Possible Picks - 2026 [Pt. 1]

I've always maintained on this blog that I will generally avoid giving direct recommendations for or against any specific player (and I certainly won't be sharing anything about my own squad; not in advance, anyway; maybe occasionally retrospectively, just to share a few 'war stories' for general enlightenment and mirth - and acknowledge my fallibility), but.... since The Big Kick-Off is finally drawing near again, everyone is becoming obsessed with polishing up their opening squads.... and casting around for additional sources of advice.

So, I'll attempt a brief-ish rundown of who I think are the players most worthy of consideration, for each position and price category.

Goalkeepers

David Raya is once again the runaway favourite in goal, with fully one-third of the 5.5 million managers who've signed up for the new season so far having picked him. I've said a number of times before that he - or indeed, any premium-priced keeper - is probably a bad pick. I've gone into particular detail with the Raya example - it having a lot to do with the pressure of club quota; that there are often other Arsenal players who'll probably give you more of a differential advantage than him; but at the start of the season, it applies to any keeper priced at 6.0 or higher; and arguably, this year, since so many of the keepers have been priced down, to the 5.5 options as well. (Raya might just about have been worth it last year, because his record-breaking number of clean sheets put him well ahead of the rest of the field by the end of the season. But that could not reasonably have been anticipated before the campaign started; and he only pulled out that gap with a remarkable run of 5 or 6 straight clean sheets near the end of the season; prior to that, he'd been mostly neck-and-neck with the other leading keepers, as I'd anticipated. Moreover, you'd usually expect that other players from a title-challenging team would give you a bigger advantage than the keeper; but none of Arsenal's attacking players were consistently productive for very long, and they suffered so much injury disruption in defence that only Gabriel posted a large number of starts at the back.) Now, Raya is an excellent goalkeeper; and he probably will end up as the top keeper in FPL again. (And perhaps once again Arsenal won't be a high-scoring enough team to make anyone else an attractive long-term selection from them, apart from a regularly-starting defender [or two!].) Even so, I fear 6.0 million is a bit too much to spend on a keeper at the start of the season. Later on, when you've grown your budget a bit, and a lot of the more premium-priced players have got injured or proved to be in disappointing form, you can splash out on a player like Raya; in the initial squad, when budget is a bit tight, it is rash, unnecessary. 

I am a firm believer that two good mid-price keepers, with effective rotation around their more difficult fixtures, will almost always - and often quite substantially - beat the top-price keepers, anyway. Here's the list of the home/away rotation pairings for the coming season (apparently not yet published in a single list on the Premier League's own site, so this is courtesy of Brentford FC's website!). However, it's often better to look at the likely fixture-difficulty (obviously, you're quite likely to take a battering from one of the top clubs even when you have 'home advantage'): AllAboutFPL has this useful list of the most promising fixture pairings through the early part of the season, along with some possible selections.

Kelleher/Henderson look probably the most appealing pairing just on the home/away rotation, although Roefs/Horníček (if he takes the start from Pope; many seem to think he will) and Sels/Rushworth might also be appealing, though considerably riskier, punts. However, Jamie Trafford is a very tempting option now that he's moved to Leeds, and he enjoys a rather fortuitous rotation with Brighton's Bart Verbruggen - who was outstanding for much of last season - with it being possible to avoid pitting either of them against a top four club until the end of January!

The alternative strategy you could try for the early part of the season (though I wouldn't recommend it, as it leaves you unable to deploy your Bench Boost chip at short notice; and it's almost certainly not going to produce as many points for you as a good rotation pair) is to save some money by relying on a sole keeper while taking the cheap back-up from his own club (so, at least you always have a guaranteed starter between the sticks if your primary ever misses a game for some reason): Kinsky/Dubravka is the popular selection under this heading, with 20% going for this pair (probably only because they're so cheap, at just 8.5 for the two of them!); but I'd prefer Verbruggen/Steele as a slightly stronger - um, less Spursy - option at the same low price; and Lammens/Darlow, or perhaps Roefs/Ellborg, would, I think be much better, if you can rake together another 1 million for the goalkeeper budget; although, for that money, you can get two starters, which is surely going to be the preferable option.

Defenders

I already said last week that although Gabriel will probably again be the best defender for FPL,... I just don't think you can justify spending 8 million on him. (Not at the start of the season, anyway. As with a premium keeper, you can usually more comfortably afford that sort of luxury in the second half of the season...) Moreover, I doubt if he can match last season's exceptional points total; I imagine he'll only be in the 170-190 range this time, which probably won't put him far ahead of the rest of the field. With Saliba likely to be out for a few months, after needing surgery on a troublesome back problem, Mosquera seems likely to be his regular replacement in the centre-back pairing, and at just 5.5 million, offers quite tempting value for some representation in Arsenal's formidable defence. Calafiori and White are also tempting at the moment at the same price, but both have been injury prone in recent seasons, and have been strangely in-and-out of favour with their boss too; and they face competition for their starts from Timber (when he's fit again; should be less than a month?) and Hincapie - so, they both seem rather too risky to me for opening squad picks.

With unclear selection and significant rotation-risk, probably none of City's defenders should be in contention for selection just yet - even more so after they leaked like a sieve in the Community Shield game the other day! Once they find their feet under their new coach (I'm assuming they will...), Gvardiol will probably be worth having, especially if he starts regularly at left-back again. Nunes would probably have been my favoured City pick for the start of the season, but he picked up a muscle injury in the warm-up in Cardiff on Sunday, and might now be out for a few weeks.

Manchester United ended up with a pretty impressive defensive record last season; and of course, after Carrick took the reins in January, they were in fact the best team in the league over the remainder of the season. Shaw (very impressive last season, though linked with moves away this summer, as the club searched for a new left-back) and Maguire are currently the most popular picks from Old Trafford, though I'd be a little nervous about their age and injury record; Martinez (although he hasn't featured in pre-season, because of his late return from the World Cup) or Dalot would be my preferred options. It's a bummer, though, that Dorgu has been reclassified as a midfielder.

I think it will take Liverpool a while to adapt to Iraola's style of play, and that is likely to leave them often vulnerable on the counter-attack - so, their defence could at times suffer even worse than last year, at least in the early weeks of the season. Van Dijk is aging quickly, getting visibly slower and making far more mistakes over the last season or so; some of his defensive performance numbers were actually pretty terrible last year, but his FPL total was buoyed by an exceptional number of goals/assists, which isn't likely to be repeated (quite a few of them were very generously attributed to him in the first place; and improved defending and changes in the refereeing will probably mean we see far fewer of these melee goals this year). Jacquet looks promising, but it's a risk to go for new players in the initial squad; we should give him a few weeks to see how he beds in, and if he's getting a regular start. I suspect we'll want Kerkez, Frimpong, or Bradley at some point this season - but again, they're probably wait-and-see prospects at the moment. 

Likewise at Chelsea, James is too much of an injury-risk, Palestra looks promising but might not be assured of an immediate start, and everyone else is probably too much of a rotation risk. Colwill, if he's fully fit again, is probably the best option there at the moment. And while Villa should be comfortably in the top third again, they've rarely looked that consistent or convincing at the back under Emery; Cash, or perhaps Maatsen, if he's finally going to get a regular start, after Digne's departure, could be worth having at some point - but they're not ones to bet on in Gameweek 1; in fact, their early run of fixtures doesn't look all that amenable.

Palace and Bournemouth had very impressive defences last season, but they've again lost key members of their back-line - Lacroix to Chelsea and Senesi to Spurs - and there's a danger that they'll suffer a rocky transitional period under their new managers. With Palace, in particular, I fear there's a distinct chance they could slump towards the relegation zone this year. Daniel Munoz has been outstanding for them for the past couple of seasons, but is rumoured to be about to leave; FPL managers have just woken up to the fact that his left-wing counterpart Tyrick Mitchell returned almost identical points last year, but costs 1-million pounds less - so, he's proving a popular pick. But I think I'd avoid any Palace players for now. There are similar misgivings about Bournemouth, but I'm a bit more optimistic about the overall strength of their squad, and Marco Rose's compatibility with the existing style of play. Truffert is likely to be the best bet from them.

The Spurs defensive roster looks very impressive; but we just don't know what the preferred selection is going to be at the moment (unless they play a back-five, Senesi, Van Hecke, and Van de Ven can't all start regularly; even if they do play that system, Robertson and Davies are also in the mix as options for the left side of the central three), or how well it will work in practice. There are so many changes going on at that club that I think it will take a while for things to settle down, and we'd probably do better to steer clear of them for the first few weeks, at least.

I'm hoping Sunderland can kick on from their tremendously impressive debut season (although playing in the Europa League will be a drain on them, and we're likely to see a dip in their Premier League performances following midweek European games). Alderete, Ballard, Reinildo and Mukiele were all worth having in spells last year; the latter is my particular favourite, for his attacking threat down the right flank - and his tremendous long-throws. Leeds also started to look much more robust in the second-half of the season, although they suffered a lot of injuries at the back which has made Farke's selection preferences there unclear. Rodon, Gudmundsson, or Bogle could be tempting budget picks.

Brighton and Brentford are both too inconsistent to be very attractive defensive options for me. Kadioglu or De Cuyper would be tempting, if they weren't competing for the same starting slot; Brentford's Michael Kayode is probably one of the more promising 4.5-million-pound options. Nottingham Forest, under Oliver Glasner, could bounce back from their chaotic 25-26 season, making any of their previously formidable back-line tempting again (and presumably there'll be five of them to choose from now!); but with Glasner liking to progress his full-backs into the attack quite often, Aina and Williams are likely to be the best options.

Livramento and Hall are two of the best full-backs in the league; but they've both been linked with moves away in this transfer window. And with Newcastle having already lost two of their best players this summer, there's a danger they could suffer a complete collapse - at least for a while, until Jaissle gets a grip on things.

Everton and Fulham, although they have some good defenders, are quite likely to be in relegation trouble this season, I fear; so, I'm hesitant about going in for any of them at the start of the season. Tarkowski was one of the top performers for 'defcon' points last year; and Branthwaite, if fully fit again, might be almost as good for half a million less; but they might have a bit of a torrid time in the first couple of months, with only two 'soft' fixtures in the first eight gameweeks.

I'm wary of going for anyone from the promoted clubs at the start of the season. Even if they do get their shit together and start making a decent fight to stay up, history tells us that these usually takes at least a few weeks, if not a few months. And picking one of their defenders just because they're cheap usually turns out to be a dangerous false economy; a defender who takes a battering every week can end up with an average points return below 2 per week - which is absolute worthless. You will at some point, probably sooner rather than later, need to draw on your bench; and if you're going to spend money on a player, you should be spending the money for something rather than nothing, for some actual worthwhile points-potential. I'm sceptical as to whether any of this year's promoted trio will manage to survive, and I suspect only Coventry have a fighting chance. Thus, their 4.0-million-pound defensive options, centre-back Bobby Thomas and full-backs Milan van Ewijk and Luke Thomas, might be justifiable picks for an ultra low-cost 'budget enabler' - though, for me, very risky ones. They've probably only achieved their rather high early ownership levels of 8% and 14.5% respectively because they face Hull in Gameweek 2.

So, that's it for the defensive half of the equation....

I'll try to get around to a 'Part Two' on the more attacking options tomorrow.

But first, this....

I shall be attempting, a little later today, to put together a few thoughts on this season's initial FPL selection dilemmas.

But I'm still buzzing from that really fantastic World Cup we enjoyed last month, and wanted to revisit one of its outstanding moments: Cabo Verde's stunning extra-time equaliser against Argentina in the 'Round of 16', an absolute pinger from their young full-back, Sidny Lopes Cabral - subsequently voted the 'Goal of the Tournament'.

That was a goal celebrated by the whole world (yes, even Argentinians should have been able to appreciate it, should have relished being made to work so hard for their progression). It's good to have the occasional thing like this that can bring us all together.

TOP TIPS for picking the initial FPL squad

 

Now that the Community Shield game is out of the way (I managed to find a suitably grungy little dive bar, The Shamrock, to enjoy it in), it is reasonable to start thinking about the coming season of Fantasy Premier League for the first time.... Although I still wouldn't actually draft a squad until this Friday afternoon!

In a day or two, I'll try to start putting out a few posts with discussions of the main selection dilemmas of the year. (I've already done one on the key conundrum of the new season: which, if any, of this year's three 'super-premium' players might still be unavoidable picks, despite being so horribly over-priced.)

I am here compiling a summary of some of the key advice I've given on choosing the Initial Squad in this game, with links embedded to my original longer posts on each topic, if you want to look into any of them in a bit more detail.

How to choose the INITIAL SQUAD

This is my comprehensive guide on the main principles to keep in mind. Obviously, a lot of the specific player examples are now out of date, but the basic advice should still be clear enough. [I also have a potentially useful = or encouraging - follow-up post on how to assess if you've done a good job with your squad selection.]

You should also try to avoid falling in thrall to the myth of the 'differential', the misguided belief that players can be worth having just because they are low-owned. This is obvious nonsense; you need to focus on points-potential (within the reference-frames of what else you're doing with your squad, and how much money you've got left), not ownership level. [See What a 'differential' is not... and The true meaning of 'differential' for a fuller discussion on this.]

You might also find it useful to keep in mind these rough scales or tiers of points returns and pricing.

And here are a selection of more specific tips...

Don't take a chance on uncertain starters (or new arrivals)

Players new to the league, players who've had injury problems over the summer, players who might still be a bit fatigued after the World Cup, players facing a lot of possible competition for a regular starting slot:... these all have to be avoided in the initial squad. Early in the season, we have enough problems with unexpected dropouts among players we thought we could rely on as nailed starters, without taking any unnecessary extra risks like this.

And likewise,  Beware of double-ups and treble-ups

In general, you want to avoid over-exposing yourself to any one club, even the strongest of them; but especially at the start of the season - when you just don't know (however 'well' they may have appeared to do in pre-season) what their, or anyone else's, form is going to be like in the opening few games.

Stack the midfield  and  The fifth midfield slot is where the value lies

It is amazing how wilfully blind so many FPL managers are about this most obvious and fundamental element of the game: midfielders earn more points than the other positions, and usually dominate the overall player rankings at the end of the season (typically at least 6 or 7 of the Top 10, often as many as 15 of the Top 20). This simple fact dictates that you should be trying to play all 5 midfielders as often as possible - and that that 5th midfielder is likely to be the squad slot that gives you the biggest differential advantage over your rivals!

 

A good rotation pair can beat a premium keeper

A very basic point about goalkeeper selection - but many people seem to fail to grasp it!

Two mid-price picks beat a premium and a dud

While this point is not as invariably and incontrovertibly true with other positions as it is with goalkeepers,.... it is very nearly so.

How to fill the 'bargain' - 'budget enabler' - spots

At the start of the season, when budget is a bit tight, you can't usually afford to spend much on your 4th and 5th defenders or your 3rd forward, and you might be skimping a bit on your back-up keeper and your 4th/5th midfielders too. But you really need to guard against making false economies - especially in midfield.

Defensive premiums aren't usually worth it

You have to think very, very carefully about spending more than 6.0 million on a defender - because, 9 times out of 10, they just won't be that much, if at all better than several of the cheaper rival picks.

And... The super-premiums aren't usually worth it

The most expensive players each year, in any position, are never 'worth it' in pure value-for-money, points-per-pound terms. But I suggest some other criteria by which to evaluate if it may be worth paying a super-high price for a player.

Attacking returns will still (usually) beat 'defensive points'

'Defensive points' are a novelty in the game, only introduced last year (the 25-26 season), so we're still struggling to assess just what impact they are having. I made this prediction last year that, while the new points would be very nice to have, they probably wouldn't on their own make anyone a preferable pick over someone who offered high attacking returns. Many people are not yet convinced of this because... we happened to have a horrible year last year (the lowest-scoring FPL season ever in midfield!). However, the top performers on these new points, in both midfield and defence, also happened to produce quite a good number of attacking contributions as well: they wouldn't have finished so strongly in the overall rankings if they hadn't done well under both headings; and they still wouldn't have been nearly so high up in the final table in any normal year!!

 

NO-ONE is a 'set-and-forget'

FPL managers often naively assume that all they have to do is guess which players are going to end the season with the most points, pick them all, and then.... hang on to them until they get injured. Um, no - it just doesn't work like that. There are very, very few players - not even the season's top points-producers - who are actually worth hanging on to for the entire season.

You NEED your Bench!

Many people ignore and disparage their Bench. But it is super-important, and it is foolish to 'go light' on it - even at the start of the season.

'Dead men' earn NO POINTS; and they LOSE VALUE

In particular, you cannot afford to leave empty seats on your Bench - with injured or non-starting players.

These three broader overviews of 'how the game works' might also be of interest...

What MAKES THE DIFFERENCE in FPL?

This is a quick round-up of the factors that determine whether you finish the season with a high ranking. (Alas and alack, 'player selection' doesn't feature very high!)

Signs an FPL manager doesn't know what they're doing 

A fairly recent post itemising the most common mistakes we see - even in the squads of supposedly 'top' managers!!

And...  Are you a 'good' FPL manager?

My definitive checklist for identifying your possible handicaps and shortcomings in the game.

And I regularly recommend that if you're going to seek help or inspiration from online advice,... you should confine yourself to some of these excellent tactical analysis channels on Youtube.

You can find other bits and pieces of advice on specific topics like this in my Adages, In a Nutshell, and Top TIPS! series. [I never figured out how to differentiate these strands, and have ended up tagging a lot of posts with two or even all three of the labels. The only consistent distinction is that the Adages are (mostly) quite a bit shorter, and have the main point usefully summarised in the post title!]

And lastly, of course,... Remember - it's mostly LUCK!

And..... Remember The ONE GREAT TRUTH of the game.

The annual conundrum!

 

Every year..... we face this challenge at the start of a new FPL season that our favourite players, who were expensive last year, are even more expensive this year - and seem 'overpriced', perhaps unaffordable.

Last year, at least, only Haaland and Salah were priced at a 'super-premium' level, and I warned in an early post that, the way their two teams were going into the season, it looked unlikely that either of them would have a particularly good year,... and might end up with quite a disappointing one (although I did not anticipate quite how spectacularly Mo Salah's farewell season would fall apart).

Because last year was so epically low-scoring (one of the worst in the game's history; in fact, the worst for midfielders), and because, as yet, no major new talents have transferred in during the current trading window, we are really short of elite-level points-prospects in the game. And hence the top performers in each of the three outfield position categories have been especially aggressively overpriced this year - to the point where, in most years, we'd just accept that they were unacceptably priced, 'priced out' of consideration altogether, and we'd have to find ways of making do without them.

But, as I mentioned the other day, there's such a shortage of obviously 'high value' players in the game at the moment that budget pressure doesn't really seem that acute. In most previous years, there have been so many 'premium' and 'super-premium' players that we'd all probably want, we obviously couldn't have them all - and we had some tough choices to make. This year, with only three to tempt us, it's not that difficult to accommodate them all without leaving the rest of the squad hopelessly weak (although you are probably going to have to overlook a lot of tempting picks in the mid-price range, and leave yourself with a dangerously light bench). And squeezing in one, maybe even two of them, really isn't a bother at all. In the past, it usually would have been; but this year it's not.

But, although we might not face an immediate crisis of simply not being able to afford them, they are, I think, so grotesquely overpriced that we should still hesitate over whether to buy them - any of them. And my instinct is that we should probably only pick one of the three.

I've seen a lot of misguided logic applied to this question - of which, if any, of the three 'super-premiums' to pick for the start of the season - on the online forums over the last few weeks. The commonest line has been that Fernandes is cheaper than Haaland, and thus provides better value-for-money.

There might be something in the idea that if you want to spread more money around the rest of the squad, going without Haaland might give you an edge there. But it's only a very small one. Haaland is a whopping 6.5 million more expensive than the second highest-priced forward option this year, Isak; and there are only six other pretty decent forwards priced within 8 million of him. The two next highest-priced midfielders after Fernandes are still a substantial 2.5 million pounds cheaper; but there are 118 midfielders - some of them really rather appealing FPL prospects - priced between 6 and 7 million pounds cheaper than him. So, although the price gap is scarily big with Haaland, there isn't really that much competition for his place; with Bruno, there is - there are a lot of other players to choose from in midfield, at much lower prices.

The key thing here is that your 'super-premium' players never give value-for-money in pure points-per-pound terms (Salah's record-breaking season was arguably an exception - but a unique one!); and so you have to evaluate them on completely different criteria from most of your initial squad picks. Their absolute cost (not just their price itself, but the consequent 'opportunity cost' in how far you might be going short in other areas of your squad) is one part of it; but, as I just said above, I don't think that's really in play this year, because there are so few players at high price-points now (and the ones there are didn't show any convincing form last season, for one reason or another) that budget pressure isn't particularly acute. 

No, the main thing you have to consider is the absolute points advantage they offer you over the next best options in their position category.

Haaland - who had a pretty so-so year, really, given what he's capable of when everything clicks for him and his team - was 58 points ahead of the next best forward, and nearly 100 points ahead of the 5th best. And it's not unreasonable to hope that he might do at least a little better this year. He really looks as though he has the capacity to return a 250-point season with relative ease; and he's the only current player who looks like he could potentially have a 300-point season in him.

Fernandes - who had a really outstanding year, his second-best ever (and is really unlikely to surpass that, or even get all that close to it again) - still finished narrowly behind Haaland in the overall ranking, and only 33 points ahead of the next best midfielder, Semenyo; and 55 points ahead of the 5th best (barely half the margin that Haaland had). And this in a year when almost all the usual highest-returning midfielders had dreadful years due to injuries or whatever....  It is almost certain that Bruno Fernandes will do a little less well (perhaps quite a lot less well) this year, and that several other competitors in that position category will at least get close to him. I'd be surprised if at least one or two don't out-perform him this year. Maybe.... someone like Szoboszlai, who's priced 5.5 million pounds cheaper!

Fernandes was performing near the top of his envelope last year. And Haaland wasn't; nowhere near. So, the potential at least is there for Haaland to do much better this year, while it would be extremely unlikely for Fernandes even to equal last season's total. Quite apart from the statistical improbability of performing near your absolute theoretical peak two years in a row, our Bruno, bless him, is aging: he turns 32 shortly - and at this age, your physical performance can drop off a cliff at any moment. Even if he does manage to sustain excellent levels of fitness and sharpness for a few more years, it is pretty much certain that his very best years are now behind him. Moreover, it's always seemed to me that Bruno is a player who thrives on disaster: he plays his best when the team around him is terrible - he really digs deep to try to carry the whole damn team, and often he manages to pull it off. That was happening for much of last season, with many other key players injured, Sesko not being trusted with a regular start, and Cunha and Mbeumo struggling to fit in, never quite regaining the sensational form they'd shown with their previous clubs the year before. If things all start coming together under Carrick, these other star performers will start taking the limelight, and Bruno can lapse into a more supporting role. I still expect him to have an excellent season, and very likely be United's highest points-scorer again (although I have a suspicion it might be Mbeumo this year; or perhaps even Dorgu, if he gets a regular start on the wing); but he won't be the prime/sole driving force behind their success, as he was for so much of last season. And so.... he might have an excellent season without breaking 200 points this time.

In my judgement, then, Haaland might do even better than last season; and, since there isn't much competition in the forward position at the moment (unless Isak recovers his best Newcastle form and manages to stay fit all season and doesn't suffer any rotation with Ekitike or Gakpo - all of which seem like pretty big ifs), he's pretty much certain to again be the highest-scoring forward and quite likely to outscore his closest positional rival by at least 30-40 points, quite possibly more than twice that much. While Fernandes is likely to do at least a little worse than last season, might not even be the highest-scoring midfielder this time, and it's unlikely to be by all that much of a margin even if he is.

On that basis, it looks like you'd be paying a 4 or 5-million-pound premium for Bruno Fernandes for.... little or nothing. While for Haaland, you're paying the extra 6 or 8 million for a very substantial - really unique! - differential advantage in the forward position category. And that..... is almost certainly worth it.

And Gabriel?? Well, I don't see much of an argument there. No, he's not going to be worth it this season.

He's priced at 8 million because he had an exceptional season, he got a significant lift to his points total through the newly introduced 'defensive points', all of his defensive peers at Arsenal missed chunks of time with injuries, and all of the other top clubs had pretty poor years, and his other closest rivals in the defensive rankings (Tarkowski, Senesi, Lacroix, Truffert, Mukiele, etc.) were all playing for mid-table teams who had rather up-and-down seasons. I don't see any of those things happening again. And frankly, in the past, I've hesitated to buy even an attacking-contributions monster like Alexander-Arnold or Cancelo when they've been priced at 7 million or more; 8 million, for a defender, is just stupid. I'm not sure that I fancy any of the 6.5 or 6.0 options in that position all that much this year!

Like Bruno Fernandes, he had a gap last year of 30 or more points over his closest positional rivals. But, exactly like with Bruno Fernandes, I doubt if he's going to do that well again, and it's reasonable to expect that at least some of his rivals might do a lot better this time. This is not to say anything against Gabriel: I'd say he is - arguably, at least - the best defender in the Premier League at the moment. And Arsenal are likely to be, once more, the best defensive team in the league. He is quite likely to again be the No. 1 ranked defender in FPL this year. But.... it's not a racing certainty; and it's not likely to be by a massive margin. For me, both of those things need to be true for him to be worth even 7.0 or 6.5 million, let alone 8.0 million!

Last year was a freakish season for him. 19 clean sheets?! Surely not going to be quite that good again. Tons of defensive points?! That was because Arsenal were actually quite ropey at the start of the season, and then had another big wobble approaching the final run-in; if they play better, if they play consistently to their true potential - players like Gabriel (and Zubimendi and Rice, and the other defenders) won't be nearly as busy defensively this season. 8 attacking contributions?! (Only 3 goals in that; I'd thought it had been more!) Again, not likely to be repeated. The rule-change allowing referees to penalise jostling fouls before a set-piece is delivered will greatly reduce the effectiveness of set-piece routines for nicking goals, which Arsenal relied on so heavily last year. No doubt new tactical ideas can be worked out which don't rely on unfair wrestling prior to the kick, but... they're unlikely to be quite so productive. And even without this sea-change in the rules environment, Gabi had been becoming rather too obviously the almost invariable target man for Arsenal's set-pieces. Opposing teams would have got better at defending his threat, and Arsenal would have had to start varying things up a lot to maintain their effectiveness at converting set-piece opportunities.

So, I can see Gabi and Arsenal again dominating the defensive numbers this season, and him being very probably the best individual FPL defender. But I doubt if he'll get above 200 points again; maybe not above 180. And he won't beat his closest rivals by all that much. Which, when he's priced at 2.5 million more than most of them,.... he needs to.

So, my summary position on the Super-Premiums Conundrum for this season is:

Haaland - YES: almost certainly going to be 'essential', because he's the only current player with a proven potential for regular returns well over 200 points per season. It's 'worth' paying pretty much whatever they're asking for such a unique advantage in the game - particularly when none of the other forward options look very convincing to return even three-quarters of Haaland's points.

Fernandes - PROBABLY NOT: unlikely to do quite as well as last season, and unlikely to have a very substantial advantage, if any at all, over the next best in his position. (He might, indeed, be outscored by his United teammates Mbeumo, Cunha, or Dorgu; or they might at least get fairly close to him, for much less money - so, he could be ruled out on club quota, as well as 'value' for money.)

Gabriel - DEFINITELY NOT: won't do nearly as well as last season, and has no obvious massive advantage over his own cheaper teammates, or the 'best of the rest' in the defender category, many of whom are 2.5 or 3.0-million pounds cheaper.

Of course, fans of these players or their clubs, or FPL managers who've included these players in their early drafts, will take these opinions very much amiss. I'm sorry: it's nothing personal. It's just.... common sense.

Does it 'matter' this year??

 

The traditional curtain-raiser to the new season, the Community Shield, kicks off this Sunday afternoon (though, for some reason, it's in Cardiff rather than London this year?!).  I've said before that in recent years, the two participants have been tending to take this game much more seriously than in the past, treating it as a valuable final warm-up - much more competitive than any of the other pre-season games - and as an opportunity to establish an early psychological edge over a rival. That is particularly the case, of course, when the two teams - the winners of last year's League and FA Cup trophies - are the likely frontrunners for this year's league title. That doesn't always happen; but this year, Arsenal and Manchester City are indeed the two favourites to become the Premier League Champions of 2027 - so, there's a lot to play for: this could be a 'dry run' for this season's title chase.

And for us FPL enthusiasts, we could see - for the first (and only!) time in pre-season - some reliable indications of the preferred lineups, and the likely early form of these teams and players.

There is particular curiosity - anxiety - about what part Erling Haaland may play in the game. He only finally returned to training from his extended post-World Cup holiday in the last few days, and so it may be doubtful if he's able to take part at all. If he doesn't feature, or gets only very short minutes. there will be major concerns that he might not be ready to play in City's opening league game against Bournemouth, at The Etihad next Sunday. And, since he costs a whopping 15.5 million quid in the game this year, that might prompt a lot of people to go without him in Gameweek 1, feeling that they should use some of that huge chunk of budget on a forward who's more certain to contribute a full 90 minutes.

The problem with this is, of course, that because Haaland is so much more expensive than every other player (3.5 million more than this year's only other 'super-premium', Bruno Fernandes; 6.5 million more than the second most expensive forward, Alexander Isak), you can't very well put all of that extra budget to use if you're only expecting to go without him for one or two weeks; you need to be swapping him for one other expensive player, and leaving the considerable surplus in the kitty (unless you're also committed to using your 1st Wildcard straight away, so you can make multiple changes to the squad when you bring him in). Well, you could also wait a few weeks, and save up transfers - or even take a few hits - so that you could bring him in alongside multiple other changes, and thus have all, or at least most, of the initial budget put to work in your selection. But we rarely have that luxury to use transfers at will early in the season; there are usually large numbers of forced changes thrust on us through early injuries, or players being in terrible form or just unexpectedly dropped.

I have a further concern that unless his ownership level is very high (it's currently at 73.5%, which, I fear, is not quite high enough - and it might drop a little from this peak if there are major worries about whether he's going to start next week), there's a danger of being caught out by a price rise. It will be difficult to anticipate when the fence-sitters decide to come in for him, and there might be a sudden jump in price,... perhaps even during that opening weekend (especially if he scores a brace off the bench in that first match!!); and that might happen while many of us are asleep.... At the start of the season, a shortfall of even 100k in your budget can be a massive inconvenience, because most of us are maxed out on our spending on the initial squad, and most the price-steps are still at the original 500k minimum intervals; hence, a single price movement can leave you unable to afford everyone at a particular price-point (and perhaps unable to afford anyone at all, if you want to offload a 4.0-million-pound 'budget enabler'). If Haaland's initial ownership level is up around 80%, I think we'd be fairly well insulated from that danger, because there's always a substantial minority of naysayers who just don't like him (or, more likely, don't like City), or have obstinately committed to doing without him for the season to use the budget elsewhere; so, even if he were to score a hattrick off the bench against Bournemouth, the number of new managers coming in for him should be relatively modest; and when the starting ownership level is that vast, you need really huge numbers of purchasers to move the price-dial any further - it becomes just about impossible. But if the ownership number is down around 70% or even lower,.... I think I'd take the chance on having him from the get-go. 

This is really no different to any other gameweek; there's always a chance that Haaland is going to miss a start here or there, after picking up a minor knock, catching a cold, or just getting rested before a big European game. This is why you have a decent 3rd forward - someone you won't start every week, someone you might hardly use at all, but someone who'll hopefully give you fairly decent points whenever you do need to use him.

Moreover, I don't like the idea of committing to transfers - let alone multiple transfers or a possible early Wildcard - just to bring in a key player for a particular gameweek. At the start of the season we are facing so many uncertainties: lots of players go down with injuries ('trying too hard' while not yet fully match-fit), lineups get unsettled by arrivals or departures during the transfer window, some teams or players are mysteriously out-of-form while others may be unexpectedly super-hot. We very often have to make multiple transfers - or reach for that early Wildcard - anyway, without having made 'plans' to bring in Haaland a week or two late.

But if the big Viking gets a decent run-out on Sunday and looks sharp,... this will all be moot: he'll be in at least 80% of teams by next Friday!

[I have moved to Danang for this weekend - purely because it is reputed to be the one place in Vietnam with a few decent sports bars where I might be able to watch the game... Fingers crossed! Since bloody TNT Sports acquired the rights to the game last year, we don't even get highlights on BBC or ITV any more.]

[So, Haaland started, and played about an hour: not fully sharp, but no real issue with his fitness. The bigger concern arises from the rest of his team: everybody else looked miles off it - even Donnarumma - and they're clearly still struggling to get to grips with Maresca's desired style of play. They have so many excellent players that I imagine things will start clicking for them fairly soon, but.... they're looking a very dodgy prospect for the opening few games of the season.

The weirdest and most worrying aspect of yesterday's unexpectedly one-sided Community Shield was that while Arsenal fielded what was largely a 'B team' (no Rice, Zubimendi, Saka, Gyokeres, Timber, Saliba....), City, with the exception of Kovacic, were putting out something much closer to a full-strength side, pretty much what we might expect them to start with against Bournemouth. Ouch.]

A little bit of Zen (107)

 

"The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true."

Robert Oppenheimer

"I'm kind of an optimistic pessimist: I always hope for the least worst outcome."

GW

The rise of 'the idiocracy' (again)

Around this time last year, I shared this video from the Philosophy Coded Youtube channel, on Dietrich Bonhoeffer's analysis of 'wilful ignorance' as a mass phenomenon (Bonhoeffer was a German pastor, famously martyred for his opposition to the Nazis; so, he was probably thinking particularly of the Germans' complacency in accepting Hitler's rise to power in the early 1930s).

The other week I discovered another interesting discussion of Bonhoeffer's ideas on this topic from Jonny Thompson of the Big Think channel in the video above. (Apparently there's an extended version of this talk, although I haven't yet had the chance to watch that to see what more it adds.)  Thompson observes that there was a similar concept - 'amathia' (ἀμαθία, the rejection of learning or understanding) - in Ancient Greek philosophy. Unfortunately, we do see rather a lot of this 'sticking one's head in the sand' in the realm of FPL; managers cling to their superstitions and prejudices in defiance of reason, they follow the promptings of supposed 'experts' or just fall in with the herd - rather than taking the trouble to think for themselves. Like the gadfly Socrates, I am always trying to goad people into original thought - and it makes me very unpopular on many of the forums!

And if that hasn't got you depressed enough about humanity,.... Philosophy Coded has a follow-up video on Bonhoeffer's ideas.

How pricing works in FPL

 

It is a mistake to suppose that the initial pricings in each new FPL season are a reliable measure of a player's value, his likely points return.

For managers new to the game, it serves as a reasonably reliable guide to who the best points-prospects are - but it's not infallible. And it's certainly not finely-tuned, not a precise correlation to likely points return: the most expensive players simply do not provide 'value for money' on a points-per-pound basis; the 'premium' and 'super-premium' players are lifted beyond that consideration and have to be evaluated on other criteria.

It is also a mistake to suppose that it is based only on last season's performance.

It is very largely; but there are important other factors at play. Haaland this year, for example, has had his price increased not because he had a great season last year (it was, by his standards, a pretty mediocre one!), but because Salah has left the league, creating a void at the top end of the pricing scale.

Pricing is, in fact, primarily determined by the need to maintain budget pressure - so players are priced relative to other 'competitor' players in their position category or price bracket, and in an overall context of how many players there are available at each of the price-points.

With the likes of Kane, Son, DeBruyne and Salah leaving the league in recent years, without any comparable replacements coming in, and with almost all the most exciting young talents like Saka and Palmer and Foden and Mitoma having very subdued seasons last year, we are left with a very thin top-end in the pricing spectrum this year. Haaland and Bruno Fernandes are the only two 'super-premiums'; and nobody else is priced at or above 10 million. The next most expensive forward, Alexander Isak, is only 9.0 million this year, while Saka and Palmer are the only 9.5-million-pound players (which many feel is still a bit too high, given their returns last year). Semenyo is the only player at 8.5, and only five players (one of them a defender!!) are priced at 8.0 million this year.

The pricing gnomes have tried to compensate by increasing the prices of a lot of defenders, and creating a lot of congestion in the 6.5-7.5-million range (which is probably where most of the crucial selection decisions will have to be made this year), but.... it really looks like the system is 'broken' at the moment: there isn't any effective pressure on budget - and for the first time in years (perhaps ever??) people might be having quite a stacked bench and/or leaving some cash unspent, even in Gameweek 1.

The shortage of elite points prospects in the game at the moment has meant that last year's three outstanding performers - Haaland, Fernandes, and Gabriel - have been priced stupidly, eye-wateringly high. For me, this has been aggressively overdone: there is a jarring disconnect now between how much they cost and how much 'value' they offer. So, ordinarily, in most years, they would be very clearly 'priced out', and we'd just have to find a way to get by without them. It would, almost certainly, be more advantageous to use the money saved on them to enhance the rest of the squad, because buying them would inevitably leave the rest of the squad very weak. This year, however, I don't think that level of budget pressure is there: it seems it might be perfectly possible to afford all three of them without completely beggaring the rest of the squad; and having at least one of them is not a problem at all. This situation creates some interesting dilemmas of its own - which I'll probably write a bit more on shortly. [Actually, quite a lot more; and only a couple of days later!]

Yes, Gabriel, Fernandes, and Haaland are grotesquely overpriced this year; but they're still arguably 'affordable'.

What then can we do?

I said again this morning that early drafting is worse than a waste-of-time.

What, then, can the FPL enthusiast do to 'prepare' during the last couple of weeks or so before the Big Kick-Off?

Well, it's usually a good idea to watch a fair bit of the pre-season friendlies (highlights only, of course!) - especially the later ones, and those involving the Premier League's better teams matching themselves against some top European sides. 

However, we always have to keep in mind that such games rarely tell us very much about likely form in the opening games of the domestic season. Particularly in a World Cup year, so many key players are returning late to training, and have figured little or not at all as yet. And these matches - even the occasionally more 'competitive' ones - are generally played at a fairly gentle pace, and feature unlimited substitutions. They can be quite useful for giving some insight into new tactical ideas being tried out for the season ahead, and for showcasing promising youngsters who might have a chance of breaking into the first team at some point this year (though probably not straight away...), but they mostly tell us next-to-nothing about likely team or individual form or probable lineups on the opening Premier League weekend.

The Premier League's website has a list of the pre-season fixtures played, usually with links to brief match reports. And there's also this - very brief - roundup of minutes played and attacking contributions registered by leading players.

Unfortunately, most of the main FPL help sites like Fantasy Football Scout seem to have firewalled all of their content about the pre-season games this year, so there's very little useful information that you can access for free (the Fantasy Premier League site itself is predictably useless on this).

It's also a good idea, of course, to try to stay on top of the transfer news. (Though I'd resist getting bogged down in the endless flurry of groundless rumours that we suffer in this 'social media' era. Arsenal fans somehow managed to convince themselves that Vinicius Jnr was going to join them - though that was obvious nonsense. And their acquisition of Bruno Guimaraes unfolded at a glacial pace over an agonising three weeks or so, with some new pointless bit of 'progress' announced almost every day during that! It is just painful...)

At least Fantasy Football Scout's list of the new signings is stil free-to-view (though not many of them have been given 'scout reports' yet). The Transfermarkt transfers page has links to its profiles of the players (although that website continues to look horrible; and it is now awash with gambling ads...). The TNT Sports website actually seems to have the best-looking - and possibly also most helpful... - transfer summary this year.

Also, of course, we should keep an eye out for possible injuries. We seem - touch wood! - to have been remarkably fortunate so far this year. But usually we get a slew of players breaking down in training during the last couple of weeks - or even in the last few days - before the new season gets under way again. Again, Fantasy Football Scout usually has a good injury list, but I find Premier League Injuries is occasionally a little more up-to-date.

Naturally, it's worth having a look over the fixture schedule for the early part of the season (although the game's own 'Fixture Difficulty Rating' guide here is usually laughably inaccurate, and needs to be taken with a huge grain of salt).

And it's probably worth taking a look at what the promoted clubs played like last season, and what transfer moves they've been looking to make over the summer (few of them these days have any realistic chance of staying up, but every once in a while, one of them can give us a surprise - I fancy Frank Lampard's Coventry to have a decent chance this year; and even the obvious punchbag teams may still have one or two tempting budget player options). Adam Clery's 'Mini-Me' - his chirpy young editor, Archie Corbett, who's been very ably deputising for Adam on some of the excellent ACFC channel's recent videos - produced a good summary of this year's trio last week.

Finally, AllAboutFPL recently had this article of basic FPL tips by a supposed 'top manager' (I'm always a bit sceptical as to whether these guys are really that good, or if they've just enjoyed a few years of exceptional luck...). They are all fairly simple and generic points, but is is a very sound introduction to the game for newbies - actually, much the same kind of thing I'm usually saying on this blog and elsewhere online; so, worth checking out, I'd say.

I'll be posting some summaries of my past advice on selecting the initial squad, and weighing up this season's selection dilemmas next week - after the Community Shield game has been played.

BEST OF LUCK, EVERYONE!!!

Drafting may be 'a game in itself' - but it is of no help to the REAL GAME

 

For the past couple of weeks, the online FPL forums have been full of people sharing endless preliminary drafts of their squads - many of them joking about how many dozens of attempts they've had already, and how many more they're likely to get through... (Or, even more alarmingly, a good number of them bizarrely claim that they're done, finished, that they have their 'final' lineup sorted.... still 10 or 15 days out from the start of the season, with new transfer rumours flying around every day...??!!)

We're still a little shy of 4 million enrolments for the game this year; and we'll presumably hit at least twice that number by the end of next week, and maybe three or more times that many by a few weeks into the season. And the daily volume of transfer activity would appear to indicate that perhaps only 20-30% of managers are indulging in these endless revisions, while the majority - as I recommended a couple of weeks ago - are contenting themselves for now with a placeholder team, created in a few seconds with the game's 'Auto-pick' facility.

Now, I don't like to be a killjoy.... If these folks are treating this endless obsessive re-drafting as a bit of 'harmless fun' - well, good luck to them!

I imagine that the appeal is as a sort of 'playing the real game in imagination', trying to picture what might happen with each of the chosen squads. And this without the downer of getting immediate negative feedback in your points returns when you make actual changes to your squad during the season!! Perhaps it is nice to be able to endlessly tweak your team like this without feeling that pain.

And later on, I suspect, some of these multi-drafters may seek solace in the idea that one of their discarded 'early versions' (perhaps in a slightly misremembered, idealised form...) might actually have done really well - so much better than the final squad they actually landed on!

Quite a few seem to be leaning on AI gizmos to 'rate' their early efforts, creating a new side-game where they struggle to get ever closer to the illusory validation of their squad being deemed 100% 'perfect'!! Alas, none of these AI tools have any real understanding or discrimination, and are doing little more than spitting out random numbers - so, it's very doubtful if this will be at all helpful (probably the reverse) in developing a stronger selection.

Where I take issue with this pastime is with the widespread underlying delusion that it is actually worthwhile, that it is doing some good in honing the final selection. It most emphatically is not: it is nothing but harmful.

First of all, of course, it is a colossal waste of time.

Second, and the way in which it is most actively deleterious to your Fantasy management efforts for the season (as I discussed in detail when I first launched this blog), it will tend to lead to worse decisions on deadline day, because of the human cognitive biases that tether us to our earliest preliminary decisions on an issue. It is never a good idea to start making judgements about things before you have all the necessary information available with which to make those judgements - which, with Fantasy Premier League, doesn't happen until a few hours before the first kick-off of the season.

And third, a more general and longer-term harm, I think, is that this practice builds up a dependence on being able to see different lineups on your 'Pick Team' display before you can imagine how they might work together and how they fit within your budget cap. Just as with chess, you never get very good if you always have to physically make moves on the board to picture how a simple endgame might play out, so too in Fantasy football, I think it helps to develop the ability to picture mentally what different combinations of players you can afford within the limitations of the budget. If you really have no idea what a 'No-Haaland' squad might look like without actually building it in the app,.... I think you have a problem. And you're making that problem worse.

Trust me on this: refraining from early drafting is good for you.

Beware the 'defcon' MIRAGE...!

 

I have a problem with the new 'defensive points', introduced into the Fantasy Premier League game for the first time last year. I went into some detail on this when the change was first announced; but here's a brief recap - and an expansion.

Why chasing 'defcon points' is probably misguided

1)  They're opaque.  

FPL has still provided no definitions or illustrations of how the various eligible actions are identified (and distinguished from each other!). And there are so many different game actions that might fall under one or more of the eligible categories that it is simply impossible to know from watching a game whether a player of ours has reached the necessary threshold of 'defensive contributions' to earn us extra points or not. We have to take it entirely on trust from Opta. [It is often as arbitrary and mystifying as the operation of the widely reviled 'Bonus Points System' in the game.]

2)  They're unreliable.  

Opta is extremely fallible: they do frequently miscount things. And with these 'defensive points' a miscount of one can make the difference between your guy getting 2 extra points (perhaps unjustly) or getting 0 points (perhaps unjustly).

3) They're unduly sensitive to fine margins of difference in performance (and margins of error in the counting!), and hence very unpredictable. 

Because the thresholds for earning the points are set so high, and being deemed to have come up even one contribution short of that mark means you get no additional points (while you cannot earn any further points beyond the basic 2 points, even if you exceed the threshold by 2x or 3x!!), it is impossible to predict whether a player is likely to attain the points in any particular game; much of the time, the best 'defcon' performers are hitting a number around their 'season average' - which is slightly below the required threshold to earn the points.

4)  The extreme sensitivity of the eligibilty threshold referred to above also makes it difficult to infer with any confidence how players' performance on these points will hold up from one year to the next.

It is impossible to rely on how much consistency players will achieve from one season to another in earning 'defensive points': a player might produce a similarly high level of consistent defensive solidity in his performances, and achieve an almost identical total 'defcon' tally for this season as he did for last, yet come up with a vastly lower return of 'defensive points' - simply because he had unluckily come up just short of the threshold in several matches this time around.

5)  They tend not to be earned in combination with points for anything else. 

Players usually only earn 'defensive points' in games where they're being put under a lot of pressure, where their team is generally having the worst of things. In games like that, they're unlikely to be keeping clean sheets, or featuring well in the Bonus Points - or coming up with any attacking contributions. 'Defensive points' can be a very nice consolation in a game in which your player's team take a bit of a battering; but a good 'defcon' number is rarely allied with a really good weekly points return. (And so, since you're usually rotating out your weakest 1 or 2 defenders, and sometimes your weakest midfielder - you probably often won't be playing your 'defcon monster' picks anyway: because the games that give them the best prospect of earning the 'defensive points' are games in which you don't fancy them to pick up more than 4 points, and the rest of your squad really should be able to do better than that.)

6)  'Defensive contributions' don't register very strongly under the BPS.

You get massively more credit under the 'Bonus Points System' for overall game involvement: a defensive player who gets on the ball a lot and registers a high percentage for pass completion will almost always out-rank one who just has a big day on the 'defensive contributions'. The 'defcons' may occasionally have enough of an impact to raise a player into the bonus points (though, usually, just a single one), in a sterile, low-scoing game where nobody achieves much of a BPS score; but that's only going to amount to a handful of extra points a season, at best. 

7)  The impact of the 'defensive points' last season was massively amplified by other - freakish! - factors.

Last season was - if you allow for the 'defensive points' (probably worth 100-150 points for most people) and the new additional chips (perhaps worth an extra 10-50 points together) - one of the lowest-scoring in the history of the game; and the lowest-scoring ever for midfielders: almost all of the usual highest points-producers - Palmer, Saka, Mbeumo, Cunha, Maddison, Wirtz, Gakpo, Maddison, Mitoma, etc., etc. - suffered seasons blighted by patchy, disppointing form and/or repeated or long-term injuries. Thus, the fact that so many central defensive midfielders finished fairly near the top of the midfield rankings last year, largely as a result of their 'defensive points', is unlikely to be repeated. In fact, only Rice and and Anderson crept into the Top Five midfielders (and Casemiro and and Garner were just in the Top Ten), so - that's still not heavy representation in the upper rankings. And in a more 'normal' season, you'd expect that at least 10 or 12 of the more prolific goalscorers and creators in the position category would comfortably outscore all the defensive midfelders. (Moreover, all of those top CDM performers last year had their ranking buoyed by an unusual number of attacking contributions as well; that's also unlikely to be repeated this year. And a key part of their appeal was their overall consistency, a steady drip-drip-drip of points through most of the season. This means that they were almost always being outperformed over shorter runs of games by several midfielders on a short-lived streak of good attacking form, and thus never really deserved a place in the squad - even though their end-season totals were quite impressive.)

So,.... I'm inclined to think that the allure of the 'defensive points' is a dangerous distraction.

The online forums at the moment are full of people asking Who are the best 'defcon' players?? 

As I said above, we can't necessarily have very high confidence that any of last season's best 'defcon' players will get the same return on these points this year, even if their level of performance is identical. (And there are other issues too: Van Dijk and Tarkowski are getting old, Senesi and Lacroix and Anderson have changed clubs, Garner is injured going into the start of the season, and... Crystal Palace and their previously impressive defence might fall apart without Oliver Glasner.)

And there are a few players who return pretty well on the 'defensive contributions' but offer little prospect of regular points for anything else. Some of the most consistent producers of these points are from weaker teams, who are regularly taking a battering; you generally want to stay away from teams that are going to be foundering down in the bottom third of the table.

Is is best to target defensive players from teams who concede fairly few goals. Teams who concede few goals will also pick up a decent number of clean sheets. No-one this season is going to get anywhere near Arsenal's remarkable haul of 19 clean sheets last time (not even Arsenal!!); but even 7 or 8 or 9 over the season is worth having. And for defenders, it's crucial to escape the slow attrition of shedding points as more goals are conceded; you have to try to avoid players who often take a pasting (this is why gambling on defenders from the promoted clubs, just because they're so cheap, very rarely pays off.)

And because they're 'in games' a lot of the time, not constantly being overwhelmed and only fighting rearguard actions, these sorts of teams have better prospects of picking up an above-average number of attacking contributions too (Sunderland's defenders did particularly well on this last season, for example). The best defenders at teams like this will probably be posting good 'defcon' numbers as well - but they'll be picking up plenty of points for other things too. And those other points are likely to be more reliable and more predictable.  So, that's what your main focus should be on.  'Defensive points' are nice to have, but they're a collateral benefit of being an all-around 'good defensive prospect' in FPL - not the main deciding factor for the selection. 'Defcon' potential can break a tie between two players who appear to you to be inseparable on every other metric; but if you choose a player for their 'defcon' record alone, there are almost certainly going to be alternative picks who might fare slightly less well on the 'defcon' numbers but are likely to do much better overall.