Goalkeeper Rotation Review: Gameweeks 1- 9

I’ve seen many comments on these boards discussing the merits of expensive single goalkeepers versus budget rotating keepers but little analysis to back up the opinions.  In this article I review the performance of goalkeepers so far this season, particularly as rotation pairs.

OPTIONS

The goalkeepers can be grouped together into four price-bands, based on their starting prices:

• Premium (5.5 upwards): Thibaut Courtois, Joe Hart, Wojciech Szczesny, Tim Howard, Hugo Lloris, David De Gea, Simon Mignolet.  Only Spurs stopper Lloris has justified his higher price tag so far this season, with clean sheets hard to come by for the top teams.
• Mid-price (5.0): Fraser Forster, Adrian, Asimir Begovic, Julian Speroni, Lukasz Fabianski, Alan McGregor. Forster seems the stand-out choice here, unless you’ve already got three Southampton players.
• Budget (4.5): Costel Pantilimon, Tim Krul, Kasper Schmeichel, Tom Heaton, Rob Green, Brad Guzan, Ben Foster. These are popular choices for those going with rotation strategies.
• Back-ups (4.0): Boaz Myhill, Alex McCarthy, etc. Only come into play with an injury to the first-choice keeper but do free up some cash.

METHOD

I’ve looked at the scores so far for the 20 first-choice goalkeepers.  I’ve also calculated the total score for the 190 possible rotation combinations of those keepers.  To give an unbiased assessment, I’ve based the rotation selection purely on the clean sheet potential of the opposition (using the Fantasy Football Scout season ticker ratings).  If you make your selection based on form of your keepers it is possible you could get higher scores.

RESULTS

Here are some selected results.  I’ve included rankings for the points scored and the fixture difficulty so far.

GK1               GK2              Pts   Cost (£m)   Pts rank       Ease of fixtures – rank

Best combinations

Speroni          Fabianski        48      10.0            1                    60/190

Speroni          Hart                  48      11.0             1                    120/190

Speroni          Green                47       9.5              3                    35/190

Hart               Forster              47      11.0             3                     9/190

Heaton          Fabianski        46       9.5              5                    76/190

McGregor      Fabianski       46      10.0             5                     9/190

McGregor       De Gea            46      10.5             5                     85/190

McGregor       Lloris              46       10.5            5                    161/190

Best cheap combos

Guzan            Green                42        9.0             16                   181/190

Krul               Mannone          39       9.0            36                    70/190

Krul                Green                38        9.0            46                   100/190

Guzan            Mannone         37       9.0             54                    54/190

Best single Goalkeepers

Lloris              bench              40        9.5            34                    11/20

Forster            bench              39        9.0            36                     1/20

Fabianski      bench              35        9.0            78                    3/20

Best budget single Goalkeeper

Heaton            bench             30        8.5            140                   16/20

Worst combos

McGregor         Foster           18         9.5            208                   85/190

Schmeichel      Adrian          18         9.5           208                   186/190

Howard            Mignolet      21        11.0           202                   181/190

Begovic             Foster            21         9.5            202                   40/190

Worst single GKs

Schmeichel       bench           15         8.5             210                   19/20

Howard             bench            20        9.5             207                  18/20

The results indicate that:

• A good rotation combination can deliver significantly more points than a single goalkeeper. The option of Hugo Lloris plus a cheap non-playing backup is outscored by 33 of the two-keeper combos. Many of these can be discounted as too expensive but 11 of the 40 point plus options cost 9.5 or less.
• Indeed, only the three keepers listed above have scored more than 31 points on their own but 128 of the 190 possible goalkeeper combos have done so (41 of the 81 budget combos).
• For 135 of the 190 combinations, the combined total is higher than both the individual keeper scores so far.
• Unless you’ve got plenty of spare cash, the best combinations so far have been Speroni/Green (47) and Fabianski/Heaton (46), coming in at 9.5 which is no more expensive than a premium keeper and nominal backup.
• Sticking to only 4.5 keepers, the best budget options so far involved Guzan, Green, Krul and Mannone and gave very respectable totals of 37 points plus. This is comparable to Fraser Forster’s 39 points to date.
• Not all the combinations have done well. You’d think spending 11.0 on a combination with perfect home/away rotation would deliver a respectable total but Howard/Mignolet (21 points) have proven otherwise so far.
• All the combinations have more points than Kasper Schmeichel, who missed out on Leicester’s only clean sheet this season.  His total of 15 points is only half of fellow 4.5 keeper Tom Heaton’s tally. Leicester’s fixtures have been tough so far so there is plenty of scope for improvement.
• There is a pretty reasonable correlation between points scored and ease of fixtures for both individuals and combos. For example, Forster and Fabianksi have both had very favourable games so far. Good as Southampton’s defence has been, they’ve benefited from the kindest fixtures to date so surely will struggle to keep it up.
• Good fixtures are not a guarantee of points though – theoretically Begovic (27 points) and Foster (25 points) rotated pretty well but only scored 21 points when combined.
• The Guzan/Green combo was the most unexpected success.  They delivered 42 points despite having amongst the worst combined fixtures and seemingly leaking goals for much of the season.  They achieved clean sheets for almost all their easy fixtures and Guzan even got a clean sheet at Anfield.
• With only nine Gameweeks played the results are sensitive to single higher scoring performances. For example, half of Julian Speroni’s 30 points so far came from one match (BUR). In fact, 12 of his points came from a single save in that match – his penalty save (five points), maintaining his clean sheet (four points) and earning full bonus (three points).

CONCLUSION

I was already a firm believer in the merit of a pair of rotating keepers. This analysis confirms the benefit a well selected duo can give your team. As the season progresses, a pair of active keepers offers better cover against injury, cancellations and double Gameweeks. It also gives you a bit of time to consider your options if one keeper plays for a team who seem to be engaged in a competition to provide the most slapstick final touch to an opposition goal (I’m talking about you Vito Mannone)!