Season in Review – Grading the Goalkeepers

By: Brian | May 27th, 2008

The Werder Offside will be reviewing the season position by position, bestowing a letter grade upon each player who made a senior appearance. The grade will be the result of a complex formula incorporating passes completed, balls won, cards issued and our own personal whims.

Today we feature the goalkeepers. A fairly simple venture considering the list consists of two players, one of whom played 90% of the minutes in the entire season. Apparently the message wasn’t received by Tim Wiese to pick up a rash of injuries limiting his playing time and decreasing his fitness like virtually every other squad member.

ChristianVander

Five matches is hardly enough of a sample size to level a fair assessment of Vander’s performance this season. But, we’ll do it anyway.

He did preside over victories versus Hamburg in December, Leverkusen on the final matchday of the season, and some minor club from Madrid. Despite the victories, he was less than impressive. The Olympiakos match comes to mind. When he extended his stay a few weeks ago, it compelled Klaus Allofs to confide that “In the public eye he doesn’t come off so well. We get to see him everyday in training where he continually performs on the sort of level that he displayed under competitive conditions against Real Madrid and HSV.” Not exactly a massive vote of confidence. Nevermind the fact that he should’ve done better with both goals Madrid scored and HSV’s goal was the ugliest Werder allowed all season. C-

Tim Wiese

Werder conceded 45 league goals this season, placing them 6th in the Bundesliga for defensive futility. Not dreadful, but hardly fitting of a top side. Where does the blame lie? Defensive miscues? The free flowing commitment to attack? Lapses in concentration? In truth, all played a role. And Wiese must take part of the blame too, but really, truly, not a whole lot. Honestly.

In the vast majority of goals conceded, Wiese was left deserted by the ten men in front of him, especially the ones given the task of preventing balls from being fired past him – the four defenders and, well, Frank Baumann. I’ve put his majority at a scientific 70%, and most of those came on odd man counterattacks. I can’t tell you how many times this happened. If you watch this team you know how many times this happened. Wiese saw more two on ones coming at him than any keeper in the Bundesliga. Yes, even more than Mattias Hain.

There were match days when Tim was the best keeper in the league. He made some amazing saves that a younger, less experienced net minder wouldn’t have. His strengths – cutting down the angles, distribution – were nearly as strong as ever. And if you look back on some of the tighter, more defensive matches (of which there were few) he probably could be credited with a few wins. However, one can’t help but feel that the season saw him take a step back in terms of overall performance and reputation (there was always an outside shot of getting called Die Mannschaft – now that chance is all but completely gone).

Now, with all that being said, he spectacularly failed on the biggest stage Werder found themselves on this season – Ibrox on March 6th. It is days like these that the term ‘howler’ is tailor made. On a day that saw Werder control long stretches of the match and create the usual bucketful of scoring chances, a nil-nil draw was the least they deserved. But The Pop-Up (1-0) was followed by The Spill (2-0) and Werder’s excellent performance in the second leg wasn’t enough to overcome Gers.

A bit harsh to focus on a single match in a season that saw Wiese perform relatively adequately overall? Perhaps. Adequacy was a standard that may have been acceptable even five years ago, but we’re in The New Age of Werder Football and more should be expected. When placed next to Wiese’s unnecessary drop in the round of 16 of the CL in 2006, he begins to look the part of the big game bottler. The more Werder find themselves in Big Games, the less he seems like the man for the job. The midfield, attack and defensive (players individually, not collectively) personnel are all in the top four units, at the least, in the Bundesliga. I don’t think you can say that about the goaltending.

At the end of the day, Wiese will be remembered for two things this season: the disaster in Glasgow and his Donnie Yen impression in Hamburg.

On the plus side, the pink shirts are gone, replaced by a very tasteful yellow and eggplant. B-