I’ve been struggling to decide who to play between Butland and McCarthy, as I’m not sure which is the better fixture for a keeper, ars or MCI. Instinctively, I followed the logic of going for the home player, and the bookies clean sheet odds suggest that Palace (MCI) are likelier to keep one than Stoke (ars). Arsenal have been struggling to score at home lately though, blanking in 5 of their last 6 at the Emirates in the league, which gave me pause for thought.

To help me out, I looked at the total points scored by Goalkeepers playing ars and MCI last season. City scored 39 goals away from home and were shut out on 1 occasion last season. Arsenal scored 41 goals at home and were shut out on 3 occasions last season. It doesn’t look like there’s much in it there, but keepers comfortably averaged more points away at Arsenal than at home to City, largely due to save points.

Interested by this discovery, to try and see how much of a role save points play, I’ve worked out last season’s average Points Per Game for goalkeepers by fixture, excluding games against the three relegated teams. Keepers keep more clean sheets and concede fewer goals at home, but pick up more save points away from home.

So that I was looking purely at the balance between these factors, I’ve excluded points won and lost for yellow cards, red cards, own goals and penalty saves (as well as bonus points gained as a result). If an injury or red card caused more than two goalkeepers from the same team to play in a fixture, I’ve worked out the points as if they were one player. These were the best fixtures for a keeper, sorted by PPG:

SUN – 4.53
NEW – 4.47
SOU – 4.21
CPL, LIV – 4.05
AVL, WBA – 3.95
MUN, sun – 3.89
avl – 3.79
lei – 3.74
cpl– 3.68
WHM – 3.63
EVE – 3.58
LEI – 3.42
tot – 3.37
SWA – 3.32
wba – 3.21
ars, eve, liv, sou, STO – 3.16
whm – 2.95
new – 2.89
ARS, swa – 2.79
CHE – 2.68
mci, sto – 2.63
TOT – 2.53
mun – 2.47
MCI – 2.21
che – 2.11

The first thing that I noticed is that even though keepers make more saves in away matches, they still get more points at home – clean sheets should always be the main factor when choosing which keeper to play. In fact, the only teams against whom keepers averaged more points away than at home were Arsenal, Leicester, Man City and Spurs. In each of these cases, being at home or away didn’t make much difference to a keepers' clean sheet prospects, but they made significantly more saves in the away fixture.

Keepers score more points at home to most teams then, with the exception being top attacking sides who are equally good away from home. In that case. save points mean that an away fixture will see your keeper average more points. That said, save points do still have a big effect on determining the best fixtures for a keeper.

Conversely to what you may have expected, SOU, MUN and LIV were all excellent fixtures for a keeper last season. These teams struggled to score as many goals away from home, but being good teams, they also provided keepers with plenty of save points.

On the other hand, several fixtures away to mid-table sides were as bad as or worse than those away at the better teams in the league. Sides like West Ham, Newcastle, Swansea and Stoke all failed to score at home on just three occasions, but as they also didn’t pepper keepers with that many shots, you’d have been better off playing a keeper away at the likes of Arsenal, Liverpool, Southampton or Tottenham.

Apologies for such a long post on something so dull! And credit must go to The3rdTurd for his public tableau of last season’s FPL scores, without which I couldn’t have carried out the research.