How to select your daily fantasy football goalkeeper
Germany’s Manuel Neuer has propelled goalkeepers into the spotlight in recent times with his proactive approach, perhaps taking a leaf out of Rene Higuita’s book. The Colombian was a pioneer in influencing goalkeepers to take more responsibility for situations further from goal.
When asked about El Loco (‘’The Madman’’), infamous for a Scorpion kick save that he once pulled off against England, Ron Atkinson, the former Coventry City manager was quoted as saying:
‘We’ve got absolutely no interest in him. We’ve got a goalkeeper with a better trick – he stops the ball with his hands.’
This leads us to ask ourselves what exactly makes a keeper stand out from the crowd and more importantly what should fantasy managers be looking for?
Clearly clean sheets are important but ever-increasing access to Big Data has resulted in the full goalkeeper package coming under closer scrutiny. This in turn has led to more sophisticated scoring systems being introduced by game operators so the likes of saves, passes, fouls, catches and so on are now scoring points in some game formats. A goalkeeper will always to a certain extent be dependent on the players in front of him but strong organization skills, positioning, agility, quick reflexes , game-reading ability are just a few of the other factors that will contribute to the number of saves he makes and his overall performance.
To initiate the goalkeeper selection process you must first study the scoring criteria of your chosen game and adapt your strategy from there. Once you understand this you need to factor in player valuations and the significance of goal expectancies. The following Mondogoal case study will provide tips on how to evaluate which daily fantasy football goalkeepers offer the best value as well as providing key selection pointers.
Case Study 1b - Mondogoal Goalkeepers
Let’s look at how goalkeepers can earn or forfeit points based on the Mondogoal ‘s unique scoring system:
Regular play – Fouls won, minutes played, and tackles won (REG)
Discipline – Yellow cards, red cards and fouls committed (DIS)
Saves – regular saves and penalty kick saves (SAV)
Clean sheets (CLN)
Goals conceded – single goal game and goals conceded (CND)
In the following table we have categorised these to show the average points per game ranges for the Top 20 Goalkeepers with a minimum number of 10 appearances during the 2014/15 season up to and including week 37:
2010 - present
2010 - present
Only 2 goalkeepers – David Ospina and Fraser Forster averaged more points per game for defensive duties (clean sheets and goals conceded) than saves.
In the following table we have ranked the Top 20 Goalkeepers by ‘Saves’.
When defence figures are portrayed this way it can be somewhat misleading. So what conclusions can you draw? You can pretty much throw a blanket over them in terms of regular play and discipline but when we look deeper at clean sheets and goals conceded it becomes quite clear that not all goalkeepers are equal.
It’s also worth remembering that a clean sheet is worth 6 points, a single goal game is effectively worth 1 point and all subsequent goals conceded above 1 will result in 2 points being deducted for each. Arguably one of the best goalkeeping performances of the season was Joe Hart’s performance in the Barcelona v Manchester City Champions League tie. That earned him a Mondogoal score of 13.8 but the margin was fine. Just suppose he didn’t pull off one of those saves resulting in a 2-0 defeat then he would lose 1 point for the save, the 3 point bonus for the 1 goal game and incur 2 more minus points for the extra goal conceded effectively knocking his score down to 7.8. Compare this to Eden Hazard who averaged 13.41 PPG during the EPL season and it becomes difficult to make a case for investing too much of your budget on a keeper.
So the final piece of the jigsaw revolves around value for money. Try to find a keeper that looks capable of scoring more points than his projected PPG based on his salary cap level. Let’s look at the same Top 20 goalkeepers:
Plotting a best-fit line through this scatter chart gives you an indication of how a goalkeeper should be priced based on his projected points per game. Calculate how many points you think a goalkeeper might earn in a particular match then cross-reference against the salary scale to see if he looks like a value proposition. Mondogoal ‘s algorithm indicates that ‘recent form’ is taking quite a lot of precedence when putting a valuation on a player. This means there could be some tremendous value available for the fantasy football manager. You might consider introducing projected shots on target forecasts into your calculations but measuring the exact quality of any given shot on target may prove troublesome.
Our conclusion is that you should look for favourable game conditions. Try to eke out some value by checking the number of goals a team is expected to concede. A great starting point is to concentrate on home sides and look for fixtures where a team is expected to concede ‘less’ goals than the average number of goals they concede for standard home games based on bookmakers lines. This can be done simply by having home and away average goals concession tables to hand and then cross-referencing against the ‘Goal Expectancy’ tables we produce in our Hotcard section which focus on key game rounds played in the English Premier League as well as selected soccer fixtures from the MLS. Once you rule out anyone who looks like he might concede 2 or more goals this should give you a workable short-list to focus on, which in conjunction with our ‘Saves’ Rankings tables should enable you to find a great value goalkeeper option thereby freeing up more of your budget to spend on those big hitters in more offensive positions!
Make sure you check out our Picking a keeper - a crucial decision for any fantasy manager article for more discussion on this niche position as well.
