How Do You Rate Ali Al Habsi To The Rest ?

Not really though. You said ‘Teams with good defenses, will appear to have great keepers’, which is obviously untrue as earlier in the post you had already clarified that De Gea doesn’t appear great. Saying you don’t rate him after you’ve contradicted yourself doesn’t enforce any argument/point you may have, it just enforces that fact that you have contradicted yourself and are still sticking to the fact you don’t rate De Gea. You can tell whether or not a keeper is good regardless of what team they play for and how good good their defense is, and unfortunately Ali still isn’t in my top 5, but as I said earlier, still a good keeper and happy to have him between our sticks.

Not too sure if I am honest Filmoss, but when I think off the top of my head I can easily think of 5 above him.
I will submit my top 5 keepers now, bearing in mind it is basically off the top of my head, so changed may be made :P (These are in no order, just the 5 I believe are the best)

1.Hart
2.Cech (I know I said he’s gone off the boil but still one of best)
3.Krul
4.Mignolet
5.Schwarzer??

Other players could easily be in this list and would be above Ali, such as Friedel, possibly Jaaskelainen etc. Cesar of QPR also obviously a good keeper but admittedly not seen enough of him since moving to QPR. So basically they aren’t my definite top 5 as the aforementioned players could/should replace people within the list.

Some of the keepers listed on here have all made high profile mistakes recently. Schwarzer conceded from approximately 40 yards v Tottenham last week, Mignolet was badly at fault for WBA’s 2nd goal, Howard was castigated by Evertonians for not coming for a cross when Norwich equalised at Goodison Park, Krul gifted Southampton their first goal with a poor clearance, Cech was poor for Juve’s 3rd goal in Turin and Hart had a poor night against Switzerland. It’s the nature of the position Gents, Ali has been consistently excellent for Latics since he came here and we’re lucky to have him. I’m pretty sure that all keepers after making a mistake will come under criticism from a number of negative after-timers, the like of which follow all teams, we’re certainly no different in that regard.

Well Ben’s broke his leg and Jordi’s just scored a hat trick.

1. Gary Bailey
2. That lad in ‘Kes’
3. Fatty Foulkes
4. That Colombian keeper geezer with the scorpion kick, higita?
5. The speccy one off ‘jossy’s giants’, you know, dare devils taking there chances, burning the candle both ends. If they don’t score tonight then what the heck, they’ll score tonight in the discoteque.

All of these keepers may have made mistakes. So has Ali (Twice recently). It doesn’t change an opinion. Mistakes aside, my top 5 still stand. Just because they made mistakes ASWELL as Ali doesn’t mean Ali is better. The only point you are making is that keepers make mistakes, we all know that, and although Ali is a good keeper, there are still numerous better keepers in the league than Ali.[/quote]

It might be worth pointing out that this is a public forum and therefore not every post is written directly with you in mind. Ali’s performances are now under greater scrutiny than they were a month ago because of his recent errors. A consequence of Ali’s gaffs could be this thread as well as the increased traffic on the other thread on this board about him. I was trying to point out that most of the keepers perceived to be the best in the league have all made mistakes of their own recently. Therefore a sense of perspective might be a good idea and tomorrow we should all get behind somebody who has been very good for us.