Here’s our FPL defensive rotation article where we have a look back at a few combinations of goalkeepers and see if it was better in those instances to rotate of have a single GK.
FPL defensive rotation – Cheap or rotating Goalkeepers or premiums
Methodology
I’ve compared 3 rotations from my pre-season rotation article to see whether it would have been better to have 2 cheap rotating GKs or just have a single cheap GK.
The rotation options I’ve picked were
Villa and Watford – £4.5m Heaton/Reina and £5.0m Foster
Brighton and Burnley – £4.5m Ryan and £4.5m Pope
Brighton and Bournemouth – £4.5m Ryan and £4.5m Ramsdale
I basically did a home and away rotation and where there was conflict or no home and away rotation picked what I thought would have been the best fixture at the time.
I then added up their total points and compared it to just having the 1 GK. Either a cheap 1 or a premium GK.
The rotating pairs
Villa and Watford – 122 points
Under my rotation this was pretty successful with their being 4 double figure hauls along the way and no benching disasters. Foster contributed a mammoth 77 points the Villa GKs 45. Only Pope as a single GK would have more points
Brighton and Burnley – 104 points
A surprisingly poor rotation considering. There was 1 benching disaster with a 12 pointer of Pope’s on the bench for a 2 pointer of Ryans. Ryan contributed a paltry 41 points and Pope 63. 8 individual GKs would have beaten their total
Brighton and Bournemouth – 95 points
Anything involving an Eddie Howe defence is going to be a disaster and this was no exception. Ramsdale only contributed 30 points with Ryan 65.
Single goalkeepers
The cheap GKs
The only £4.5m GKs really were
Pope 128 points
Ryan 102 points
Ramsdale 96 points
Krul 91 points
Mid range GKs
If you extend it to £5.0m then there are far better results
Henderson 122 points
Schmeichel 119 points
Dubravka 118 points
Guiata 116 points
Patricio 116 points
Foster 111 points
Premium GKs
This was a disaster with only the Liverpool pair getting anywhere near a decent score
Alisson and Adrian – 116 points
£5.5m De Gea 103 points
£6.0m Ederson and Bravo – 93 points
£5.5m Kepa and Caballero – 76 points
So what does this mean?
This season was blighted by the lack of £4.5m GKs which meant rotation was a more difficult option than previously with limited choices. Rotation £5.0m GKs and a £4.5m suddenly starts to look like a pretty big investment.
So comparing the 2 isn’t easy.
Of the 3 rotations the 2 £4.5m rotations weren’t successful but really only Pope of the £4.5m GKs were anyway.
The Villa/Watford rotation was successful but involved £5.0m Foster and their were a number of £5.0m single GKs with scores in that zone.
For me nothing in this brief example would make me switch to rotating GKs. Apart from anything the inevitable benching of a double figure points haul is just toomuch to bear.
Premiums seem a complete waste of money. Even the Liverpool one when you compare it to Alexander Arnolds 166 points and Robertson’s 137. Even Van Dijk has got to 141. They may have been more expensive but the Liverpool GK option still seems a bad choice
Other posts
A fixture ease schedule for defenders
A fixture ease schedule for attacking players
FFGeek contributors during the PL suspension
Social Media
Follow FFGeek on twitter and facebook and instagram for article updates and news
