Benching The Starter Or Starting The Bencher

I own both Brad Guzan and his actual backup, Shay Given. In deciding which I should start in my Fantasy Premier League (FPL) team, I did some research and got a little carried away. This was just going to be a long post, but it then got so long that I decided it had to be an article, as incredibly niche a topic as it is! Owners of Foster/Myhill, Heaton/Gilks, or any combination of a keeper and their real-life backup, may also find this helpful. To any former Krul/Elliot owners, I apologise, it may still be too soon!

I wanted to see who scored the most points in the event of a keeper substitution – the starter (i.e. Guzan) or the backup (i.e. Given). To do this, I looked at keeper substitutions this season so far, and in the three seasons beforehand, which comes to exactly 1,300 matches overall. I calculated the points that would have been earned using members stats – the only thing missing was bonus points.

In this time period, there were 32 goalkeeper substitutions, none of which were for performance-related or tactical reasons. Given that this happens in less than 2.5% of matches, it’s not likely to make much difference, but a mini-league could always be won by a point or two. Of those 32 substitutions, 25 were due to injuries suffered by the starting goalkeeper, and seven were due to that goalkeeper being sent off.

Sendings Off

In the event of each of these red cards, the starting goalkeeper would never have scored more points than their replacement. In six out of seven cases, the starting keeper would have ended up on negative points, with that minus three points for a red card taking its toll.

The one occasion where the backup keeper failed to outscore the starter was an exceptional circumstance – Norwich’s Gameweek 3 match at Stamford Bridge in 2011-12, where starting keeper John Ruddy would have earned zero points despite his red card in the 80th minute – two for playing 60+ minutes, and one for a save point. His replacement Declan Rudd also would have scored zero points, after conceding twice in his brief cameo.

I thought that a possible advantage to the bench keeper might be the chance of saving a penalty – this only happened once, however, when Brad Jones came off the bench at Blackburn in GW33 of 2011/12 – he would have outscored the dismissed Doni by 6 points to -2.

The combined scores of the seven starting keepers and seven bench keepers in the event of a red card:

Starting Keepers: -11     Bench Keepers: 14

Injuries

When it comes to injuries, there are three scenarios that most impact the points of the starting and bench keeper. With an extra point for minutes played, as well as possible clean sheet points, coming in for at least 60 minutes of play, bench keepers should be advantaged if the starter is injured before the 30th minute, the starting keeper should be advantaged if they are injured after the 60th minute, and it should be fairly even if neither keeper plays 60 minutes. Let’s see if that’s the case:

Injuries before 30 minutes:

In the three instances where the starting keeper was injured before the 30th minute, the backup keeper matched or outscored the starter. The only clean sheet came in Gameweek 7 of this season, where Petr Cech scored six points to Thibaut Courtois’ 1, after the Belgian went off injured in the 23rd minute against Arsenal.

Starting Keepers: 4         Bench Keepers: 10

Injuries between 30-60 minutes:

An injury between the 30th and 60th minute was by far the most common reason for a goalkeeper substitution – accounting for 14 out of 32 subs. Frankly, there was very little in it in each case, with limited chances of a clean sheet or penalty save, it came down to save points and goals conceded.

The starting goalkeeper scored more points in two out of 14 cases, the substitute keeper scored more in four cases and in eight cases they scored equally. There was never more than two points difference in it, and in 12 out of the 14 instances, there was one point in it at most.

Starting Keepers: 13       Bench Keepers: 15

Injuries after 60 minutes:

For those considering playing a Myhill over a Foster, this is the situation to be wary of. It is the only case where starting keepers fared better than backup keepers. In fact, they outscored their backup on each of the eight occasions where a keeper was injured after the 60th minute. On three of these, playing the backup keeper would have resulted in missing out on a clean sheet.

Starting Keepers: 34       Backup Keepers: 9

Conclusions

In what may not be the most comforting news to anyone who’s bothered to read all this, there’s very little in it. Of the 42 goalkeeper substitutions, the starting keeper scored more on 10 occasions, the backup keeper scored more on 12 occasions, and they scored the same on 10 occasions.

Starting Keepers: 40       Backup Keepers: 48

Given that keeper injuries before the 30th minute are fairly rare, for whatever reason, and there’s nothing in it with keeper injuries between the 30th-60th minute, the real swinger is if the keeper is sent off, or if they are injured after 60 minutes. If your keeper has a history of red cards, you’re probably better off starting the backup. If they have a history of injuries, like Ben Foster, it’s probably safer to start him, in case a late injury scuppers your chances of picking up a clean sheet.

In general though, it’s very close, with only a slight advantage towards the backup goalkeepers. Given that they are likely to have a much lower ownership than the starter, I recommend throwing caution to the wind, and starting your backup. It probably won’t make any difference, but if it does, that 1 or 2 points gained will be well worth it!