Goalkeeper Pairs

After the earlier post on the best schedules to get you to the wildcard window, a couple of readers had wondered which goalkeeper pairs made sense for that same period. Any new readers might want to take a glance here for my original post on the goalkeeper pair strategy.

I am going to assume that most people make goalkeeper transfers either because of injury or when using their wildcard (rather than juggling them on a weekly basis). Therefore the below data is based on the next 12 weeks (sufficient to get you into the wildcard window):

Lowest average goals conceded
This is calculated by selecting each player's expected goals conceded within a pair and then picking whoever is the best play (the idea being to avoid having keepers from teams who face Chelsea and Arsenal in the same week). I then take the average result for the chosen keeper for the next 12 weeks. The below rankings do not factor in price but I have only taken keepers who cost less than 5m or else the point of the strategy is defeated:

1. Gordon / Robinson
2. Begovic / Robinson
3. Schwarzer / Robinson
4. Foster / Robinson
5. Fabianski / Robinson
6. Fabianski / Krul
7. Gordon / Krul
8. Foster / Krul
9. Krul / Robinson
10. Fabianski / Schwarzer

The first thing that jumps out is the presence of Robinson in the top 5 selections. He is the prototypical rotation strategy keeper for the next 12 weeks with 5 games where he is expected to concede less than half a goal but four games where he is expected to concede 2.5 goals or more. Gordon is another classic rotation keeper as Sunderland have tended to be either very good (six clean sheets this season) or very bad (five goals conceded to Newcastle, three conceded to Wolves). Frustratingly, the good games have often come at unexpected times (clean sheets against MnU, MnC and Che) but they are generally a safe home play and hence Gordon makes a nice complement to Robinson.
If we adjust the above rankings to consider the cost of each player, we get the below:

1. Begovic / Robinson- 8.9m
2. Gordon / Robinson - 9.1m
3. Fabianski / Krul - 8.8m
4. Gordon / Krul - 8.5m
5. Fabianski / Robinson - 9.4m
6. Schwarzer / Robinson - 9.5m
7. Foster / Robinson - 9.6m
8. Krul / Robinson - 8.6m
9. Foster / Krul - 9.0m
10. Fabianski / Schwarzer - 9.7m

 I am pretty comfortable with this data and my goalkeeper strategy has been one of the few things to consistently work, both this year and last. My only word of caution would be with Krul who will be dropped in future when Steve Harper returns from injury. That won't really impact the ratings much as Harper only costs 0.3m more and is probably a better player but it would be important to consider before using a transfer on Krul in the next few weeks.

As a point of reference, over the same period Petr Cech would lead all keepers with an average expected goals of 0.75 per game. Both the Begovic/Robinson and the Gordon/Robinson partnerships come out with the same number to within 0.01, while saving you at least 1.5m in the process (as you would need spend at least 3.9m on a player to sit on your bench no matter good Cech is). This suggests the GK strategy is still a useful one to follow and it is one I won't be abandoning anytime soon.

Thanks for reading and all comments/questions are welcomed below or @plfantasy. I also ask that if you like the blog you click the 'follow' button which can be found in the top left corner. I am trying to boost my online presence and it would be great to get an idea of how many people are reading the blog.