UCL Fantasy Football: What we know so far – Goalkeepers

UEFA.com casts its eye back on the first three matchdays to assess the key performers in each position, and what that means for #UCLfantasy managers going forward. Here we look at goalkeepers.

Premier League sides Chelsea and Liverpool are the only teams remaining who have yet to concede a goal in this season’s UEFA Champions League campaign, and another clean sheet on Matchday 4 for either team would match Paris Saint-Germain's run in 2019/20, the eventual finalists having kicked off last season's competition with four successive shut-outs. Both Adrián (€4.5m) and Alisson Becker (€6.0m) have donned the gloves for Liverpool over the first three matchdays, so that leaves Chelsea’s Edouard Mendy (€5.1m) as the highest-scoring #UCLfantasy goalkeeper. The summer signing has accrued 19 #UCLfantasy points so far – four more than any other goalkeeper.

Ordinarily at this stage of the competition, #UCLfantasy managers may be looking to target those teams who play twice at home in the next three fixtures, but a glance at the stats show that there has been an even distribution of home and away shut-outs; out of the 25 clean sheets so far, 13 were for the home team and 12 for the away side. Be that as it may, reigning European champions Bayern are in Munich twice over the next three matchdays so the most highly-selected goalkeeper in #UCLfantasy – Manuel Neuer (€6.0m) – seems bound to retain his high ownership, while Juventus’ Wojciech Szczęsny (€5.5m) comes into the reckoning with successive home games on Matchdays 4 and 5.

Of course, clean sheets aren’t the only route to points for goalkeepers in #UCLfantasy. If it’s saves you’re after, look no further than Krasnodar’s Matvei Safonov (€4.5m), who comfortably leads the way in that department with 19 saves so far. That has been good enough for an extra six #UCLfantasy points, and with a low price tag, Safonov could be a canny investment as one of your two rotating goalkeepers.

In terms of ownership, we may start to see a shift as we head towards the business end of the group stage. Paris’ Keylor Navas (€5.5m) and Atlético’s Jan Oblak (€6.0m) remain two of the most popular choices in #UCLfantasy circles, but rather underwhelming totals of 11 and three points respectively might prompt a raft of sales. The joint-second highest scoring goalkeepers – Leipzig’s Péter Gulácsi (€5.5m) and Porto’s Agustín Marchesín (€5.0m) – could well trend in the opposite direction given their returns so far of 15 points apiece.