Wes Foderingham is ranked among one of the best Premier League goalkeepers so far. The Blades shot-stopper is not only in the top 10 keepers based on performance, but he also leads the way for shots saved and is the highest ranked Englishman.
The stats not only show how well the Sheffield United number one is performing and his importance to the team right now, but it also highlights how much Paul Heckingbottom and his players need to find a way of providing him with better protection. It's not normally a good sign when the goalkeeper is the best-performing player because it indicates he is being overworked.
Yet, that should take nothing away from Foderingham's displays, without which United's position in the table will look a lot more alarming than it already does. Foderingham has been in impressive form from the off.
Of those goalkeepers who have played at least 50% of their team's matches so far this season, he is ranked the seventh best, according to player data provider Whoscored.com, with a rating of 6.81, behind Tottenham's Guglielmo Vicario (7.07), Wolves' Jose Sa (7.03), Alphonse Areola (7.02), of West Ham, Arsenal's David Raya (6.89), Fulham's Bernd Leno (6.85) and Chelsea's Robert Sanchez (6.84).
That also makes him the best-performing English keeper, ahead of Crystal Palace's Sam Johnstone (6.71), Nick Pope (6.56) and current number one Jordan Pickford (6.39).
And, what stands him out from the crowd so far is the number of saves he has made. He tops the charts with 45 from his eight matches so far, an average of 5.6 a game. Interestingly, just under half of those are from inside the penalty area, with six coming from shots inside the six yard box and the other 18 taking care of efforts from outside the 18-yard box.
Those stats also back up Paul Heckingbottom's argument that although teams are laying seige to their goal, the majority of shots are coming from the edge of the area or just inside. That was the case at Tottenham, where the hosts had 28 efforts at goal but 15 were from the edge of the area or further and seven were from wide angles beyond the six-yard box.
Eighteen of those shots were blocked by a defender or off target and Spurs needed two goals deep into 12-minutes of added-on time to finally break United's resolve. It led to manager Ange Postecoglou describing Foderingham's display as 'outstanding' afterwards. He said: "You saw how difficult they made it for us. Their keeper was outstanding and I thought they defended their box really well, really brave and courageous."