It’s time for Leicester’s Iversen to get EPL chance

After a woeful run of form from Danny Ward in his first seven Premier League games as the Leicester City No.1, is it finally time to give Daniel Iversen a chance?

My personal opinion, along with most of the Foxes fanbase, is absolutely the Dane should come in. Ward has had his opportunity and proved he’s just not good enough, so why not give the Danish keeper an opportunity. I mean, he certainly can’t be any worse than what we’ve got at the minute. The poor lad is probably sat on the bench week in, week out, wondering what he has to do in order to make it into the team.

Not only have Leicester conceded 22 goals so far, which isn’t great, but he’s made too many mistakes in front of goal, in the Brighton & Hove Albion game at the Amex (sorry to bring it up, I know it’s a painful one) he seemed to dive the opposite way for the ball when it was obvious which way the opposition were going. But had he gone the correct way, there would’ve at least be a possibility of getting a touch on the ball and therefore even prevent it from going in the back of the net. He also attempted to play the ball by foot and a Brighton player swooped in and took it off him.

I won’t sit and read off a list of all his mistakes but another one to mention is the Manchester United game at home: the Welshman boots the ball up the pitch, LCFC lose possession and Jadon Sancho scores. The Tottenham game was just the tipping point, letting six goals in, I’ll give the guy some credit: three of those you can’t really do a lot about. Yet Harry Kane’s header in at the post is just embarrassing, as a Premier League goalkeeper you should be saving that.

Looking at it from a statistical point of view, football 365 ranked EPL goalkeepers PSxG+/ (which is the number of goals a keeper has conceded minus the expected goals against their team), Ward is ranked 21st (bottom) with a score of 6.1. With seven games played he has faced 36 shots on target, conceded 22 goals, expected goals against are 14.9 and his saves percentage is 41.7. To put into further into context how bad this is, Southampton’s Gavin Bazunu has an overall PSxG+/ of 2.5, Ward’s is more than double that!

Alex Neil (manager at Stoke City) wants to reunite with Iversen, after setting his sights on him for the January transfer window. The stopper won Preston North End’s Player of the year award last year and was outstanding in goal for them, so who can blame him?

It’s almost unbelievable in a way that the latter is not at least been given a chance in the English top-flight, especially after the EFL Cup game against Stockport, where he was particularly incredible in the penalty shootout. I just don’t see why it isn’t time for him to start for Leicester City, it could be just what we need.

I’m hoping Nottingham Forest at home will be the time we see him start, I can’t see it happening to be honest, but if not now then will it ever happen? With Brendan Rodgers in charge, I won’t hold out too much hope for a new No.1.