\u2019s top flight. The 23-year-old\u2019s save rate stands at 71%, ahead of Liverpool\u2019s Alisson (64.8%) and Chelsea\u2019s Robert S\u00e1nchez (70.8%). Over the season he has played 27 games, conceded 32 goals and faced 110 shots on target. His xGOT conceded is 33.2 and he has prevented 1.2 goals compared with Alisson\u2019s -2.0 and S\u00e1nchez\u2019s +2.7, according to Opta.<\/p>\n
There are also distinctions in distribution. Roefs attempts more long passes than the two Premier League rivals, with 50.1% of his passes classified as long while Alisson plays long 33.5% of the time and S\u00e1nchez 47.6%. Roefs averages 39.5 passes per 90 and his defence start distance measures 40.1 metres, compared with Alisson\u2019s 31.5 passes per 90 and 42.5 metres, and S\u00e1nchez\u2019s 39.5 passes per 90 and 42.8 metres.<\/p>\n
His manager has welcomed the contribution. \u201cHe\u2019s key,\u201d R\u00e9gis Le Bris recently gushed. \u201cIt\u2019s fair to say that in an efficient team, you need strong players on both sides. I think the goalkeeper and the centre backs are really important to protect the goal.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s young, without a lot of experience,\u201d Le Bris said of the 23-year-old. \u201cOften you would say you need an experienced goalkeeper, because this role is really demanding, even psychologically. So he\u2019s doing really well. When you give opportunities to young players, you can be surprised.\u201d<\/p>\n
At 6’4″, Roefs has rarely looked overawed by the physical demands of the division, and he says the atmosphere at home and on the road has been a highlight of his debut season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Roefs accepts links as a compliment, insists he is focused on Sunderland after signing until 2030…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7083,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[230,172,689],"tags":[983,355,1162],"class_list":["post-7084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analytics-stats","category-epl","category-sunderland","tag-agents","tag-alisson-becker","tag-analytics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7084\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}