England's goalkeeper Jordan Pickford saves a penalty during the UEFA EURO 2020 final football match between Italy and England at the Wembley Stadium in London on July 11, 2021. (Photo by JOHN SIBLEY / POOL / AFP) (Photo by JOHN SIBLEY/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)England's goalkeeper Jordan Pickford saves a penalty during the UEFA EURO 2020 final football match between Italy and England at the Wembley Stadium in London on July 11, 2021. (Photo by JOHN SIBLEY / POOL / AFP) (Photo by JOHN SIBLEY/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
England's goalkeeper Jordan Pickford saves a penalty during the UEFA EURO 2020 final football match between Italy and England at the Wembley Stadium in London on July 11, 2021. (Photo by JOHN SIBLEY / POOL / AFP) (Photo by JOHN SIBLEY/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

The hardest to beat goalkeepers in the Championship with Burnley's Arijanet Muric, Blackpool's Chris Maxwell, Preston North End's Freddie Woodman and Wigan Athletic's Ben Amos all rated

There have been 602 goals scored in the Championship this season — but that number could have been far greater if it wasn’t for the cat-like reflexes of the division’s goalkeepers.

Some of the second tier’s shot-stoppers have had more to do than others, there are those who boast high save percentages, keepers with an impressive ratio of clean sheets, guardians who have exceeded expectations, and those who might not have lived up to them.

So which goalkeepers have been the hardest to beat in the Championship so far? Using player data scouting, BetVictor has scored each team’s most played goalkeeper out of 10 based on their performances this campaign.

The ranking algorithm considers post-shot expected goals (PSxG) minus goals against (GA), or more simply put, how many goals more or goals less a goalkeeper has conceded than expected. In addition to other key shot-stopping statistics such as save percentage to find out how difficult a goalkeeper has been to beat.

Statisticians and performance analysts reviewed the data to help determine each player’s overall score. Post-shot expected goals examined the likelihood of a goalkeeper saving a shot once it is known that shot is on target, to estimate how many goals a keeper is expected to concede.

Post-shot expected goals minus goals against (PSxG-GA) therefore shows how much a player is overperforming or underperforming this season relative to their expected stats.

This data was standardised and combined with the save percentage to assign an average Z-score to each player. The Z-scores were then converted into a score out of 10 to form the ‘shot-stopper rating’ with players then ranked from best to worst.

And, without further ado, here are the results, in reverse order.

Statistics from this study reflective of games up to, but not including, November 11.