The Official Sport Is A TV Show Premier League Goalkeeper Power Rankings -- January 2009

Welcome to a new feature here on Sport Is A TV Show, our Official Premier League Goalkeeper Power Rankings. We feel that the creators and the goal-scorers, the flamboyant and flairy of the game, get too much of the kudos, endorsement deals and unfeasibly-plasticised lady-friends. Through these rankings, we hope to bring some attention to those who, through no fault of their own, were born without the capacity to be any good at proper football but who love to scream "Keeper's!" and glare threateningly at their own teammates.

And what an perfect time to begin. On Tuesday, Edwin van der Sar extended his run without conceding a Premier League goal to 17 hours and 12 minutes, eclipsing the previous record set by Petr Cech in 2004/5. (We tried to find out whether any goalkeeper from the football's dim prehistory had a run better than this but, as we know, much of the game's history was lost in the Great Record Purge of 1992.) This spectacular achievement has had quite an impact on our inaugural table.


On which. We polled a panel comprising some of the planet's most omniscient deities and superheroes and fed the results into our hypercomputer, Maisie. (If you're unfamiliar with Maisie's previous work, have a look at this.) Using a set of formulae devised by Maisie herself, which are so complicated that even I don't understand them, this information was processed for a full twenty-four hours (with a ten-minute paper-jam-related interruption) until our rankings were produced. So, how exactly does van der Sar fare?


1. Shay Given
2. Shay Given
3. Shay Given
4. Shay Given
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6. Shay Given
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8. Shay Given
9. Shay Given
10. Edwin van der Sar

Well done, Edwin!