As the start of 2024/25 gets closer, there still doesn’t seem to be a consensus amongst the Fantasy Premier League (FPL) community on who the best £4.5m goalkeeper is.

For those managers who like to start the season by spending as little as possible between the sticks, can stats from last season reveal who the best budget stopper is?

SECURITY OF STARTS

Let’s start with which one is the most ‘nailed’. Brentford’s Mark Flekken began 37 of the 38 and leads the way, followed by Jose Sa (35) of Wolverhampton Wanderers, Bournemouth’s Neto (32) and then West Ham United’s Alphonse Areola (31).

MINUTES PER SAVE

Here, we want the number to be as low as possible. Anything under 30.0 indicates they average at least three saves per 90-minute match and, therefore, one save point each time.

New Ipswich Town keeper Arijanet Muric excelled here, with a save every 14.1 minutes during 10 Burnley starts. In second place was Areola‘s 19.3 rate, then notable contenders like Sa (22.6), Neto (24.8) and Flekken (28.3) who all crept under the 30.0 threshold.

Shots from outside the penalty area make the minutes per save figures even better, as they tend to be easier to stop, which ensures a quicker route to racking up save points. Areola is top with 55 saves from long-range, while Flekken is second with 53. Interestingly, almost half (46%) of Flekken’s total saves came from distance compared to Areola’s 39%.

In tandem with this, you also want someone who doesn’t often face big chances. As these are harder to save, by definition, the fewer a goalkeeper faces per game, the more likely they are to save the shot and secure a clean sheet.

Some notable mentions for this metric were Sa facing 95 big chances in 35 starts (2.7 per game), Flekken coming up against 88 in 37 (2.4 per game), the 82 in 31 for Areola (2.6 per game) and Muric‘s 35 in 10 (3.5 per game).

The data for Nottingham Forest’s Matz Sels looks very good here, facing 16 of them in 25 games. This averages just 1.6 per game. We just need to know how nailed-on he is.

EXPECTED GOALS PREVENTED (XGP)

This is often a crucial goalkeeping stat, correlating how many goals an individual was expected to concede minus how many goals they actually let in.

Sa and Muric were the best throughout all price points with very impressive xGPs of +8.50 and +6.10 respectively. Worryingly, Flekken posted -6.70, the worst for all who started more than 30 games.

CLEAN SHEETS + POINTS

And now the bread and butter stats for all stoppers – clean sheets and FPL points.

Seven shut-outs came for Flekken and Neto, with Crystal Palace’s Sam Johnstone grabbing six in 20. He’s another whose number-one status needs clarifying.

Meanwhile, Sa and Areola have just four of them from 35 and 31 starts. Despite not conceding many big chances, Forest’s Sels picked up only one clean sheet and a terrible -9.50 xGP in 16 starts.

For points, Flekken (119), Areola (116), Neto (110) and Sa (107) were the best four of this season’s £4.5m goalkeepers. Nobody else hit triple figures.

It’s often said that stats become more reliable for a player when his name keeps appearing across the board for a wide range of important ones. That has certainly been the case with these four, showing up time and time again.

CONCLUSION

So, without sitting on the fence: who is the best £4.5m goalkeeper to begin 2024/25? There isn’t a big, flashing hidden gem buried beneath the numbers.

Furthermore, when teams like Bournemouth and Nottingham Forest unceremoniously rotate their goalkeepers mid-season and others like Chelsea, West Ham, Crystal Palace and Brighton and Hove Albion each have two to three viable options for their new or relatively new managers to choose from, their security of starts is an issue.

With all that in mind, the better pick is probably Brentford’s Mark Flekken. His shots faced and saves made are what you want for an FPL goalkeeper and, with the stability of head coach Thomas Frank, there could be improvement in his second season. Enough to raise his clean sheet count and get the xGP data closer to par.

Indeed, Frank touched upon this back in April:

“It’s not the first time a player moved to another league and took a little bit of time to adapt. He moved to the best and the quickest league in the world. On top of that, we have had injury after injury after injury to the back four – at this moment in time our entire maybe preferred back four are out.

“So he hasn’t had that stability to help him settle in quicker. I think in the last 10-ish games, he has performed at a very high level. I think it’s fair to say the start of the season he was not as good as now. That’s natural, and now it’s a good level and the level we hoped to see from him.”

Data backs that up. Flekken secured three of his seven clean sheets during the final eight games, where his xGP was a much improved -1.10. Earlier on, he memorably made 12 saves in one match against Manchester City.

So, there was significant progress throughout the season and it wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect this to continue in his second full Premier League campaign.

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