Edit on 4th Aug - Some of the numbers were slightly off in the rotation analysis. Fixed it. Overall conclusion not impacted though.
Lab Record Type Section
Introduction
This post is part 2 of a series of number crunching posts I intend on doing on some EPL Fantasy Football data I have. I focus on selecting the goalkeepers in this one.
Part 1 has the main introduction and some other relevant details and assumptions and things all that.
Lab Record Type Section
Introduction
This post is part 2 of a series of number crunching posts I intend on doing on some EPL Fantasy Football data I have. I focus on selecting the goalkeepers in this one.
Part 1 has the main introduction and some other relevant details and assumptions and things all that.
I notice that Lloris' jersey seems to be switched with Begovic's and that Ruddy's jersey is a QPR jersey. This is because the premier league has somewhere update them in such a manner. It is too much pain to manually correct it so skip it and concentrate on the numbers.
Relevant Summary of Earlier Parts
I typically don't invest a lot in goalkeepers as they only bring extra points through the occasional clean sheets and the rare penalty save. Clean sheets are more of a collective effort than individual brilliance and are unreliable.
The fact that you need two keepers on the rolls to fill one active position is a great opportunity to exploit some bench strength. I typically won't be found with a Cech (Courtouis?) in my team, I'll try and manage by rotating a Mannone and a Speroni maybe.
Szczesny makes it to the top 11 for the year but at 5.5 is just 0.5 too expensive for my liking. His inclusion might be a result of my excluding the bench rotation option.
Weekly Analysis
If you break it down to the week level dream teams, Szczesny with a starting price of 5.5 makes an appearance all the way at rank 6 with 2 appearances in the 37. Ironically, erstwhile number 3 to WS, Vite Mannone, priced at a humble 4.5, playing about 900 minutes lesser than WS, heads the list with 5 appearances.
| Name | Team | Frequency in Weekly Dream Team | Start Price | Total Minutes | Total Points | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 |  | Vito Mannone | SUN | 5 | 4.50 | 2478 | 133 |
 |  | Julian Speroni | CRY | 3 | 4.50 | 3330 | 144 |
 |  | Asmir Begovic | STK | 3 | 5.50 | 2880 | 136 |
 |  | Ben Foster | WBA | 3 | 5.00 | 2058 | 90 |
 |  | Adrián San Miguel del Castillo | WHU | 3 | 4.50 | 1710 | 81 |
 |  | Wojciech Szczesny | ARS | 2 | 5.50 | 3330 | 157 |
 |  | Joe Hart | MCI | 2 | 6.50 | 2700 | 111 |
 |  | Tim Krul | NEW | 2 | 5.00 | 3150 | 121 |
 |  | Artur Boruc | SOU | 2 | 4.50 | 2487 | 123 |
| |  | Jussi Jääskeläinen | WHU | 2 | 5.50 | 1620 | 88 |
In other news, Simon Mignolet, Bradley Guzan, Allan McGregor, Boaz Myhill, Tim Howard, John Ruddy, Hugo Lloris, David Marshall, David De Gea, and Mark Schwarzer make only one appearances each. Joe Hart has 2 although you may argue that he lost valuable minutes (630 minutes or 7 games) during the butter finger weeks. Notably, Cech does not figure on this list even once.
All the slightly expensive options, top four contestants and whatnot, might be very consistent but from a best team point of view, it (pretty much) never makes sense to make a heavy investment in the keeper; those funds are better used elsewhere. The top 5 on the above list all played for teams which were near the relegation zone at some part of the season. Moreover, West Ham had their minutes split between two keepers, and Boruc was injured otherwise Szczesny might have been even lower than number 6. The defenses at the lower end of the table are going to play their hearts out during various stages of the season and are worth keeping on the payroll.
The Value of Rotation
The goalkeeping position is that it is the least complicated selection in the team. Only one keeper plays at any time and there are two available to pick from. This is a very important factor in how I pick the keeper because it allows me the freedom to pick two low-priced keepers who can complement each other whenever possible and still fetch a decent tally with rotation. Mannone and Speroni for me any day over Cech and Hart.
If we had two keepers whom we rotated such that we always picked the higher scoring keeper for that gameweek, then we could have upped our goalkeeping returns significantly as the Total Points column in the below table indicates.
| Rank | Name 1 | Team 1 | Start Price 1 | Name 2 | Team 2 | Start Price 2 | Total Start Price | Total Points | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  |  | Tim Howard | EVE | 5.50 | | | Vito Mannone | SUN | 4.50 | 10.00 | 226 |
| 2 | | | Asmir Begovic | STK | 5.50 | | | Vito Mannone | SUN | 4.50 | 10.00 | 223 |
| 3 | | | Vito Mannone | SUN | 4.50 |  |  | Hugo Lloris | TOT | 6.00 | 10.50 | 221 |
| 4 | | | Wojciech Szczesny | ARS | 5.50 | | | Tim Howard | EVE | 5.50 | 11.00 | 217 |
| 5 |  |  | Petr Cech | CHE | 6.50 | | | Tim Howard | EVE | 5.50 | 12.00 | 217 |
| 6 | | | Wojciech Szczesny | ARS | 5.50 | | | Vito Mannone | SUN | 4.50 | 10.00 | 215 |
| 7 | | | Wojciech Szczesny | ARS | 5.50 | | | Petr Cech | CHE | 6.50 | 12.00 | 214 |
| 8 | | | Wojciech Szczesny | ARS | 5.50 | | | Julian Speroni | CRY | 4.50 | 10.00 | 213 |
| 9 | | | Julian Speroni | CRY | 4.50 | | | Artur Boruc | SOU | 4.50 | 9.00 | 212 |
| 10 | | | Petr Cech | CHE | 6.50 | | | Vito Mannone | SUN | 4.50 | 11.00 | 212 |
| 11 | | | Julian Speroni | CRY | 4.50 | | | Hugo Lloris | TOT | 6.00 | 10.50 | 211 |
| 12 | | | Artur Boruc | SOU | 4.50 | | | Vito Mannone | SUN | 4.50 | 9.00 | 208 |
| 13 | | | Wojciech Szczesny | ARS | 5.50 |  |  | David De Gea | MUN | 6.00 | 11.50 | 206 |
| 14 | | | Tim Howard | EVE | 5.50 | | | Artur Boruc | SOU | 4.50 | 10.00 | 206 |
| 15 | | | Wojciech Szczesny | ARS | 5.50 | | | Asmir Begovic | STK | 5.50 | 11.00 | 206 |
| 16 | | | Julian Speroni | CRY | 4.50 | | | Tim Howard | EVE | 5.50 | 10.00 | 205 |
| 17 | | | Tim Howard | EVE | 5.50 |  |  | Simon Mignolet | LIV | 5.50 | 11.00 | 205 |
| 18 | | | Tim Howard | EVE | 5.50 |  |  | John Ruddy | NOR | 5.00 | 10.50 | 205 |
| 19 |  |  | David Marshall | CAR | 4.50 | | | Vito Mannone | SUN | 4.50 | 9.00 | 205 |
| 20 | | | Tim Howard | EVE | 5.50 | | | Hugo Lloris | TOT | 6.00 | 11.50 | 204 |
If you look at last year's fixture list for Boruc and Speroni, in 31 of the 37 games at least one of them had a home fixture. If you were to just pick the home game keeper, the average of the two if both had home games, pick Speroni for the game Boruc was injured or didn't play, and use your intuition to pick the keeper for the three games left after this filtering, you could still manage 156 which is just 1 point lesser than Szczesny by himself. During the actual game itself, you might not blindly choose home game over away game when say City during their score-8-in-each-match phase were playing the keeper at home while West Ham during their Carlton-Cole-upfront phase were playing the keeper away but the point is that a very simple rule based selection could keep the points tally up but also save money.
I wanted to see if there is a correlation between this complementing fixture set and the pairs that figure above but because of mismatching double gameweeks and absence in other gameweeks, it is hard to get a correct number. I manually checked it for Howard and Mannone and their fixture list complement each others too. A similar rule as the one above, gets you 180 points from this pair, 23 points more than Szczesny. There's probably something in it.
This investment of 1m in the outfield could increase the Team of the Year tally by 9 points from 2110 to 2119 by replacing Mertesacker and Lambert with Fonte and Sturridge. The net gain would be of ((156 - 157) + 9 =) 8 points. That doesn't seem much but remember that we are taking the simplified scenario without bench rotations and transfers. An extra 1m would be quite handy in those matters.
However, keeping that extra 1m in the goalkeeping budget and investing it in Howard + Mannone instead of Boruc + Speroni would increase the tally by 23 points and maybe even more if Mannone had been playing from the start. Think Mignolet, or Begovic during the season before that. Foster, or Krul in 2011-12. There will always be someone.
Conclusion
Unless you are as risk averse as someone who keeps all their savings in FDs, avoid the Cechs, and the Courtouiss and the Harts. Stick to a good mid + low-budget keeper combination and rotate them wisely. A keeper with idiot defenders gets to make a lot of saves and gets you extra points for the saves, if not for clean sheets.
When picking out keepers, track the manager's strategies (Allardyce, Pulis, Poyet, etc.) and see when they switch to survival mode and enforce a defensive clampdown. Also check out the fixture list to see possible complementary home/away fixtures. On second thoughts, let me do it myself - here, you're welcome.
My prediction for the top 20 rewarding combinations are the ones below. No City or Chelsea. Plenty of bottom-of-the-table teams. No LIV in case Reina and Mignolet get rotated, if they add to their defense and decide on one keeper then maybe rethink.
| Team 1 | Team 2 | Complementary Home Games |
|---|---|---|
| EVE | HUL | 31 |
| HUL | LEI | 31 |
| MUN | QPR | 31 |
| SUN | WHU | 31 |
| WBA | WHU | 31 |
| EVE | QPR | 32 |
| HUL | MUN | 32 |
| HUL | QPR | 32 |
| LEI | QPR | 32 |
| LEI | TOT | 32 |
| QPR | SUN | 33 |
| TOT | WBA | 33 |
| ARS | QPR | 34 |
| EVE | WHU | 34 |
| HUL | WBA | 34 |
| ARS | WHU | 36 |
| CRY | QPR | 36 |
| CRY | TOT | 36 |
| BRN | HUL | 38 |
| CRY | WHU | 38 |
Other Posts in the Series
Part 1: General Team Composition
> Part 2: Picking the Goalkeeper
Post 3: Picking the Defensive Line
Part 4: The Value of Money
Part 5: The Value of Wildcards
Part 6: Getting Ready for 2014-15
Part 7: How Much Does the Opposition Matter?
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