Clean sheets don't mean anything. Well they do, but certainly not for goalkeepers. Clean sheets are always associated with goalkeepers, and they are used to really judge how good a goalkeeper is. I don't understand this, however.
Clean sheets are a measure of how well a WHOLE DEFENCE has performed, and not the GOALKEEPER. Of course, a goalkeeper can obviously greatly contribute to the team keeping a clean sheet, but if you look at it, with a crap defence and a really good goalie, the team will always let in goals. So that's why it doesn't make sense. You can also view it the opposite way: the defence could have been absolutely brilliant, but the goalie could have been crap. So if the goalie ends up getting a clean sheet, it would be extremely unfair, as he should have really let in a lot of goals.
Is there a way to accurately judge the quality of goalkeeper and how well they're performing? Fear not, there is. I thought about this and realised that the accurate way to judge their performance was simply on the number of saves they have made during the match/season. You can get such a stat through fantasy football, and the results as to who the best keeper is so far this season save wise is quite surprising: it's Brad Friedel with Robert Green tied for second place. Cech is all the way down in 8th place and Van der Sar, yes Van der Sar, is all the way down in 15th place.
This really is, in my opinion, the correct way of assessing goalkeepers, not clean sheets, as they can be influenced by numerous factors. Here is the link to the saves rankings, it will also be put on the "Links" page.
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