The reserve goalkeeper usually has a claim to be the most irrelevant player in football.
Barring injury, suspension or squad rotation, they can spend the entire season as highly paid spectators.
Not at Chelsea, though, where for the second successive weekend, the pivotal figure in the Premier League could be one of the London club's second-choice shot-stoppers.
Petr Cech tired of playing behind Thibaut Courtois, decamped to Arsenal and erred twice as West Ham United won at the Emirates Stadium last Sunday.
Asmir Begovic signed up for the lucrative duties as the Belgian’s deputy and immediately found himself propelled into action.
His first meaningful task as a Chelsea player was to retrieve Bafetimbi Gomis's penalty from the back of the net.
His first competitive start comes in what is already a potentially season-defining game: away at Manchester City on Sunday, standing in for the suspended Courtois, who was sent off against Swansea City.
This is why Chelsea spent £8 million (Dh45.9m) on a back-up who last season was regarded by many as one of the best half-dozen keepers in the division.
“Thibaut and Asmir are two fantastic keepers,” said Jose Mourinho in one of his more reasoned comments this week.
Only Manchester United possess such goalkeeping luxuries and then in the strange situation where Louis van Gaal is opting not to pick David de Gea, freezing out Victor Valdes and still able to call upon Argentina’s top keeper, Sergio Romero.
Chelsea were able to win the League Cup final last season with their second choice, Cech, in goal, as Mourinho showed his sentimental side by selecting the veteran.
Yet it is pertinent that Courtois started every league game against last season’s top finishing clubs – until now.
If Chelsea are looking for a favourable omen, they may find it by casting their minds back a year to when Begovic kept a clean sheet at the Etihad Stadium in a tactically disciplined performance as the visitors won 1-0.
Stoke City manager Mark Hughes appeared to have borrowed from Mourinho’s compact, counter-attacking 4-2-3-1 tactics then, which meant the Bosnian did not even need to excel.
That looks to be Chelsea’s aim.
They were similarly well organised when they won 1-0 at the Etihad in February 2014 that Cech did not need to excel.
That win remains arguably the definitive performance of Mourinho’s second spell in charge.
He represents both Manuel Pellegrini’s nemesis and his antithesis: the Portuguese is the charismatic but pragmatic nullifier, the Chilean the dour but purist attacker.
The football enemies have divided the past two league titles, but in contrasting fashions: City conquered England by scoring a century of league goals and Chelsea did it with 73.
Mourinho and Pellegrini were both appointed in the summer of 2013, their sides have played 77 league games apiece since and Chelsea have scored 146 goals, City 188.
It is a staggering difference between two of the division’s superpowers, yet only three of those 188 goals came against Chelsea.
Mourinho has a game plan that has tended to prove effective against City sides who often possess more attacking talent.
Pellegrini, though, said his team had the better of both 1-1 draws last season.
There have been an unusual number of gaps in the Chelsea defence in recent weeks. It is nevertheless easier to envisage Mourinho plastering them up to reform a solid wall of resistance.
His February 2014 triumph when, as now, City entered the game on the back of seven successive title wins and as free-scoring title favourites, owed more to men such as Nemanja Matic, Branislav Ivanovic, John Terry and Willian than to the last line of the defence.
His goalkeepers, whether Cech or Courtois, have tended to represent the insurance policy and their success has been based on the structure erected in front of them.
Yet the realities of goalkeeping’s unique duties are such that one misjudgement, however slight, can have colossal consequences, and one error, when the regular returns, can see a deputy consigned to the margins for months.
Begovic may be playing behind the best back four in England but he finds himself in an unenviable position, nonetheless.
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