Former England goalkeeper Ben Foster has been speaking about Newcastle’s clean sheet exploits on his YouTube channel, The Cycling GK and has clipped a specific theory for his Instagram.
According to Foster, the reason Newcastle keep so many clean sheets is down to the height within their back line. Although Foster incorrectly goes on to claim that “all” of the back line are giants, there is definitely a lot of sense in his theory.
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While Kieran Trippier doesn’t break the six foot barrier at 5’10” and Fabian Schar is 6’1″, Sven Botman is a whopping 6’4″ and Dan Burn is 6’7″ – all lining up in front of another giant, Nick Pope who is 6’3″ – all of these quoted heights differ depending on the source, but are there or there abouts.
To back up his claim, Foster cites Chelsea under Jose Mourinho who had Petr Cech in goal. There was a policy that he had to have six players over six foot tall in the team, according to Foster. This enables the defence to defend against set-pieces with ease, and cutting down on the amount of goals conceded from set pieces allows you to win more games than not.
Newcastle do have quite a tall team and rarely struggle with the likes of corners or free kicks whipped into the box. For the longest time, Sven Botman had an unbeaten record when it came to aerial duels. That kind of defending wins games – or in our case, allows us to draw 0-0 because we lack that cutting edge up front.
Foster almost joined Newcastle before Loris Karius was signed, but it was while getting ready to come up and meet Dan Ashworth that he realised he was done with football, but it’s clear to see that he has a deep admiration for the way they play.