ok that is an interesting idea and may well be true. but we're repeatedly told that shot stopping is hart's ace in the hole, the ONE thing that makes it worthwhile to overlook his poor distribution, poor decision making, and poor command of the area. if he is actually that good at stopping shots, I would have expected him at least to feature in the top ten?? imo he was once a good shot stopper but that was years ago. now? he's below average, and his errors have cost/are costing us too many points in the PL, not to mention the fact that we might have topped the group in CL and avoided barca last season.
I can give you this after some more search: the general consensus on all sites that tend to use or gather keeper data say he's not very good at stopping long shots, which I've never thought about before.
I don't agree that he's below average, I think he's above average and I trust him. I don't think he's bad at crosses and commanding his area, at least not as bad as he used to be (not the best of praises I know but I'm rarely nervous about crosses any more). However, he needs to start working on his flaws and become a more complete goalkeeper, as I think our needs for a goalkeeper has changed since he broke through. Back in the days we were happy with a shot stopper and we were under a lot more pressure. Four years on and we are now looking for something else and he needs to adapt to that.
What I've liked about him is that he's always been one to improve on mistakes after he made them. He should also know that he's lost a bit of the aura of invulnerability he had before. He needs to regain that. Otherwise it doesn't matter. He's only 27, he should be developing as we speak and prove the doubters. I've not seen that from him yet.