The Premier League plays host to many of the world's best goalkeepers.
Chelsea's Edouard Mendy was scandalously excluded from the Ballon d'Or nominees despite winning the Champions League and hoovering up clean sheets like they were going out of fashion.
Manchester United's David de Gea is enjoying his best form since the World Cup with superb saves at Wolverhampton Wanderers and Villarreal as well as a masterclass in the Manchester derby.
Premier League's best goalkeepers
Arsenal's Aaron Ramsdale also happens to be in the form of his life with a streak of outrageous stops and shutouts laying down a challenge to Jordan Pickford as England's number one.
Meanwhile, Ederson and Alisson are regularly named amongst the world's finest shot-stoppers with the Brazilian pair's brilliant footwork and distribution making them truly valuable assets.
And that's all without mentioning the likes of Copa America champion Emiliano Martinez and World Cup winner Hugo Lloris to really ram home the quality of the Premier League's goalkeeping cohort.
'Goals prevented' statistic
However, who has been the shot-stopping king to top them all this season? Well, naturally, that's a complicated question, but one that we can come a lot closer to answering through statistics.
And while it might make you skeptical at first, seeing how goalkeepers have performed against the expected goals they were meant to concede is one of the best ways to judge number ones.
Officially phrased as xGOT (expected goals on target), the metric shows the total of goals that a shot-stopper is expected to have conceded based on the quality of the shots that they've faced.
So, when you compare that number to how many goals that they actually conceded, you can find out the total of goals they prevented or on the flip side, the tally of goals they let in that they should have stopped.
Premier League goalkeepers ranked
Got it? Well, either way, the moral of the story is that it's a great metric to deploy and The Athletic ordered every shot-stopper with more than 500 minutes in the Premier League this season using it.
As such, be sure to check out the goalkeepers who have prevented the most goals this season down below with the number ones with negative figures performing poorly against what's expected.
22. Kasper Schmeichel (Leicester City): -6.7
21. Nick Pope (Burnley): -6.6
20. Karl Darlow (Newcastle United): -5.5
19. Tim Krul (Norwich City): -5
18. Daniel Bachmann (Watford): -4
17. Alex McCarthy (Southampton): -3.9
16. Vicente Guaita (Crystal Palace): -3.7
15. Jordan Pickford (Everton): -2.8
14. Ben Foster (Watford): -2
13. David Raya (Brentford): -1.9
=11. Alvaro Fernández (Brentford): -1.7
=11. Illan Meslier (Leeds United): -1.7
10. Emiliano Martinez (Aston Villa): -1.3
9. Lukasz Fabianski (West Ham United): -0.4
8. David de Gea (Manchester United): -0.2
7. Hugo Lloris (Tottenham Hotspur): -0.1
=5. Ederson (Manchester City): 0.4
=5. Alisson Becker (Liverpool): 0.4
4. Robert Sánchez (Brighton & Hove Albion): 0.6
3. Aaron Ramsdale (Arsenal): 2
2. Edouard Mendy (Chelsea): 2.5
1. Jose Sa (Wolverhampton Wanderers): 3.7
Sa takes the number one spot
It's fair to say that swapping Rui Patricio for Sa didn't work out too badly for Wolves, right?
Besides, the statistics largely conform with the eye test as fans have been very complimentary of Mendy and Ramsdale all season long, so it's a credit to Sa that he outperforms both of them.
Preventing more than three shots on target that the data suggests would ordinarily have been scored is a massive compliment to a goalkeeper's ability to produce heroic dives and denials.
And it certainly goes to show just how fantastic Mendy has been between the sticks for Chelsea as he bosses De Gea, who has also been brilliant this season, when it comes to the numbers.
But at the other end of the spectrum, Brendan Rodgers will certainly have some food for thought with the point of The Athletic's article concerning whether or not Schmeichel should be dropped.
Looking at the data, you'd certainly forgive Rodgers for taking that exact course of action...
