Many Leeds United fans have taken to Twitter to savage Kiko Casilla for his performance in their side’s 1-0 defeat to Charlton Athletic on Saturday afternoon.
United fell to fourth in the Championship table after failing to pick up a win in the capital, with Marcelo Bielsa’s men falling victim to a first half strike from the home side.
And many supporters felt that the Spaniard was at fault for the goal.
Here are some of the best tweets from fans.
The worst attempt at saving a shot I’ve ever seen in my life. What on earth is Kiko doing??? #LUFC pic.twitter.com/KoXoLNzBoJ
— Sam Bird ?? (@SamBirdyy) September 29, 2019
https://twitter.com/PaulOConnell100/status/1178305070447955970?s=20
It's just terrible keeping but not unexpected
— varlo (@BenVarley4) September 29, 2019
To be fair to Leeds fans, you can understand their frustrations with Casilla.
The goal, a dreadfully scrappy strike from a corner kick, looked entirely preventable, and watching the game, your initial gut reaction to the incident was that Casilla should have just caught a fairly routine header in the first instance.
There isn’t a great deal of pace on the effort from Tom Lockyer, and it is essentially straight at the Spaniard, but rather than cushioning the ball into his midriff and relieving the pressure on his side, the veteran stopper instead elects to dive forward and punch the ball away.
As unorthodox as that might be, if it works, it works, but instead of clearing his lines, Casilla’s effort is feeble and he ends up cannoning his own fisted clearance off the back of Macauley Bonne.
It was calamitous, it was avoidable, it looked dreadful in real time, and watching it back later in the day, it certainly didn’t get any better.
No thanks to casilla again the liability
— carl smith (@carlsmith_88) September 28, 2019
With the shots to goal against us stats, surely Casilla us the problem, dreadful goalkeeping yesterday, most of us would have just held that #lufc
— Andrew ???? (@LUFCMOTogether) September 29, 2019
The red flags have been there for some time with Casilla though.
Last season, for instance, he conceded an average of 1.13 goals per game, despite the fact that his expected goals conceded was just 0.87, as per Wyscout.
That means he conceded an extra 0.26 strikes per match last term, or, in other words, a goal he should have prevented once every four games.
By contrast, Bailey Peacock-Farrell, who was ousted for the Spaniard midway through the campaign, conceded 1.06 goals per game – the exact total he was expected to, as per Wyscout.
People may extoll the virtues of Casilla’s pass completion rate from last year, which sits at a healthy 88.1%, but that figure is only 2% better than Peacock-Farrell’s was.
You’ve got to ask yourself, are two extra accurate passes for every 100 made worth a goal every four games? Very probably not.
What the hell is casilla doing – he is appalling!!! We look so poor from corners defensively and attacking – awful!!
— Ron (@ronaallleeds) September 28, 2019
https://twitter.com/MikeyM666/status/1177955173597102080?s=20