Who have been the best Goalkeepers so far this season?

Introduction

Although it is probably the position that FPL managers give the least amount of thought to, having the best keeper in the game can really lay the foundation for a good Gameweek. As Nick Pope non-owners can tell you in the weeks leading up to Gameweek 29, when you don’t have that good base of 6 to 10 points to build upon, you really are playing catch up as the weekend unfolds and you have to rely on your outfield players to do something pretty special to make up the deficit.

In this article, we will have look at all the goalkeeper data from this season and pluck out some key stats to identify the best FPL asset between the sticks. If the Premier League season resumes and multiple double gameweeks are announced, then, as is often the case in a double, having the best goalkeeper (or goalkeepers plural if the bench boost is played) can be very lucrative.

What Does The Data Say?

FPL Points

Let’s kick things off by reminding ourselves of perhaps the only bit of data that really matters: FPL points. The top 3 is as follows:

1. Nick Pope (£4.9m) 128 points
2. Dean Henderson (£5.3m) 122 points
3. Kasper Schmeichel (£5.4m) 119 points

One important point to make here is that Sheffield United’s Henderson has played 2 fewer games than Pope and Schmeichel. If he had played 29 games like Burnley’s number 1, would he be the highest scoring goalkeeper in the game right now?

Clean Sheets

Bread and butter for any goalkeeper is his clean sheet count. Let’s remind ourselves of the top 3 as things stand:

1. Nick Pope (£4.9m) 11
2. Alisson Becker (£6.2m) 10
2. Kasper Schmeichel (£5.4m) 10
2. Dean Henderson (£5.3m) 10
3. Martin Dubravka (£5.1m) 9
3. Ben Foster (£4.9m) 9
3. Vicente Guaita (£5.0m) 9
3. Ederson (£6.0m) 9

With Pope leading the way for clean sheets, we have 3 goalkeepers tied for second and 4 goalkeepers tied for third place. Once again, the number of starts is an important consideration, as only four in the list above have played every game so far this season. Henderson, as previously mentioned, and Guaita have played 27 games, while Ederson has played 25. An honourable mention must go to Alisson, who is only one clean sheet off the top spot despite playing 9 fewer games than Pope.

Percentage of saves from shots outside the box

Delving a bit deeper into the stats from the last 29 gameweeks, the percentage of saves a goalkeeper makes from shots outside the box is important to look at. The top three is as follows:

1. Alisson Becker (£6.2m) 49%
2. Bernd Leno (£5.0m) 42%
3. David De Gea (£5.3m) 39%
3. Lukasz Fabianski (£4.9m) 39%
3. Aaron Ramsdale (£4.5m) 39%

By their very nature, a long range shot from outside the penalty box is easier to save than a close-range effort near the goal. The more shots a keeper faces from distance, the more likely those save points are to rack up. For keepers with more than 15 starts, Liverpool’s Alisson claims the top spot here. Nearly half of the saves he has had to make were from shots outside the box, which is testament to how good the Liverpool defence is at keeping attacks away from their goal. Indeed, the only goalkeeper who has a higher percentage of saves from shots outside the box than Alisson is his number 2, Adrian (in the 9 games he has played this season, 50% of his total saves have been from shots outside the box). It should be noted, however, that the Liverpool number 1 has only made 22 saves from outside the box, whereas 2nd placed Leno has more than double that at 45 saves (albeit with 8 more starts).

Minutes per save

Next we turn to the classic goalkeeping stat of minutes per save.

1. Martin Dubravka (£5.1m) 22.3
2. Bernd Leno (£5.0m) 23.3
3. Aaron Ramsdale (£4.5m) 24

For goalkeepers with 15 or more starts, Dubravka has the lowest figure illustrating that he is making saves the most frequently. This is all the more impressive when you consider that only 31% of his 117 total saves this season (top for all goalkeepers) have been from shots outside the box. It is testament to how good a goalkeeper he is that nearly 70% of his saves have come from close range efforts.

xG Prevented

xG Prevented is a relatively new phenomenon. It looks at how many goals a keeper was expected to concede from the quality of the chances they faced and then subtracts how many goals they actually conceded. In very simple terms, Gordon Banks’s infamous save from Pele’s header in the 1970 World Cup is probably the closest you’ll ever get to a perfect score of 1 for xG Prevented for a save. Indeed, if a keeper has positive figure for this, you can expect to see him on some kind of Match of the Day compilation for best saves. Across the 19/20 season, the top 3 for xG Prevented are:

1. Dean Henderson (£5.3m) +8.2
2. Martin Dubravka (£5.1m) +7.8
3. Vicente Guaita (£5.0m) +7.6

It’s always a bit of fun to look at the minuses for xG Prevented, i.e. goalkeepers who have let in more goals than the expected data said they should have.

1. Kepa Arrizabalaga (£5.4m) -8.5
2. Angus Gunn (£4.2m) -7.4
3. Tom Heaton (£4.3m) -6.2

Bottom of the pile is the Premier League’s most expensive goalkeeper ever – Kepa, who cost Chelsea a cool £71.6m, has let in 8 more goals than he should have. Second is Gunn, which is probably why he lost his place to Alex McCarthy, and in bronze is Sir Tom Heaton, which perhaps goes to prove that the goalkeeper isn’t the key to Burnley’s defensive success but rather it is Burnley themselves.

Save percentage

The last stat I’m going to look at is save percentage – of all the shots on target faced, how many did the goalkeeper save?

1. Alisson Becker (£6.2m) 80.4%
2. Vicente Guaita (£5.0m)  77.9%
3. Dean Henderson (£5.3m) 77.8%

Not surprisingly, given that Liverpool are so good at restricting teams to efforts from range, Alisson claims top spot again for keepers with at least 15 starts. Bottom of the pile is poor old Kepa again – who has saved just 59% of the shots on target faced.

Conclusion

Simon March, who famously won FPL, once said that it is important to look at a “funnel of stats” to get the best out of them. That is, which player and which name keeps popping up as you look across a wide range of all the most important stats. In this analysis, that name is Dean Henderson who appears in the top three for some of most important goalkeeping metrics no less than four times. Although it should be noted that, if Alisson had played as many games as other keepers in this analysis, he would have likely have gotten the coveted fourth mention.