Sponsored by FanTeam
Fantasy Football Scout are delighted to be uniting with FanTeam, Europe’s biggest daily Fantasy sports platform, for the new season.
We’re particularly excited about their season-long Premier League Fantasy game, in which there is a €1m prize pool – and €200,000 goes straight to the winner.
It’s all the more enticing as it’s essentially an FPL-style game (and therefore easy to pick up) that comes with the chance of a huge windfall:
- A starting XI built from a 15-man squad
- One free transfer a week
- Price changes
- Captains and vice-captains
- £100m budget
- Maximum of three players per club
- Two Wildcards a season
- Very similar scoring system (three points for an assist, four for a clean sheet etc)
Entries cost just €25 per team, a payment you’ll make up by finishing in the top 5,659 places (see below).
Given that a maximum of 75,000 entries are permitted, the odds are favourable for those who know their stuff.
We have already given you a rundown on how to play the game, so now we turn our attention to the player price list.
In this article, we’ll take a look at the stand-out names between the posts, picking out the goalkeepers who could prosper and seeing if we can spot a bargain or two in the process.
(All prices given are for FanTeam and not FPL)
CLICK HERE TO HEAD TO FANTEAM’S €1M PREMIER LEAGUE FANTASY GAME AND START PICKING YOUR TEAM
HOW GOALKEEPERS SCORE POINTS
Before we delve into the player pool, here’s how goalkeepers can accrue points in FanTeam and how the scoring system differs from FPL:
| FanTeam | FPL | |
| Playing up to 60 mins | +1 | +1 |
| Playing over 60 mins | +2 | +2 |
| Clean sheets | +4 | +4 |
| Penalty save | +5 | +5 |
| Saves | +0.5 per save | +1 every three saves |
| Bonus | +1/-1 “impact points” if a team is winning/losing when the player is on the pitch | +1/2/3 based on Bonus Points System |
There are, of course, other ways to gain and lose points such as yellow cards, sendings off, own-goals, goals scored and penalties conceded (we’ll refer you to our ‘How To…’ for more details) but the above table is a good indicator of the main sources of points.
What’s striking looking at the goalkeepers in FanTeam is that pretty much all of them outdid their achievements in FPL last season.
Saves are even more important in FanTeam as every stop is rewarded, rather than multiples of three in FPL.
Take Nick Pope (£5.5m), the highest-scoring goalkeeper in both FanTeam and FPL, as an example: the Burnley custodian’s 120 stops were only worth 25 save points in FPL but a massive 60 in FanTeam.
So saves and clean sheets are important but so is being on a winning (or at least drawing) side.
Ederson (£6.0m) and Alisson (£6.0m) were unsurprisingly huge benefactors of this in 2019/20, so much so that the differences between their scores in FanTeam and FPL were two of the biggest (36.5 and 32 respectively, with 17 and 20 coming from their net “impact points”).
Winning isn’t everything – the likes of Martin Dubravka (£5.0m) and Mathew Ryan (£4.5m) lost more games than won but compensated with saves – but it’s certainly a bit of a leveller when it comes to the shot-stoppers from the “bigger” sides.
Here is a selection of the highest-scoring goalkeepers from FanTeam last season and their respective points in FPL:
| Player | 2019/20 Team | 2019/20 FanTeam Points | 2019/20 FPL Points | 2020/21 FanTeam Price |
| Pope | BUR | 183 | 170 | £5.5m |
| Schmeichel | LEI | 177 | 156 | £5.0m |
| Patricio | WOL | 176.5 | 153 | £5.0m |
| de Gea | MUN | 173.5 | 143 | £5.5m |
| Henderson | SHU | 170 | 160 | £5.0m |
| Ederson | MCI | 169.5 | 133 | £6.0m |
| Dubravka | NEW | 164.5 | 143 | £5.0m |
| Alisson | LIV | 154 | 122 | £6.0m |
| Ryan | BHA | 147.5 | 135 | £4.5m |
| Guaita | CRY | 146 | 137 | £4.5m |
| Pickford | EVE | 137 | 117 | £4.5m |
| Leno | ARS | 134 | 114 | £5.0m |
| Ramsdale | BOU | 131.5 | 126 | £5.0m |
| McCarthy | SOU | 120 | 104 | £4.5m |
| Arrizabalaga | CHE | 116 | 90 | £5.0m |
| Lloris | TOT | 112 | 98 | £5.0m |
PLAYERS TO CONSIDER
Hugo Lloris
- Price: £5.0m
- Next six fixtures: EVE | sou | NEW | mun| WHU | bur
Hugo Lloris (£5.0m) is perhaps the stand-out name from the crop of FanTeam goalkeepers, with his affordable price marrying with decent fixures at the start of the season.
Not only that, but his points-per-match average was also the best of any FanTeam goalkeeper last season (5.33).
Jose Mourinho’s track record of pulling rabbits out of the hat in his second season in charge of a club is also worth bearing in mind, with Spurs beginning to show signs of defensive resilience after lockdown with four clean sheets in their final eight matches.
Lloris’s save percentage and expected goals conceded (xG) total were also the best in the division in 2019/20, which bodes well for those all-important save points.
Alisson
- Price: £6.0m
- Next six fixtures: LEE | che | ARS | avl | eve | SHU
While Ederson (£6.0m) blanks in Gameweek 1 and has some tricky tests thereafter, Alisson (£6.0m) begins 2020/21 with a home fixture against newly promoted Leeds United.
Liverpool also face Aston Villa, Everton, Sheffield United and West Ham United between now and Gameweek 7.
It’s a decent bet that Jurgen Klopp’s side will better last season’s total of 15 clean sheets, which was their lowest in three years and came about after a relative shut-out drought in the first 15 Gameweeks of their title-winning campaign.
While FPL managers might see the Brazilian as a waste of a Liverpool slot, the extra rewards on offer for goalkeepers in FanTeam and the lack of a Bonus Points System does level the playing field somewhat.
Alisson’s points-per-match average in FanTeam was 5.31 last season, only marginally inferior to that of Trent Alexander-Arnold (5.63) and superior to the likes of Virgil van Dijk (5.08) and Andrew Robertson (5.25).
Karl Darlow
- Price: £4.0m
- Next six fixtures: whu | BHA | tot | BUR | MUN | wol
At the other end of the price list is Karl Darlow (£4.0m), who is attractively listed at one million cheaper than he is in FPL.
An injury to Martin Dubravka (£5.0m), which could keep the Slovakia international out for up to eight weeks, has opened up a spot between the posts on Tyneside, with Darlow expected to see off the challenge of Mark Gillespie to deputise – although pre-season minutes will perhaps tell us more on that front.
The Magpies kept 11 clean sheets last season (the most of any side finishing in the bottom half) and open their 2020/21 campaign with winnable fixtures against West Ham United, Brighton and Hove Albion and Burnley in the first four Gameweeks.
Dubravka made the most saves of any Premier League goalkeeper last season, so Darlow should be kept busy whether the clean sheets arrive or not.
He is at least playing bench fodder (for now) at £4.0m and, for those intending on picking David De Gea (£5.5m), Nick Pope (£5.5m) or Ederson long term, could be played in Gameweek 1 before the two Manchester clubs and Burnley get their seasons underway a week later.
Others
Like Darlow, bargain-bin custodians Illan Meslier, Orjan Nyland and Jed Steer (all £4.0m) could feasibly start in Gameweek 1 and it’s worth monitoring the goalkeeping situation at Leeds United and Aston Villa in pre-season.
There’s a cluster of playing shot-stoppers available at £4.5m, with Jordan Pickford and Vicente Guaita among the standout names.
All ten of Crystal Palace’s clean sheets came against teams ranked 10th or below last season and the Eagles face eight such fixtures (if we include the three promoted clubs) in Gameweeks 1-11.
For those who like to rotate their £4.5m goalkeepers, Guaita could even be paired with Pickford over the same timeframe to give a favourable run of matches that avoids any of last year’s top 10.
The second-highest-scoring goalkeeper of last season, Kasper Schmeichel (£5.0m), also has some decent fixtures in Gameweeks 1-5 but will likely be playing behind a defence that is decimated by injury and suspension in the opening month.
Wolves, on the other hand, were in great form before the end of the season, keeping clean sheets in nine of their last 14 matches.
Their fixtures are appealing-looking from Gameweeks 3-9 and Rui Patricio (£5.0m) could perhaps be paired with Darlow, with the Newcastle back-up an option to play at home to Brighton in Gameweek 2 when Wolves face Manchester City.
CLICK HERE TO HEAD TO FANTEAM’S €1M PREMIER LEAGUE FANTASY GAME AND START PICKING YOUR TEAM
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