The season started with a trend among the FFS community for all premium back lines, indeed I advocated that approach in my article based on previous season’s stats. As the gameweeks have ticked by, the apparent lack of clean sheets has led to a shift to budget defenders. But is this season really that different to those gone before?
Total clean sheets
Looking at number of clean sheets in the first 8 gameweeks we see:
2019/20: 41 clean sheets
2018/19: 44 clean sheets
2017/18: 59 clean sheets
2016/17: 36 clean sheets
2015/16: 44 clean sheets
2014/15: 43 clean sheets
The obvious outlier is 2017/18, but otherwise the number of clean sheets at this stage actually seems pretty usual.
Teams with clean sheets
But what about the spread of clean sheets – so far this season, no team has reached 50% clean sheets, how does that compare to previous years?
2019/20: 0 teams
2018/19: 4 teams
2017/18: 6 teams
2016/17: 1 team
2015/16: 4 teams
2014/15: 1 team
Ok, so this season is a little strange with no one having 4 clean sheets in the first 8 gameweeks, however 2016/17 and 2014/15 are pretty similar.
The big six
What about the big boys that usually command the premium prices for their defenders? I looked at the average clean sheets at this stage for the big six teams over the past few seasons:
2019/20: 1.8 clean sheets
2018/19: 3.3 clean sheets
2017/18: 4.5 clean sheets
2016/17: 2.5 clean sheets
2015/16: 3.3 clean sheets
2014/15: 2.0 clean sheets
Again, this season does seem to be on the low side, but its not a million miles from 2014/15 and 2016/17.
What to expect going forward
So, is it still worth having the premium defenders this season?
I’m going to exclude the 2017/18 from this analysis, because it is quite clearly a freak season for clean sheets. For the other season, let’s look at the end result for number of clean sheets:
Season: After GW8 – After GW38
2019/20: 41 – ?
2018/19: 44 – 207
2016/17: 36 – 214
2015/16: 44 – 215
2014/15: 43 – 224
And the average clean sheets for the big six by the end of the season
Season: After GW8 – After GW38
2019/20: 1.8 – ?
2018/19: 3.3 – 12.8
2016/17: 2.5 – 14.5
2015/16: 3.3 – 14.2
2014/15: 2.0 – 13.0
The deviation from the norm is remarkably low, and the correlation between the first eight gameweeks and the season is pretty weak. By the end of the season I would expect to see an average of 13-15 clean sheets for the big six teams as per usual despite the poor start to the season.
For my team, I’m sticking with premium at the back and believing in a regression to the average
4 years, 6 months ago
Brilliant, thank you for this Hedge.
It's a tricky one - it's certainly felt that the defences have been far less predictable, but the clean sheets stats don't seem to particularly support this. Perhaps we were just spoilt by the attacking returns of Mendy, Robertson and Alonso in the opening games of last season?