Considering pre-season has barely started, there seems to be an awful lot going on. The World Cup is taking up our collective consciousness (sometimes literally), it’s been around 900 degrees outside, and we’ve been “treated” to the prospect of a Devon Derby to open the season in the first round of the League Cup. Alongside that, Plymouth Argyle have completed their third signing of the summer.
Following the departures of both Conor Hazard and Luca Ashby-Hammond, the Greens were evidently going to sign at least two goalkeepers ahead of the new season. And the first of those has been announced, with James Storer signing on a permanent deal. The 21-year-old joins following the expiry of his contract at Wolverhampton Wanderers, although he never made a senior appearance at Molineux.
Instead, he’s recently had loan spells with Chester in the National League North, and Scottish Championship side Greenock Morton. Those spells will form our sample when analysing Storer’s numbers. He made 51 league appearances across those two spells, and stats are available for 49 of those games. They aren’t the most detailed (more on that later), but they still give us a strong sample size of 4,470 league minutes to investigate.
As I always say with goalkeepers, there are three key skills we can look at: shot stopping, distribution, and command. We’ll go through each element in turn, before concluding by looking at the bigger picture of how Storer can impact Argyle this season and beyond.
Shot stopping
We’ll delve into this as much as we can. And the first thing to note is that Storer is capable of making eye-catching stops. As well as some of the save compilations circulated around social media since his arrival, he also attracted headlines last season with two penalty saves. The first of those saw him deny Ayr United’s Anton Dowds in October…
…before another stop in January against Logan Chalmers of Partick Thistle, with world-renowned mascot Kingsley watching on.
However, as good as that is to see, Storer’s shot stopping as a whole will be more important to Argyle. After all, Dan Grimshaw would pull off the odd outstanding save, but it wasn’t always reflected in his wider shot stopping numbers. It’s therefore worth measuring how Storer has saved shots away from the highlight-reel stops, and over a longer period of time.
Storer made an average of 2.44 saves per 90 minutes across his spells with Chester and Morton. However, this mainly reflects how often he was called into action, and it’s better to look at how many saves he made with the context of the number of shots he faced. We can start by looking at save success. Storer’s figure comes in at 67%, clear of Luca Ashby-Hammond last season, and narrowly behind Conor Hazard.
| Player | Saves Made | Goals Conceded | Save Success |
| Conor Hazard | 65 | 31 | 68% |
| James Storer* | 121 | 60 | 67% |
| Luca Ashby-Hammond | 55 | 32 | 63% |
However, let’s not forget that Storer’s saves were made in a combination of spells in the National League North and Scottish Championship. Strikers at both these levels are undeniably worse than at League One, and it’s worth looking at the quality of those shots when assessing how well a goalkeeper makes saves.
Regular readers will know I like to use post-shot xG data to assess this, and here we’re presented a problem. From the usual data sources, I’ve been unable to find any post-shot xG data for either the National League North in 2024/25 or Scottish Championship in 2025/26. The closest thing I’ve been able to pin down is standard xG, which suggests Morton had an average of 1.52 xG against them per game.
Given they actually conceded 1.42 goals per game, that perhaps reflects favourably on Storer. Naturally though, there are caveats. Standard xG still doesn’t take into account the actual shot, which is clearly crucial for judging a goalkeeper. Meanwhile, there is no indication that the difference between goals against and xG against would stem from games in which Storer played – he missed a couple of months between February and April last season through injury.
Where I am reassured is that Argyle will have had more tools to do their due diligence. Whilst I’m a data analyst for a living (have I ever mentioned?), I’m an amateur in this game, and the club will have far more sophisticated databases to draw from when investigating a new signing. If they’ve seen enough in Storer’s shot stopping to make a move, I’m willing to trust that process.
Signing Ashby-Hammond last summer was a misstep, but the arrival of Derek Adams as director of football appears to have been paired with a move back to reliance on data. I’m hopeful that pays dividends here.
Distribution
The stats we should use to evaluate distribution aren’t quite as complicated as those used to look at shot stopping. From them, we can probably break “distribution” down into two distinct categories: sweeping and passing. Both can be used to start quick counter attacks, and both require a goalkeeper to be good with their feet to be successful.
When it comes to sweeping, it’s probably best to look at simple defensive actions. Usually applied to outfield players, it effectively looks at the actions a ‘keeper has taken outside their usual role (basically, actions with their feet rather than hands). Storer made 1.41 defensive actions per 90 minutes over the last two campaigns. That’s slightly less than Hazard and Ashby-Hammond last season, but not concerningly low.
| Player | Defensive Actions per 90 |
| Conor Hazard | 1.68 |
| Luca Ashby-Hammond | 1.51 |
| James Storer* | 1.41 |
Then there’s the passing element, which I must say I’ve found particularly impressive. One of the headline figures is that Storer had a pass success rate of 78% last season, comfortably clear of both Ashby-Hammond (50%) and Hazard (51%). Usually, I’d add an important caveat that a team’s style in possession has a heavy impact, and goalkeepers who go long more regularly are naturally more likely to have a lower pass success than those who pass short. However, I think Storer can cope with any style.
When looking at his figures for long passing, I actually began to question the data source. Storer’s long balls were so accurate, so regularly, that I considered them almost suspiciously good. All in all, Storer had a long pass success rate of 68% across the last two years, better than any Argyle player, goalkeeper or outfielder, managed in the league last season. Indeed, it was over double the success rate of Argyle’s own ‘keepers last term.
| Player | Long Passes Attempted | Long Passes Completed | Success Rate |
| James Storer* | 809 | 550 | 68% |
| Luca Ashby-Hammond | 461 | 146 | 32% |
| Conor Hazard | 631 | 193 | 31% |
If these figures accurately reflect every attempted long pass, they are exceptional.
There are a couple of things not accounted for in those numbers. Storer attempted 16.29 long passes per 90 in the last two years, slightly fewer than Hazard (22.49) and comfortably behind Ashby-Hammond (25.74). We also don’t have figures available for the speed of distribution, an area where the likes of Michael Cooper and Alex Palmer particularly excelled, whilst Hazard regularly struggled across his Home Park spell.
Nonetheless, I think it’s evident that Storer has the raw materials to become an excellent distributor. If Argyle took encouragement from his shot stopping stats, his passing numbers would have stood out like a sore thumb. I can absolutely see why Adams would have sanctioned a move based on those alone.
Command
Again, there are a few ways we can define “command” for a goalkeeper. Some come with easy metrics, whilst others are slightly trickier to measure.
The most obvious place to start is how a ‘keeper deals with crosses and long balls into his 18-yard box. If I’m honest, this is where I begin to have a couple of concerns in Storer’s case. Across his two loan spells, he made an average of 0.30 high claims per 90 minutes, a lower figure than Hazard (0.46) and a long way behind Ashby-Hammond (1.06).
When punches are added to the equation, the picture becomes bleaker. Whether stats at these levels are completely reliable remains another conversation, but Storer is not believed to have made a single clearing punch with either Chester or Morton. Add Hazard and Ashby-Hammond’s numbers to those for high claims, and it becomes clear that Storer is dealing with crosses much less successfully.
| Player | Punches per 90 | High Claims per 90 | Total |
| Luca Ashby-Hammond | 0.50 | 1.06 | 1.56 |
| Conor Hazard | 0.78 | 0.46 | 1.24 |
| James Storer* | 0.00 | 0.30 | 0.30 |
Where I’m particularly concerned is the fact Storer lags behind goalkeepers who were hardly revered for their aerial prowess. Both Hazard and Ashby-Hammond demonstrated a Dracula-esque phobia of crosses throughout their respective Argyle spells, and neither ranked particularly well across the league as a whole. That Storer has, statistically at least, been worse than both is a worry.
When considering command, we can also look at how well a goalkeeper marshals his defence, and how much confidence said defence has in their goalkeeper. As ever, the lack of an officially sanctioned football decibel meter means we can’t immediately judge how well Storer bellows his defence into shape. When it comes to confidence in the other direction? Well, he could probably do with getting off to a good start.
Last season showed why. Within fifteen minutes of the season commencing, Ashby-Hammond was involved in a mix-up with Brendan Wiredu, who scored an own goal. Confidence from the defence never seemed to recover from that moment onwards. Can Storer avoid similar early woes? I hope so. I see no reason why he couldn’t…aside from the fact he conceded a penalty 27 minutes into his Chester debut.
Command as a whole seems to be a clear area of improvement for Storer. I don’t want this section to take the form of a hit piece – Storer is only 21, and has plenty of time to grow into the goalkeeper Argyle hope he’ll become. Tom Cleverley, particularly in the second half of last season, developed a proven track record for improving players under his tutelage. With Storer, I’d suggest command is where he should start.
The bigger picture
This signing has confirmed two things to me: the Adams influence remains significant in transfer dealings, and there will be another goalkeeper joining the club soon (the rumours as to who that may be continue to rumble).
When Adams returned to the club as director of football, there was an indication that Argyle would transition back to a data-driven approach. Ronan Curtis then joined as a classic Adams signing; Curtis was a player he already knew well, and had excellent underlying data. Here, Storer arrives with good underlying data for distribution in particular, and the fact he spent last season in the director of football’s native Scotland? Well, that’s surely the opposite of a coincidence.
It’s also abundantly clear that Storer has arrived as second choice. It’s been alluded to already. In his unveiling article, Cleverley spoke of his new goalkeeper whilst mentioning that “he has great development in front of him.” Adams chimed in too, describing Storer as “someone who we believe we can develop over the period of time he is with us.” And that’s fine – exactly the same noises were made when Owen Oseni joined last summer, and he went on to have an excellent season.
Given you can only line up with one goalkeeper at a time though, it creates a curious dynamic. Storer may want to come into the club, shine straight away, and have a fantastic breakthrough year at the highest level he’s ever played. Such an eventuality cannot be ruled out entirely. However, given his backup status, the ideal outcome for the club would probably involve Storer not playing a single league minute this season.
With development in mind, Storer has been given a two-year contract with the option of a third year. It could well be the case that we won’t know whether his arrival proves a success for quite a while.