Mark Travers to Stoke City transfer latest with eye-catching stat to tick big box
Stoke City transfer news as emerges as an 11th hour target for Alex Neil
There is an eye-catching statistic from Mark Travers’ last season in the Championship.
The keeper was thrown into the deep end when he made his Bournemouth breakthrough, just turned 22 and returning from a loan at Swindon Town to replace Asmir Begovic as number one. But he stepped up to the challenge, a reliable fixture behind a changing defence, keeping 20 clean sheets as the Cherries went on to win promotion to the Premier League.
They were hard-earned clean sheets at times too and he ended up with a save ratio of 76.5 per cent from the 153 shots on target he faced. To put that into context, Stoke City conceded a similar number of shots on target in 2022/23 (145) but their save ratio was 65 per cent.
The stats men reckon that Stoke conceded about eight more goals than they should have done compared to the quality of shots they conceded – and that Bournemouth conceded seven fewer than should have been expected in 2021/22.
That can make a huge difference when Stoke lost 13 games by just a single-goal margin.
Travers, now aged 24, is expected to leave Bournemouth this summer to secure regular action again after slipping behind Neto, who was brought in from Barcelona, in the pecking order at Dean Court.
He has been linked with Gary Rowett’s Millwall and has now emerged as an 11th-hour candidate for Stoke following a summer-long pursuit of Matija Sarkic, aged 25
A £1.25m fee had been agreed with Wolves last week but it’s suddenly on the backburner, with the Wolves press reporting a failure to agree personal terms – but the elephant in the room Sarkic’s injury record, missing chunks of the last three seasons due to unconnected hamstring, shoulder and quad problems.
Sarkic showed his potential during half-a-season on loan at Stoke, with good presence and a particularly effective throw, and has also been linked with Millwall.
But whatever happens, Stoke – having gone through three transient years of goalkeepers and conceding far too many avoidable goals – need a goalkeeper they can hang their hat on for as much of a season as possible