Defensive premiums aren't usually worth it

There is a certain special glamour, a mystical 'aura' of invincibility attaching to a few giants of the game in the defender category: Van Dijk, Gabriel and Saliba, and, last season, Milenkovic and Murillo. Plus, of course, in most seasons, there have usually been at least a few progressive full-backs who seemed to offer the prospect of significant attacking returns: Trippier, White, Alexander-Arnold, Munoz, Gvardiol, Porro, Ait-Nouri.

Very nice to have for your club in real-world football; but this can be of tenuous benefit, if any, for FPL.

Attacking returns from defenders have been on the decline over the last several years, and particularly so in the last two or three (arguably Pep's influence, again), as it's become more common for progressive full-backs to tuck into central midfield, rather than pushing all the way down the flanks to overlap the wide attackers and try to supply balls directly into the box. Even the best of them haven't really lit any big fires in the past couple of seasons. If a player of this type has a really good season, they're still likely to be out at the front of the defender rankings - but probably not by the kind of big margins we've sometimes seen in the past; they might only be posting 10-15 points more than the best centre-backs.

And the best centre-backs, the Van Dijks and Gabriels.... will sometimes get outstripped not only by a couple of outstanding full-backs but by a few fellow centre-backs who are less well-known, less fancied (like Milenkovic last year).  Even when they do stay head-and-shoulders above the field,.... well, that head-and-shoulders gap over the best of the rest might not actually be that large. And the differential advantage might not be worth it, when some positional rivals who cost 1.0 or 1.5 million less are posting returns very nearly as good. That extra money spent in midfield will probably buy you more additional points.

It's also worth remembering that most defensive points are earned collectively; so, the weakest and/or cheapest member of a back-line will get almost exactly the same points as its strongest link. If Ibrahima Konate is cheaper than Virgil Van Dijk, you're probably better off going with him; if Micky van de Ven is cheaper than Pedro Porro, you're probably better off going with him; if Jake O'Brien is cheaper than James Tarkowski, you're probably better off going with him.

A few teams do have such a massively greater prospect of clean sheets than the rest of the league that it may be worth paying 6.0 million for one of their defenders: Arsenal and Liverpool this year are very tempting again, of course, and probably also Chelsea and Nottingham Forest,... maybe Newcastle. I'd usually consider getting 1 or 2 defenders around the 6.0 million mark - but not more than that. And if you can find decent alternatives at 5.5 or 5.0, go for them instead.

[Things are complicated this year by a slight upward shift in overall defender prices. I haven't had time to attempt a full breakdown of this, but it looks like there are considerably more players than usual priced at 5.5 and 5.0, rather than 4.5 this year - presumably to reflect the slightly enhanced points prospects created by the introduction of additional 'defensive points' this season.]