The phrase that titles this post is very often said as damning or faint praise. It is not often accompanied by anything else about the goalkeeper but the omission of anything else to say implies that this is the extent of the said goalkeepers abilities. It is not often said of Petr Cech that he is "a good shot stopper"; but of course he is. On the other hand I once heard an Everton fan describe Thomas Myhre as a" good shot stopper". I certainly didn't think that this meant Myhre was part of an elite upper echelon class of goalkeepers only very few of which existed.
All of the above is probably because being a good shot stopper is the first, primary job of the goalkeeper. If you are not good at stopping people from scoring then what are you doing playing in goal (unless everyone else has conceded two goals for your team)? That said, some goalkeepers are better at it than others, and it makes me wonder how important it is in Fantasy football.
With that in mind I created the above table:
Figures in bold are the statistics I calculated from the information lifted from the fantasy database. One premise I worked from was the idea that in order to make a save your defense has to allow the opposition the chance to shoot. Clean sheets and winning matches are the biggest points winners so this means a goalkeepers saves are a double edged sword. It is not a surprise that the goalkeeper with the most saves is also the one with the most goals allowed. He being Scott Carson. So I looked at how the number of saves a goalkeeper made interacted with how many he let in.
From the table you can see that Mark Schwarzer has the best % of shots saved. It is his shot stopping ability, as much as anything else, that has helped Fulham keep their clean sheets. He has been made to work as many times as Thomas Sorensen (of Stoke) but conceded roughly half as many. You can also see that Petr Cech is indeed a good shot stopper - as is Edwin Van De Saar. Both save just under 80% of the shots fired at them.
Myhill and Paul Robinson are horrible. They have negative points when it comes to saving shots and it looks as though their respective teams would benefit if they were better shot stoppers. That Paul Robinson was, for a time, first choice England goalkeeper is astounding looking at these stats. David James is very low on the list himself and the best English goalkeeper is Robert Green.
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