---
title: "How Much Did Premier League Goalkeepers Earn For Every Goal They Conceded Last Season?"
description: "How much did Premier League goalkeepers earn for every goal they conceded last season? Salary divided by goals conceded — the cost-per-concession table."
canonical: "https://anyseats.net/blog/how-much-did-premier-league-goalkeepers-earn-for-every-goal-they-conceded-last-season"
type: "blog-post"
topic: "Premier League goalkeeper earnings per goal conceded"
---

# How Much Did Premier League Goalkeepers Earn For Every Goal They Conceded Last Season?

Goalkeeper salaries in the Premier League have followed the same broad inflation curve as outfield wages, with the top-tier first-choice goalkeepers at the established big-six clubs now sitting in the £6 million-£10 million annual basic-salary range according to public reporting from Capology, Spotrac, and the Daily Mail. The cost-per-goal-conceded calculation — published-salary divided by total Premier League goals conceded across a single season — is a useful illustrative measure but is not a performance metric: a goalkeeper at a strong defensive side will inevitably score better on the calculation than a goalkeeper at a leaky team, regardless of the underlying shot-stopping quality. The numbers below are presented as illustrative based on publicly reported salary data; all salary figures are approximate and should be treated as ranges rather than exact totals because Premier League contract details are not formally published. Goals-conceded totals are sourced from the Premier League's official statistics. The aim is to show how the cost-per-concession metric works across the upper tier of the league rather than to identify the best or worst keeper.

## 1. Top-tier first-choice goalkeepers — £140,000+ per goal conceded
_Examples: Alisson, Ederson, David Raya in low-conceded seasons_

The highest cost-per-goal-conceded figures in any given Premier League season tend to come from the top-tier first-choice goalkeepers at the strongest defensive sides — Alisson Becker at Liverpool (estimated annual basic salary in the £8 million-£10 million range based on reported 2023 contract extension), Ederson at Manchester City (estimated in the £6 million-£8 million range), and David Raya at Arsenal (estimated in the £4 million-£6 million range following his 2024 permanent transfer from Brentford). In a low-conceded season — Manchester City's 2024/25 campaign for example, with Ederson conceding around 35 goals across his appearances — the cost-per-concession figure for these keepers can rise into the £170,000-£250,000 range. The figure is not a direct performance reflection: a top-six defence will produce a high cost-per-concession even with mid-tier goalkeeping, simply because the underlying shot-faced volume is so much lower than at a relegation-threatened side.

## 2. Second-tier first-choice — £80,000-£140,000 per concession
_Established Premier League goalkeepers at mid-tier clubs_

Established first-choice goalkeepers at mid-tier Premier League clubs — names such as Jordan Pickford at Everton (estimated annual basic salary in the £4 million-£5 million range), Robert Sánchez at Chelsea, and Bernd Leno at Fulham (estimated in the £2 million-£3 million range) — typically face a higher shot-faced volume than the top-six keepers and therefore concede more goals across a season, producing cost-per-concession figures in the £80,000-£140,000 range. The mid-tier band is the most representative for a typical Premier League goalkeeper across a typical season — neither at the elite-defence end where low concessions push the per-goal figure high, nor at the relegation-threatened end where high concessions push the per-goal figure low.

## 3. Lower-tier first-choice — £40,000-£80,000 per concession
_Promoted-side and bottom-half goalkeepers facing high shot volume_

Goalkeepers at promoted and lower-half Premier League sides typically have lower published salaries (in the £1 million-£2.5 million range based on Capology/Spotrac data) and face the highest shot-faced volume in the division, which combines to produce the lowest cost-per-concession figures across the upper Premier League goalkeeping cohort. A goalkeeper conceding 60-70 goals across 38 fixtures on a £1.5 million annual basic salary would post a cost-per-concession figure in the £20,000-£25,000 range, an order of magnitude below the top-tier first-choice keepers. The metric here illustrates the inverse correlation between defensive quality (lower goals conceded) and squad-cost depth (higher salary): the keepers facing the most shots are also typically the lowest-paid.

## 4. Backup goalkeepers — limited appearance figures distort the metric
_Substitute and cup-only goalkeepers typically excluded from the calculation_

Backup goalkeepers who make only a handful of Premier League appearances per season — typically the second and third-choice keepers behind the established first-choice — are mathematically distorting cases for the cost-per-concession metric. A backup keeper on an estimated £600,000-£1.5 million annual basic salary who concedes only one or two goals in two-or-three Premier League appearances over a season would post a cost-per-concession figure that is misleadingly high (potentially in the £300,000-£700,000 range), driven by the small denominator rather than any underlying performance. Most published cost-per-concession analyses set a minimum-appearance threshold (commonly 20+ Premier League appearances or more than 2,000 minutes) to filter out the small-sample-size distortions.

## 5. Methodology — how published data is built
_Capology, Spotrac, Premier League official statistics_

The published cost-per-concession analyses available from football statistics outlets are typically built from three data sources: estimated annual basic salary (from Capology, Spotrac, or the Daily Mail's annual published-wage compilation), goals conceded across the season (from the Premier League's official statistics, which publish goals-conceded-while-on-pitch figures by goalkeeper), and Premier League appearance totals (also from the official statistics). The salary figures are estimates rather than verified totals — Premier League contract details are not formally published, and the various published figures tend to settle within a 10%-20% range of each other for the major first-choice keepers. Image rights, signing-on fees, performance bonuses, and Champions League appearance bonuses are typically excluded from the basic-salary figure used in the calculation.

## 6. Why the metric is illustrative rather than performance-graded
_Defensive quality, shot-faced volume, and squad-cost interactions_

The cost-per-goal-conceded metric is widely shared in football media as a fan-engagement statistic, but it is not a performance grade for the goalkeeper concerned. A goalkeeper at a top-six side faces fewer high-quality chances than a goalkeeper at a relegation-threatened side, and the volume effect alone explains most of the variance in cost-per-concession across the league. More rigorous goalkeeper-performance metrics — post-shot expected goals against, goals prevented above expectation, claim-rate on crosses, and pass-completion percentage in build-up — provide a much better sense of underlying goalkeeping quality than the cost-per-concession calculation. The metric remains popular because it is intuitive and easily calculated rather than because it captures any underlying quality difference between the keepers concerned.

## 7. Historical context — De Gea and the 2018/19 reference case
_Manchester United · the original ticket-website published analysis_

The original cost-per-goal-conceded analysis that popularised the metric in UK football media was a 2018/19-season piece focusing on David de Gea, then Manchester United's first-choice goalkeeper on a published annual basic salary in the £10 million range. De Gea conceded 54 goals across 38 Premier League appearances that season — the highest concession total of his Manchester United career — producing a published cost-per-concession figure of around £200,000. The piece was widely shared and established the format that subsequent annual analyses have followed. De Gea left Manchester United at the end of the 2022/23 season and joined Fiorentina in 2024 after a year out of football. Manchester United's first-choice goalkeeper position has subsequently rotated through André Onana (signed 2023 from Inter Milan) and others.

## 8. How the most-recent verifiable seasons compare
_2023/24 and 2024/25 published-salary cohorts_

Across the most-recent verifiable Premier League seasons (2023/24 and 2024/25), published Capology and Spotrac salary data places the top-tier first-choice keeper cohort in a basic-salary range of approximately £4 million-£10 million, with cost-per-concession figures ranging from approximately £80,000 to approximately £250,000 depending on the goalkeeper's club, defensive performance, and appearance count. The figures should be read as ranges rather than precise totals, and as illustrative comparison rather than performance assessment. The pattern is broadly stable across the post-2018 era — top-six keepers post the highest cost-per-concession because of low conceded totals, mid-tier keepers post the most-representative figures, and bottom-tier keepers post the lowest cost-per-concession because of the salary-and-volume combination at the lower end of the squad-cost distribution.

The cost-per-goal-conceded metric is a useful fan-engagement statistic but should not be treated as a goalkeeper-performance grade. The variance across the Premier League goalkeeper cohort is overwhelmingly driven by defensive quality (which determines goals conceded) and squad-cost distribution (which determines salary) rather than by any underlying goalkeeper-quality difference. Published salary figures are estimates rather than verified totals — Premier League contract details are not formally published — and the various sources tend to settle within a 10%-20% range of each other for the major first-choice keepers. For a more rigorous read on goalkeeping quality, the goals-prevented-above-expectation metric and the broader xG-against framework provide considerably more analytical depth than the cost-per-concession calculation can offer.

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