Cast your mind back a few years, and the goalkeeper position was the first place we looked to save money in our FPL teams, readily dropping down to a budget option to free up funds for the more glamorous positions in our teams. Sure, the expensive GKs usually ended up with the highest total score, but the gap between them and the ‘pack’ was small enough that your discretionary budget was better spent elsewhere.
Over the last two seasons, though, it all changed. Thanks to the likes of de Gea and Alisson, the general thinking became almost the reverse.

But is the season where we return to the bargain basement?

There’s no escaping that budgets are squeezed in 2019/20, with many of last season’s top performers receiving steep price rises. A premium keeper might not even be affordable at all. Along with the budget bench keeper, that’s 10 of your initial 100 tied up in your stopper, and that’s a lot once you factor in what you spend on the likes of Salah and Sterling.

If you do find yourself with a bit of spare cash, there’s only one top-six keeper we can recommend, and that’s Ederson. True, he won’t get a lot of save or bonus points, but Man City are head and shoulders above most teams, could easily get another 20 clean sheets this season, and you’ll never have to think about spending a transfer or picking someone else.

Alisson could score similarly high, but we can’t recommend him in the same way. You can only pick 3 Liverpool players and there are easily three others offering better value. Salah is a ubiquitous pick, and the likes of van Dijk and Robertson are easily worth the extra 0.5 or 1 for the attacking returns. As for the other top-6 keepers, Lloris is perhaps worth a think, but de Gea and Kepa are strictly wait-and-sees as their teams restructure, and even for 5.0 we can’t bring ourselves to go near Leno at the heart of the porous Arsenal defence.

So, we look to the 4.5s, attempting to find this season’s Pope – the one budget keeper who outperforms all the rest. Problem is there aren’t that many budget keepers to begin with, with the starting keepers for Leicester, West Ham, Watford, Wolves, Crystal Palace and even Newcastle priced at 5.0. In fact, by our estimate there will only be seven starting keepers at 4.5, and some of them are starting risks too.

From that unusually narrow pool, we can reveal our best bet to be this season’s Pope… it’s Pope! His absence from the 2018-19 season has presumably led to his low price, but with Hart proving rather disastrous as a replacement and Heaton moving elsewhere, Pope is odds-on to get the starting berth. Plus, Burnley have no European competition any more, so they stand a chance of rallying in the league. If Pope can get anywhere near his 11 clean sheets and 113 saves from 2017-18, he’ll be incredible value.

The only reason you might go for a different 4.5 is if you intend to wildcard early – in which case you can take advantage of a keeper with better fixtures for a few weeks. Heaton and Henderson are the best alternatives, with Villa having built a whole new team in the off-season and Sheffield United’s defence being exceptionally mean in their promotion campaign. But with promoted teams, you can’t be sure of much, so these two go down as definite gambles.

Hedge your bets by picking two and rotating? Not recommended. There are numerous occasions when a keeper with a ‘bad’ fixture beats one with a ‘good’ fixture (e.g. they get 6 saves in a 3-0 loss versus 1 save in a 2-1 win). So for an extra 0.5 spend, you’re not guaranteed any extra points. Pick your number one, stick a 4.0 benchwarmer in there, and good luck.

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