His second and final appearance came twenty minutes from the end of normal time in the second leg of the Division Two playoff semi final against Cardiff at Ninian Park.
As had become traditional, Stoke were making a ham-fisted attempt to reach the final. A 2-1 home defeat, combined with a goalless second leg as the game entered the final minute, meant that elimination beckoned.
Cardiff's PA had just urged their fans to remain in the stands to allow a lap of honour from their soon to be victorious team, when Stoke, quite naturally, scored to take the game into extra time.
Five minutes from penalty kicks, Oulare claimed the winner in bizarre circumstances. James O'Connor's free kick was arcing gently into Neil Alexander's left hand corner and the waiting arms of the keeper, when the ball struck Oulare's backside and rolled gently into the opposite side of the net.
Stoke were into the final, ironically to be played at hospitable surroundings of Cardiff's Millennium Stadium, where even the 12 game losing curse of the South dressing room couldn't prevent them from defeating Steve Coppell's Brentford.
Had x, y co ordinates been readily available in 2002, Alexander would have been "guilty" of conceding a speculative 1 in 25 attempt, whereas the reality of the deflection made the shot almost impossible to second guess and save.
Typically around 2% of on target shots take some type of deflection and although the experience of Alexander was extreme, the frequency at which keepers are seen to flail desperately as shots loop unexpectedly from their intended flight before settling in the net, implies that such shots are more difficult to save.
Using data from the recent Premier League seasons, it appears that a third of deflected efforts defeat the keeper's best efforts to save the attempt. Therefore, whether or not a shot was deflected would appear to be a significant additional factor, alongside more usually recorded x,y coordinates and shot type, in determining the likelihood that an effort will result in a score.
A baseline figure for a shot from outside the box increases the likelihood of success from around 0.05 to over 1 in three depending upon the severity of the deflection.
Therefore, a keeper who finds himself facing a disproportionately large number of deflected attempts, may appear to greatly under-perform against a basic shot model that does not include deflections, and their impact on goal expectation for such diverted efforts.
Villa's Brad Guzan faced at least 10 such shots in 2012/13, although the following season was kinder to him. Using combined data from both seasons, a shot model that omits deflections as a predictor, suggested that a single goal was the goal expectation for all deflected attempts faced by Guzan.
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| Brad Guzan needed all the help he could get to deal with deflected shots in 2012/13. |
In reality Guzan conceded seven goals from shots that were deflected. An under-performance in both cases, but the keeper's actual concession rate is less damning when we acknowledge the possible effect of a stray deflection may have had on his chances of making what may have been a much easier task.
In a similar vein, Jussi Jaaskelainen over the same period, faced deflected shots that were "worth" 1.7 expected goals from a model that excluded deflections as a variable, but rose to just over 6 expected goals when deflections were accounted for.
He conceded five times from such shots, greatly under performing against a model that fails to differentiate between deflected and non deflected shots, but slightly over performing against a more detailed one that does account for the increased difficulty of saving a deflection.
Repeatability is the key to use data to evaluate players, but a keeper to whom fate hands a glut of deflections to deal with also deserves a model that attempts to allow for the increased difficulty of the tasked he was faced with.
