As of February 26th, 2015 Everybodysoccer.com has Rowdies goalkeeper Matt Pickens listed 14th in their list of top American keepers. Thats a full 22 spots ahead of the next listed NASL keeper, Mitch Hildebrandt. Yet, a few fans still aren’t convinced. I must admit, as Rowdies fans, we have been pretty spoiled by the men that have tended to our net. Guys like Daryl Sattler, Championship winning J-e-f-f Attinella, and the beloved Diego Restrepo, (whose injury in preseason last year lead us to purchase Matt Pickens from New England Revolution) all have special places within our hearts. So why are we so scared to embrace “Super” Matty Pickens?

I wanted to try to look a little deeper into our likely starting keeper and see what our expectations should be going into this season.

Here are his MLS Regular season career numbers:

Minutes Played Saves Goals allowed SV%

2005 298 10 4 71%

2006 930 63 13 82%

2007 2430 102 31 76%

2008 ————-Spent year in England with QPR———-

2009 1710 39 22 64%

2010 2610 88 32 73%

2011 3060 77 41 65%

2012 2859 107 49 68.5%

2013 97 2 2 50%

——————————————————————————

MLS Career 13785 471 192 71%

And his first season with the Rowdies:

Minutes Played Saves Goals allowed SV%

2014 2094 80 35 69.5%

You can look at the numbers and say there’s been a steady decline since his standout year in 2010 and it continued in 2014. I’d probably agree with you. That is until you take out that anomaly that was the San Antonio massacre. If we remove the 3 saves and the 7 goals from that match, he would have a 2014 save percentage of 73%, right up there with his career average all while playing hurt and with a tactically bland and defensively inept team in front of him.

Numbers don’t tell the entire story though. It was his first go through the NASL. A second tier league with second tier scouting. He now has more film and more experience on each player he faces. He had an entire offseason to gel with teammates and to study tendencies of the players attacking his goal.

In the end, I think our confidence for how our revamped midfield is going to improve Georgi Hristov, Brian Shriver, and Corey Hertzog, should extend to how our revamped defense and midfield is going to improve an already better than average shot stopper.