My first guide proved pretty popular, so as promised, I’ve worked on another one, filled with yet more ill-advised opinions and player tips. This time I’ve got all specific and, as the title suggests, focused on the factors to consider when selecting your Keeper and Defence. You just choose Cech and fergetaboutit right? Not quite, I love to complicate things…

Selecting a Goalkeeper and a set of Defenders is probably the least glamorous part of your Fantasy Football selection process. Unlike choosing Midfielders and Forwards, to a great extent, it’s not the individual players you look for, but the effectiveness of the defence of their real life clubs. With this in mind a good proportion of your defence and indeed, your Goalkeeper, almost picks itself without the need of any masterstrokes on your part. Having said that, I’ve always found that some careful thinking in the construction of my defence and the selection of my keeper, can, just like in real-life, provide a solid foundation for the rest of my side. If you can be happy with 75% of the players in those positions, it can free up transfers for Midfielders and Forwards where some inspiring decisions can come into play.

Choosing a Goalkeeper can always be an easy task. You can either stick Cech in goal, live with the financial hit and then forget about it all season (barring head injuries). Or you can stick a cheap promoted club’s Keeper or a bench warmer in goal and invest the money you save on another expensive forward. I’ve done both in the past and they’ve both routes have played a crucial part in my ridiculously average Fantasy season. There is however a third option which falls somewhere in between.

Selecting a keeper who can genuinely contribute points without going straight for Cech can involve doing some homework but can obviously be beneficial to your chances of success. It’s worth noting at this point, that in this guide, I’m first looking at the selection of a Keeper without consideration for non-traditional scoring factors like “Saves” and “Penalty Saves”. However, some games, notably the Premier League game, do include these, and that puts a whole new spin on which Keepers are best to select as we’ll see later. I’m also ignoring “Bonus” points or “Man of the Match” awards they are, to a some extent difficult to predict. I’m not ignoring them though, because they won’t go away. I’ll tackle all of these factors later. For now, let’s look at choosing a Keeper when all that matters are good old clean sheets and goals conceded.

As a rule, I always select my Goalkeeper and Defence as one set players. After all, both positions share the same basic scoring mechanic (clean sheets vs goals conceded) this means you can simply consider the Keeper as a Defender who is unlikely to score goals and assists (unless he’s Paul Robinson of course). In my opinion, this is an effective way of thinking about your Keeper and helps to put his price and scoring potential, in relation to the price of Defenders, and therefore your entire team/squad, into perspective.

The Triforce

Each season there are only a few clubs who actually present a good source of clean sheets – one look at my Team Stats table reveals that Chelsea, Liverpool and then United (in that order) are the clubs that stand out when searching for defenders and a Keeper who gather clean sheets based on last season’s form. After that, you have a pack of clubs who can be seen as second tier – namely Portsmouth, Man City, Reading, Bolton, Blackburn Everton and Arsenal (in no particular order). If you select your Defence and Keeper together, those five players should ideally consist of three or more from the top tier trio of clubs and one or two from the second tier. Failing that, you could opt for a midfielder, misclassifed as a defender in your game, from a lower tier club – Scharner at Wigan for example. The idea here is that his goals and assists will make up for a lack of clean sheets. The other alternative is to gamble on a promoted club and sign a cheap defender from one of these to save cash for players elsewhere.

Your first task then is to find three or more players from Chelsea, Liverpool and United that you can afford and that will play enough games to warrant selection in your side. You can read my General Selection Guide for more on this, but basically you’re looking for first choice players at those clubs in defensive positions. Personally, I feel its best to ensure that your Keeper is one of the slots filled from this top tier and here’s why…

At all three top tier clubs, the Keeper’s jersey is secure – Cech, Reina and van der Sar are all likely to play at least 36 of the 38 games in the Premiership. When you look at defenders at those clubs who will do the same you’re probably left with Carragher, Ferdinand, Terry, Vidic and maybe Carvalho and Finnan. After that, you’ve got the likes of Ashley Cole, Agger, Evra and Neville who seem likely to play around 30 games but no more. That gives you a rather simple shortlist of players from which to draw three or more players for the backbone of your defensive unit.

The significant factor here however, is that the Keepers will often be cheaper than any of those Defenders listed and can therefore grant you one of your slots from the top three defensive clubs for the best price. Selecting your Keeper from the likes of Bolton, Everton or Reading and then buying three Defenders from the top tier in your defence is likely to mean you’ll have to spend more cash, simply because Defenders from the top tier are more expensive than their Keepers. Plus if you’re unlucky with timing, and your second tier club goes through a bad spell (which is likely at some point), there is little chance your Keeper will chip in with Goals and Assists to balance this out. If you go for a top tier Keeper, thus leaving you with one or more second tier defenders, at least there is a chance that the likes of Lescott or a Shorey could chip in with a goal or an assist to help you through the bad spell. Plus, because Defenders can contribute assists and goals, it’s often easier to swap second tier defenders in and out with success. With second tier Keepers, you’re swapping like with like because the only variables are clean sheets and goals conceded – it almost feels like a wasted transfer.

So which of the top tier Keepers do you opt for? The thing to consider here, apart from price, is the contribution of your remaining first tier defensive choices in terms of goals and assists. That’s why, if you want variety and a player from each of the three clubs in your defensive unit, Reina is the probably the best choice right now. This is because Carragher and Finnan offer little in terms of goals and assists. Agger, with 2-3 goals is an option but I’m still not totally convinced he’ll see as many games. With Reina secured, you have Liverpool clean sheets covered and can go for the likes of Vidic, Terry or Carvalho to fill the remaining slots in your defence – all of which offer more opportunity for goals and assists. This gives you an overall defensive unit that consists of at least one player from Liverpool, United and Chelsea.

Once you have this basis you can then supplement this with players from the second tier of clubs listed earlier or, as I say, gamble on a misclassified player or promoted club player. Once more, I’m going to shamelessly plug my Selection Stats to help you find those players. The stats should show the likes of Shorey, Samba, Richards and Lescott should be top targets. After those three comes the likes of Mellberg, Meite and probably Distin, although Harry’s defence looks difficult to predict pre-season. Meanwhile, if you’re feeling brave and are attack minded, you may want to opt for the goals and assists that Tottenham new boy Gareth Bale offers – just consider the fact that Spurs had the lowest number of clean sheets in the entire Premiership last time out. As for promoted players, it’s a tricky one. Sunderland are tipped to do the best of the three clubs and they’ve made solid defensive signings. Greg Halford is the loose cannon here. He’ll be classed as a defender, but if he plays, he could play anywhere and he can score goals, particularly if his beanpole frame is shoved up front whilst chasing a game. A safer option would be Russell Anderson – likely to be a permanent fixture in the centre of defence. At Brum and Derby meanwhile, Jaidi’s goal threat makes him worth considering (although African Nations Cup involvement could convnce you otherwise), while at Derby, Dean Leacock is perhaps the best option as he seems set to be a regular starter at least.

In the main, my usual aim is to have three players regularly playing and contributing big defensive points with two cheaper, second tier players remaining in defence that you can juggle to form or perhaps change according to favourable fixtures. I’ve always found this a sound basis for my defence that allows me to concentrate the bulk of my transfer efforts elsewhere.

When Clean Sheets are not enough…

As I mentioned earlier, in some games simple clean sheets are not the only method of scoring for a Keeper. Most significantly, “Saves” are a factor in some games. In the Premier League game Keepers earn a point for every three saves made in a match. This suddenly means that Keepers playing in front of secure defences cannot always compete with those playing in front of “okay” ones. That’s why the likes of James, Friedal and Hahnemann scored just as high, or even higher than the likes of Reina and van der Sar. Another variable to add to this is the more saves they’re making, the more likely they are to win man of the match awards in some Fantasy Games and Bonus points for performance in the Premier League Game. This therefore, lifts these Keepers to the top of your shortlist, meaning that you’d be better reversing the strategy above and opt for second tier club Keeper in goal with three or more first tier Defenders in your back line. Which of the second tier Keepers you go for is difficult – however David James is always a good bet for Bonus points and Man of the Match awards, plus, this season Pompey have strengthened the back line so, even without these points, his clean sheet tally could compare well to the more expensive options.

Although the Telegraph doesn’t include “Saves” as a method of scoring, points from FA Cup Games are included which can also level the playing field when it comes to Goalkeepers because of rotation amongst the top clubs. The three keepers I’ve mentioned – Reina, Cech and van der Sar could all easily be rested or rotated for FA Cup games this season. When you consider that the TFF game also includes saves in penalty shootouts as a method of scoring (crazy I know), then you can see just how limiting this can be. Again this can mean reversing some of my earlier advice. If you take a look at the points scored by those three keepers and compare it to the Keepers at the second tier clubs – Friedal, James etc, you will see the difference is not as major as in other games. This makes these second tier Keepers, who will be ever present through FA Cup games, worth looking at – provided of course, they can get good cup runs. This is one of the reasons Friedal faired so well last season.

Squad Game Rotation

Another factor that can change your approach to which Keeper you sign is whether or not you have a squad to play with. In a squad situation you have two Keeper slots to fill and here you have several options. You can go with the tactic of signing a top tier keeper with a cheap reserve, perhaps from a promoted club. Or you can sign two second tier Keepers. It comes down to a question of finances and whether you’re willing to be hands-on with your squad. By having two second tier keepers, one playing at home one gameweek, the other away, you can rotate them so you always have your first choice Keeper playing at home – thus increasing your chances of a clean sheet from this position. This strategy also gives you a strong reserve should one of your Keepers get injured. Getting a top tier Keeper and pairing him with a lower tier Kirkland or Niemi, is certainly more hands-off and could even be more profitable in terms of points, it’s a question of assessing the cost of the two options and how confident you are in the second tier teams you’re drawing from.

There you go then. My views on selecting a Goalkeeper and his Defence – for what it’s worth. I hope you got something from this even if its just a few chuckles about how naive or inaccurate I am in my ideas. I’ve probably got a couple more of these guides in me at some point so pop back in the next few weeks and see if I’ve come up with any further ramblings.