This article is part of our Fantasy Premier League Rankings series.
Many fantasy Premier League games make goalkeeper scoring very dependent on clean sheets, a statistic that is fairly inconsistent, though they obviously favor the clubs near the top of the table. To counter that, targeting saves to make up for a lack of clean sheets has become a viable fantasy strategy, though saves may actually be tougher to predict than shutouts.
Manchester United's David de Gea led the Premier League with 18 clean sheets last season (he conceded 28 goals), and his fifth-highest 118 saves led him to the top of the goalkeeper fantasy scoring table in the league's official game. Manchester City's Ederson finished second thanks to his 16 clean sheets and 26 goals allowed, but his final fantasy-point tally was nearly nine percent lower because he only had to make 58 saves. Finishing just a single fantasy point behind Ederson was Swansea City's Lukasz Fabianski, who conceded 56 times and had just nine clean sheets, but 137 saves pushed him up the leaderboard. In fact, Fabianski has been a great source of saves over the past four seasons, as he's the only player to finish in the top 10 in each of the past four years:
We have some caveats, of course, such as the facts that not all of those goalkeepers were even in the Premier League in each of those seasons, and Fabianski transferred from Swansea City to West Ham this summer. So, is save upside a product of the goalkeeper himself or the defense
Many fantasy Premier League games make goalkeeper scoring very dependent on clean sheets, a statistic that is fairly inconsistent, though they obviously favor the clubs near the top of the table. To counter that, targeting saves to make up for a lack of clean sheets has become a viable fantasy strategy, though saves may actually be tougher to predict than shutouts.
Manchester United's David de Gea led the Premier League with 18 clean sheets last season (he conceded 28 goals), and his fifth-highest 118 saves led him to the top of the goalkeeper fantasy scoring table in the league's official game. Manchester City's Ederson finished second thanks to his 16 clean sheets and 26 goals allowed, but his final fantasy-point tally was nearly nine percent lower because he only had to make 58 saves. Finishing just a single fantasy point behind Ederson was Swansea City's Lukasz Fabianski, who conceded 56 times and had just nine clean sheets, but 137 saves pushed him up the leaderboard. In fact, Fabianski has been a great source of saves over the past four seasons, as he's the only player to finish in the top 10 in each of the past four years:
We have some caveats, of course, such as the facts that not all of those goalkeepers were even in the Premier League in each of those seasons, and Fabianski transferred from Swansea City to West Ham this summer. So, is save upside a product of the goalkeeper himself or the defense in front of him? If there's ever a test-case it'll be this season with Fabianski and the Irons.
Another issue we come upon is that not every goalkeeper is guaranteed to start all 38 matches. In fact, most don't, with Fabianski, Bournemouth's Asmir Begovic, Brighton's Mathew Ryan, Everton's Jordan Pickford and Huddersfield's Jonas Lossl getting the call for every Premier League game last season. That isn't to say every other keeper was inconsistent -- we saw 14 start at least 30 times -- but it's enough to give a long look at team goalkeeper stats as well.
For example, Liverpool's Loris Karius was the 16th-highest scoring goalkeeper last season after making 19 starts, with teammate Simon Mignolet ending up 19th with the same number of appearances. Because of their shared role, it's easy to overlook the fact that their combined fantasy points would have made them the sixth-highest scoring keeper in the league. We obviously don't get to choose a team goalkeeper in fantasy Premier League (at least the league's official game), but Liverpool appears to have solved their issues at the position by spending £65 million on Alisson, who is expected to get a vast majority, if not all, of the starts this season. His 17 clean sheets for Roma last season were one off the Serie A lead, while his 0.76 goals allowed per match were second-best among keepers with at least 20 starts (Gianluigi Buffon allowed 0.67 per match in 21 starts). Given the significant improvement at a position that was already a decently scoring one last season, I'm jumping on Alisson as the best fantasy Premier League goalkeeper for 2018/19.
* Played for Roma last season
** Played for Porto last season
*** Played for Swansea City last season
**** Played for West Brom last season
