Aston Villa: Could goalkeeper Mark Bunn be a play-off X-Factor?

Former Manchester United manager Louis van Gaal made the goalkeeper-before-penalties-substitution famous in his stint with the Netherlands national team. Could Steve Bruce do the same during these EFL Championship play-offs.

The spot kick. Football’s way of definitively determining a victor after all other regular means fail. Many hate penalties for their randomness, and an equal many more love the pressure bestowed on the sport’s best in crunch time.

For Aston Villa, these play-off semi-finals could come down to penalties at Villa Park in the return leg. Swapping goalkeepers is almost unheard of in football, outside of injuries and international friendlies. But there have a been a select few situations where a reserve goalkeeper was brought in before a round of penalty kicks.

Louis van Gaal, manager of the Netherlands at the 2014 FIFA World Cup, shined a light on the move when he brought in Tim Krul in the quarter-finals against Costa Rica over starter Jasper Cillessen.

Normally this sort of situation isn’t worth a discussion, but it was Mark Bunn’s display at Millwall that garnered attention. In which, the claret and blues conceded two penalties in the match. The only two the club conceded all year! Seriously! Not a single penalty kick to the opposition from matches 1 through 45.

Bunn saved Lee Gregory’s attempt to keep the scoreline 1-0. He then followed it up with a double save, and in fact, positioned himself for the triple stop, but a shot attempt was blocked. The only goal of the match came from Shaun Williams’ first half penalty, where Bunn guessed in the correct direction.

This got me thinking back to the Premier League days, where Bunn saved on title winners Leicester City and Riyad Mahrez. Is Bunn actually good at penalties? Or is it all simply small sample size noise?

Lo and behold, Bunn is 12/40 (30%) in his professional career on penalty kicks. Sam Johnstone, in comparison, is 2/19 (10.5%) in his career.

In all honesty, a sample size of 40 spread across 12+ years isn’t anything to base conclusions off, but the level of disparity is at least worth a discussion. Ultimately, Steve Bruce and goalkeeping coach Gary Walsh know, through hours of training, which ‘keeper handles the spot kick better. If they think that ‘keeper is Mark Bunn, there should be no hesitation to bring in the veteran during second-half stoppage time.