The holiday season is over, so it's back to business around these parts. Awhile back, I pointed out how our outfielders and goalkeeper have been about equally good at preventing goals. Mark Schwarzer has been the most valuable keeper in the league, and one of only 3 keepers to prevent more goals than their team's outfield unit (Gomes at Tottenham and Turnbull at Middlesbrough being the others).

But that isn't to say that our outfield defence is bad! Last summer, I calculated Marginal Goals Prevented for each player in 07/08. I've added these numbers to the squad stats page, so they will be updated as the season progresses. Here's a look:

Player	Minutes	MGP	MGP/90
Brede Hangeland	1620	3.242	0.180
Aaron Hughes	1710	2.608	0.137
John Paintsil	1696	2.346	0.124
Danny Murphy	1683	1.248	0.067
Paul Konchesky	1620	1.108	0.062
Simon Davies	1708	0.755	0.040
Zoltan Gera	1042	0.644	0.056
Clinton Dempsey	906	0.564	0.056
Jimmy Bullard	1554	0.544	0.032
Chris Baird	116	0.242	0.188
Andrew Johnson	1379	0.131	0.009
Dickson Etuhu	142	0.121	0.077
Bobby Zamora	1524	0.091	0.005
Toni Kallio	74	0.081	0.099
Seol Ki-Hyeon	197	0.081	0.037
Leon Andreasen	23	0.05	0.196
Erik Nevland	44	0.04	0.082
Fredrik Stoor	8	0.01	0.113
Andranik	8	0.01	0.113

Brede Hangeland has earned lots of attention, and deservedly so. If you look back at last season, our leader in MGP was Aaron Hughes at 2.759. Hangeland has passed this already, Hughes himself has almost matched that total, and John Paintsil is getting close. How's that for some perspective? In a few weeks, we'll have three players who have prevented more goals each than our best defender did over the entire 07/08 season.

Update: Apologies for posting before I had the table populated. Hopefully we're all set now!