Manchester City Season in Review: Joe Hart

During the close season, Man City Square is going to review each member of the 2015/2016 Manchester City squad and grade them for their year. Starting off with number 1 – Joe Hart

It’s never a great sign for a football club when the goalie gets man of the match. It’s like an admission of how badly the rest of the team played. The strikers didn’t score enough, the midfielders kept losing possession, the defence may as well have been watching from the stands – but hey, at least the keeper did well! Now imagine what if said keeper was also in the running for team player of the year and welcome to Manchester City’s 2015/2016 season.

Joe Hart goes without introduction, it’s literally impossible for you to have found your way here to this site and further still to this article without knowing who he is and understanding the special place he commands between the sticks and in the fans’ affections. He’s one of those rare goalkeepers that is so good that it’s not a slight to the rest of the team to suggest he’s the best player on the park, on any given day.

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The stats speak for themselves. Since he came on the scene in the 2010/2011 season, Hart has had at least 13 clean sheets in the league each year. In a total 216 league appearances in that span, he has notched some 95 clean sheets in total, including an impressive 15 this year alone. And let’s be honest, that figure is more impressive when you consider what he was up against with liabilities like Eliaquim Mangala and Nicolas Otamendi standing in front of him.

It’s hard to suggest this year was Hart’s best effort in his career. He did miss three league games and took a back seat to Willy Caballero for the Mickey Mouse trophies, but that’s by and large moot. He made 71 successful saves on the year which is, more or less, in line with his average and indeed matches exactly what he pulled off in 2013/2014. Even so, there was something about Manchester City and England’s number one this year that provides fuel for the fires of speculation that incoming manager Pep Guardiola will seek to replace him.

If anything, I’d imagine it’s his distribution. Hart has never been known for having tremendous distribution, but this year saw a marked decline in quality. That’s actually putting it rather nicely, given we saw a fair share of howlers from Hart this year. In pivotal games too. Take the first leg Champions League quarter-final game at PSG for example. Having being handed the lead, rather remarkably, Hart gave it right back by short passing to a hapless Fernando who had his back to the game and didn’t even notice the pouncing Zlatan Ibrahimovic until it was too late. Fernando got the blame, of course, but Hart literally didn’t have to pass to him at all.

There are other examples, most equally as head-scratching, but the point remains that Joe may well be the best shot stopper in the league, but his distribution swings from average to ugly at the drop of a hat. Oh and he punches a lot too, but I guess that’s nit picking just a bit.

Either which way, it’s likely the rumours surrounding Guardiola’s interest in bringing Barcelona keeper Marc-Andre ter Stegen to Manchester City are a result of a mixture of two things – Pep’s attack-oriented style of play and the media manufacturing drama and cashing in on it. It’s highly unlikely in my mind that Hart goes anywhere this Summer. He’s beloved in City, truly an institution there, by fans and ownership alike. He’s the deputy captain without an armband and he’s still among the best there is.

Needing a quorum of English players in the squad and having literally so many other areas of the City lineup, as we discussed, in need of improvement, the last place Pep will be looking is between the sticks. Particularly given the money sink ter Stegen would be.

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Joe Hart may well not have had his absolute best year, but it was still as good as you’ll see in the Premier League and certainly by any Englishman. He kept us in many games and, despite the gaffs, was instrumental in seeing us progress further in Europe than any of us dared dream. For these reasons alone he’s at least worth an 8 out of 10 and hey, who knows if Pep won’t get that make up the rest next year?