Fantasy Premier League managers beware – your FPL team needs a goalkeeper but Edouard Mendy might not be your wisest choice…
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Fantasy Premier League goalkeepers: who's the best? Edouard Mendy must be fairly popular.
He is, too. Over one in four FPL users have gone with the Chelsea custodian as their chosen man between the sticks for the 2022/23 season already – perhaps thanks to how good the Blues have been defensively under Thomas Tuchel, or perhaps thanks to Mendy's own supreme reputation.
Fantasy Premier League: Edouard Mendy is overrated in FPL
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Fantasy Premier League loves a clean sheet: that's the first metric you from your players – and not just those between the sticks. For defenders, too, there is no better sight than a perfect goose egg staring back after 90 minutes.
Clean sheets are hard to come by with only three clubs allowing fewer than one goal per 90 last term, and those clubs finished first, second and third in the table. Yes, that's Manchester City, Liverpool and Chelsea. While some assume, however, that Edouard Mendy is on par with his counterparts at the top two in FPL terms, they're actually… wrong.
It's no surprise that with 20 clean sheets a piece, Alisson and Ederson led the league, while Hugo Lloris (16) and Edouard Mendy (14) also posted respectable numbers. Those three keepers each command a minimum investment of £5.0m this season in Fantasy Premier League with Alisson, Ederson and Lloris in the posh £5.5m tier. Mendy is slightly cheaper at £5.0m.
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In the real world, he's not that much of a downgrade on Alisson and Ederson. For many, he's better than Lloris – and he's going to keep clean sheets, after all. But if you can’t keep goals out entirely, you’ll need to be better than average at limiting goals while also making a high number of saves.
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If you think saves only matter on bad teams, Mendy’s £5.0m starting price is lower because he gets fewer save opportunities, and thus scores fewer points.
Last season the Senegalese stopper made 73 saves from 95 shots on target. His saves total, the 15th highest, was only two fewer than Alisson (75 saves), but six additional clean sheets for Alisson (176 points) meant he neatly bested Mendy (130) in terms of total value.
John Wallin, aka @fantasygaffer, began writing about Fantasy Premier League in 2010 and now has appeared in print, podcasts and on television. John co-founded the cult favorite Fantasy Premier League draft platform Togga and has hosted the Bang Average Podcast with Ryan (@FantasyYIRMA) and Mike (@BangAverageMike) since the 2017/18 season.
