Mary Earps at Manchester United 2023/24: Analysing what makes her the ‘best in the world’ – scout report

Mary Earps is widely thought of as one of, if not the best, goalkeeper in the world at the minute. Her performances throughout Englands successful Euro 2022 campaign saw Earps prove herself on Europes biggest stage. In this years World Cup, the Manchester United goalkeeper once again raised her game as she won the Golden Glove for some sublime performances which, if we are being completely honest, kept England in the tournament on a couple of occasions. 

It has to be said the rise to the top has been a slow one for the Nottingham-born goalkeeper. After coming through Leicester Citys Centre of Excellence, Earps signed for hometown club Nottingham Forest. From there, she went on to play for Doncaster Rovers Belles during the inaugural WSL campaign and the following season. 

After some good performances for Doncaster came a move to Birmingham City, who had qualified for the Champions League after finishing second in the 2012 WSL table. Earps found first-team opportunities to be at a premium at St. Andrews, so when the opportunity arose, she put pen to paper for Bristol Academy in 2014. 

Following Bristols relegation in 2016, a move to Reading was on the cards, where her performances would earn her a place in the PFA Team of the Year for 2016/17. The following season saw Earps spend a year as Wolfsburgs second-choice goalkeeper. 

In 2019, Manchester United came calling with the offer of first-team football, so the then-26-year-old moved back to the WSL. Since signing for the Red Devils, Earps has gone from strength to strength and has not only established herself as Englands number one but proven she can cut it on the biggest stage of all. 

With the Womens Super League season starting soon and Manchester United set to make their Champions League debut, we will look at exactly what makes Mary Earps such a good goalkeeper. In this tactical analysis, we will use data to see how she compares to fellow WSL goalkeepers and use in-game analysis to pinpoint her key attributes in game situations.

What does the data say?

To begin this analysis, we will look at how Mary performs in specific metrics compared to her WSL peers.

The sample for the data comparison in this scout report consists of goalkeepers in the WSL who played over 900 minutes of football last season. From the data visual above, we can see that Earps played in all of Manchester Uniteds 22 league games last season, where she kept a remarkable 14 clean sheets. 

The only thing we can glean from these metrics is that Mary kept the highest number of clean sheets. However, given the amount of game time, we must acknowledge that she had more opportunities to do so.