The goalkeeper position is hardly Manchester City‘s biggest problem at the moment, but neither Ederson nor Stefan Ortega has been convincing of late. Is it time for a change?
Manchester City’s hopes for the season are hanging by a thread.
After throwing away a lead (again) to lose 3-2 at home to Real Madrid in Tuesday’s Champions League knockout phase play-off round first leg, Pep Guardiola’s side need a miracle in next week’s return tie if they are to progress. Fail, and the FA Cup would represent their only chance of silverware at the end of a hugely disappointing season.
Their problems are widespread, and – as we covered in this article – their ageing squad is in need of a reset. It is an issue the club is seemingly aware of, having spent approximately £180 million on future-proofing the squad in January.
But there have been no reinforcements or thinking about the future in goal, and the performances of their two goalkeepers in recent weeks have brought into question whether Ederson and Stefan Ortega remain the men for the job.
On Tuesday night, with City 2-1 up and the clock ticking past 85 minutes, Ederson claimed an overhit Aurélien Tchouaméni cross. Then, with absolutely no pressure on him, he miscued an attempted long ball upfield terribly, finding only Jude Bellingham inside the City half.
A matter of seconds later, Vinícius Júnior shot straight at Ederson from a tight angle, but the City goalkeeper let the ball hit him rather than trying to push it away from danger. The rebound fell to Brahim Díaz, who levelled the scores.
It might seem harsh to criticise a goalkeeper for not doing more to direct the ball away from goal following a save from fairly close range against one of the best players in the world, but this is the top end of the Champions League, and those are the margins that the teams up there are working with. The standard when playing Real Madrid is so high that moments like that matter, and watching that incident, it certainly appeared as though Ederson could have done more.
In the game’s closing stages, Ederson was slow and indecisive in coming off his line to meet Vinícius, who was racing through on goal, meaning the City goalkeeper was caught in no-man’s land as the Madrid forward lifted the ball over him for Bellingham to run in and tap home the winner. Ederson’s hesitation hinted at the kind of doubt that can be for goalkeepers – and was in this case – fatal.
The Brazilian has been a huge success at City, revolutionising the role of the goalkeeper alongside Guardiola, with excellent short-passing and long-ball missiles making him unique in being able to turn defence into attack via the quickest and most direct means possible. Following his assist for Erling Haaland’s goal against Chelsea last month, he is joint-first for assists among goalkeepers in Premier League history, with five.
When his team dominate the ball, there is nobody better to have in goal, but with City floundering in possession and leakier than ever without it, their goal has come under assault more than usual this season. City have conceded more goals in 38 games in 2024-25 (57) than they did in 59 games last term (54). Only once before under Guardiola – in 2016-17 (60) – have they conceded more in an entire season.
Ederson is of course not entirely to blame. He has been exposed far too much, with the lack of protection from midfield in Rodri’s absence a continuing problem. But the data suggests that Ederson’s shot-stopping hasn’t been good enough of late.
We can use our expected goals on target model, which assigns a value to shots on target to indicate the probability that it will result in a goal. A shot that has a 70% chance of resulting in a goal is given an xGOT value of 0.7. Adding all xGOT values up gives a total number of goals a goalkeeper would be expected to concede; comparing that number to the actual number of goals they have conceded, we can work out how many goals they have prevented with their saves.
Just like with forwards with xG, the best goalkeepers tend to overperform their xGOT numbers, but this season, Ederson is tracking only just above his expected goals on target, preventing 0.5 more goals than the average goalkeeper would have. Among Premier League goalkeepers to play at least 90 minutes in any competition this season, Ederson is 26th in a list of 51. He’s right in the middle of the bunch.
We can use goals prevented rate to adjust for the volume of shots a goalkeeper faces. A goals-prevented rate of one means a goalkeeper is conceding exactly one goal for every goal they’d be expected to concede. Go above one and you’re performing above expectation. Below one and you’re not.
Ederson fares little better in this metric, though, with his goals prevented rate of 1.02 suggesting that for every goal he concedes, the average goalkeeper would concede 1.02 goals. In other words, for every 50 goals he concedes, the average goalkeeper would concede 51. Among that same list of Premier League goalkeepers, he ranks 30th for goals prevented rate. To put it bluntly, he’s not making much difference with his shot-stopping.
One of the players he is above, however, is Ortega, the German who most would have pretty recently considered among the best second-choice goalkeepers in the Premier League – if not the best.
But Ortega has been called upon more than usual this season, set to play more minutes than in any other season he has been at City. However, for the first time in his three seasons at the club, he is underperforming with his shot-stopping. His goals prevented has never been lower than 4.3 in any season for City, but has plummeted to -1.3 this season, suggesting he has conceded more goals than he should have.
His goals prevented rate has dropped below 1.0 for the first time ever, down at 0.93, putting him 38th among Premier League goalkeepers. Like Ederson, he appears to be struggling playing for a team that isn’t quite as dominant as the City he is accustomed to playing for, and his shot-stopping hasn’t been good enough to play for a team like that.
His numbers won’t have been helped by his awful performance in the 5-1 defeat at Arsenal earlier this month, when he might well have done better on goals from both Myles Lewis-Skelly and Ethan Nwaneri.
Neither went down as an error leading directly to an opposition goal, though, and Ortega still hasn’t made a single such error in his entire City career.
Ederson, however, has already made two mistakes leading to a goal this season – as many as he’d made in 110 appearances across the previous three seasons combined. His four errors leading to an opposition shot also matches his total from the three seasons prior to the current one.
Something just isn’t right at City at the moment, and it isn’t possible to say for sure whether the struggles of their two goalkeepers are a cause or effect of the malaise. There’s a decent chance that both would look back to their assured best behind a functioning defence.
But there is also reason to doubt whether City will be the controlled and dominant force we have come to know them as anytime soon. If not, it might follow that neither Ederson nor Ortega is the man for the job in goal.
Guardiola has had to make big decisions about his goalkeepers before, ditching Joe Hart early on in his time at the club, before then finding his replacement, Claudio Bravo, inadequate as well. It was only when Ederson came in that Guardiola’s City developed into the monster they became.
Ederson has been a wonderful servant in his eight seasons at the club, but it could be time for City to start looking to the future in goal.
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