Matt Turner has had an underwhelming debut season at Nottingham Forest. After joining the Premier League minnows from Arsenal in the hunt for regular game-time, things have spectacularly tumbled down in recent months. Turner, a USMNT regular, has not yet been able to properly adapt to the intensity and demands of the English top flight.
In fact, he has now lost his starting role for Nottingham Forest. Nuno Espirito Santo was clearly underwhelmed by his performances before dropping him. Ultimately, Turner’s poor performances in the losses to Brentford and Arsenal in January – which included poor errors that gifted his ex-side goals – cost him.
Now, this was utterly gutting for not just the goalkeeper, but also a lot of Fantasy Premier League managers. That is because Turner had grown to become an FPL favourite in the first half of the 2023/24 season. Priced under 4.0 (currently down to 3.8), he was the cheap secondary goalkeeper option that millions of FPL managers opted for. There was good reason behind many fans liking him.
Before February, he regularly played all games for Nottingham Forest and collected decent points for making many saves in matches. But since the end of January, Turner has become a mainstay on the bench for Nuno Espirito Santo’s side. The Portuguese manager has had enough of the USMNT star and is now regularly playing goalkeeper Matz Sels instead.
Despite that, Turner still remains in the teams of 9.7% of FPL teams – mostly as a secondary option. It’s also because it’s hard to replace a 3.8-goalkeeper without seriously affecting one’s budget. But those who kept the USMNT star as a bench option were played a cruel joke in the game week 31.
The 29-year-old didn’t even feature in Forest’s 3-1 win over Fulham on Tuesday (April 2). Nuno Espirito Santo’s side decimated a very error-prone Fulham side to get three huge points and move three points clear of the relegation zone. But something rather peculiar happened involving Turner.
In the second half, the goalkeeper ended up getting himself booked after his defenders made a heroic goal-saving block to deny the Cottagers. Turner decided to complain about something he didn’t like, which caught the referee’s attention and got himself booked. As a result, he ended up suffering in FPL too.
As because he didn’t play a single minute, Turner couldn’t receive any points. But FPL’s system means that yellow cards automatically grant any player a -1. As a result, the goalkeeper ended up picking up a -1 tally just based on the booking which he received as a substitute.
Not everyone found this to be funny either. That is because with Turner being the second goalkeeper for a huge number of FPL teams, he’ll automatically be substituted into one’s team if their starting goalkeeper doesn’t play. That is exactly what has come back to haunt a number of FPL managers who persisted with keeping the Forest man in their team.
A major reason behind that is because a few popular ‘regular goalkeepers’ didn’t feature in GW 31. Indeed, West Ham United man Alphonso Areola – picked by 32% of the FPL managers – didn’t play because of injury. Neither did Aston Villa man Emiliano Martinez, selected by 13% of the managers.
Me laughing at everyone who had Matt Turner as their #FPL GK to see that Emi Martinez is now ill & he’s about to be subbed in! #MCIAVLpic.twitter.com/mUQ8GIdavB
As a result, Turner will automatically be drafted into many FPL managers’ teams at the end of the game week. This will result in a cruel one-point deduction to their totals in what is already proving to be a low-scoring week (25 average points before Liverpool and Chelsea-Manchester United matches).
This Matt Turner situation can perhaps be termed as cruel fate or fitting karma for these FPL users. That is because it’s illogical to keep a goalkeeper who doesn’t play in their team and refusing to remove him has come back to bite those who persisted with him. Perhaps this points deduction can be the wake-up call for these managers to finally replace Turner with someone who is actually playing matches and with the possibility of providing positive points.
