Every season there is a weekend where all previously accepted knowledge appears to fly out of the window and last weekend was it for this season. Manchester United gave up a 3 goal lead, losing 5-3 to Leicester in a match that could have been a carbon copy of Man United’s famous overhaul of a Spurs 3-0 lead. Spurs managed to lose at home to West Brom and their decision not to bring in a new forward over the summer continues to be costly. QPR and Newcastle didn’t lose (despite their best efforts), West Ham continued to pour the pressure on Brendan Rodger’s Liverpool whilst elsewhere on merseyside Everton managed to go down to a feisty Crystal Palace. Oh and let’s not forget that a certain Mr. Lampard (who else) took 2 points out of Mourinho’s coffers.
It makes my head swim a little just thinking about it. This weekend I hope that the status quo returns and we can manage to get some more predictable results both in the league and in fantasy terms. Many of you will have managed quite low scores in week 5 because of all of the upset but don’t be too disheartened – I only managed 75 points but that was enough for me to move up in most leagues.
The goalkeeper selections for this week are (in order of ‘to win to nil’) Courtois, Forster, De Gea and Foster. Many of you will still hold Courtois at a discount and will have a very easy choice, of the remainder I’ll happily admit that I have absolutely no faith in De Gea, the Man United defence or Louis Van Gaal’s decision making (except for buying Di Maria of course).
Last week, I looked into some statistics in an effort to breakdown conventional wisdom and find some players who might score well compared to the general players that everyone will have (i.e. Costa). It went ok even with the bizarre results, with two nondescript performances and a very solid one from Lukaku (don’t forget that Costa only managed 1 point). This week I wanted to look at Fantasy Football conventional wisdom again, this time when choosing the best goalkeeper in the game…
The Conventional Wisdom
Almost all managers start their goalkeeper selection (obviously after reading my column) by looking for a fantastic keeper, hidden behind a world-class defence, supported by an attack-focused midfield that is facing a team who leaks goals and who couldn’t score for toffees. This approach tries to ensure the ‘clean sheet’ and ‘win’ points and a nice haul of 9 points.
There are a number of issues with this approach though, the most significant being that these goalkeepers are usually prohibitively expensive. Later in the season you’ll see goalkeepers who cost 15m and that’s a lot of money to spend on someone who’s only going to get you 9 points. The second problem is that these goalkeepers have significant risks and very little chance of other rewards. The risks are primarily around conceding a goal and the resulting drop of 8 points (-3 for conceding a goal and the loss of 5 points for a clean sheet). The low rewards come because the goalkeepers defence is so strong that there’s little chance of making any saves. The final problem is that in order to justify the cost of these top goalkeepers you probably want them to cost less than 9m and that really doesn’t happen very often. A classic example would be Szczesny last weekend; a great goalie behind a great defence, playing a team who have been better than expected but no one really thought they’d do well at the Emirates. He cost just over 10m and he returned 14 points which is very nice return on investment. If Aston Villa had just got one goal in however, his return would have dropped to just 6 points which is a poor return on investment – Basically he had a whole load of downside but very little upside.
The other option
I think that in a perfect world you wouldn’t look for a keeper who will score a clean sheet and win and then hope for some upside from the occasional save; you’d look for a keeper who should make plenty of saves but with the upside of a clean sheet and a win – A small difference I grant you but an important one.
If I look at some of the best performing goalkeepers in the league, there is a fine line where a goalkeeper gets extra points from his saves because he’s defence is just leaky enough and where he starts to lose because his defence just isn’t up to the challenge. Adrian (200%), Mannone (120%), Szczesny (105%), Lloris (104%) and McGregor (100%) have all scored more points from saves than they actually have for the season, implying that even with a good percentage of saves they are losing too many points to conceding goals and losing matches. The 0.34% of managers who hold Adrian must be very annoyed that he’s scored 40 points from saves but has only totalled 20 points overall.
On the flip side, Courtois (93%), Fabianski (86%), Heaton (84%), Forster (52%) and Guzan (51%) appear to have found that perfect level where they’re getting a significant quantity of their points from saves but the remainder from clean sheets and wins. This new approach coupled with the fact that they are shown in the graph above to offer great value for money this week makes me even happier to recommend them. Furthermore, if you have Courtois at 5.94m I wouldn’t be adverse to you spending 7.36m on Forster as your second goalkeeper; I’ve looked through to Christmas and there isn’t a week where both Chelsea and Southampton have difficult matches, you can easily swap them back and forth. I really like the idea of spending 13.3m and being confident in my goalkeeper going forward.
As a final note, you may be interested in who the worst performing goalkeeper is in this respect? Well even though there are some goalkeepers out there that are struggling, the crown easily goes to World Cup hero Tim Howard. He has managed to concede a staggering 13 goals this season (a whopping 3.25 per game) and only managed 6 saves. This has given him an awful score of 12 points from saves against an overall total score of -24. The fact that his price is still high at 7.62 makes him the worst value for money I’ve seen for a long time and I’m really amazed that roughly 1 in 20 managers still have him (on their benches I hope).
See you next week, I’m off to buy Forster.
