Possible Picks - 2025 [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

As last year, I don't think the 5.5 keepers really justify their price-tag. Liverpool looked uncharacteristically vulnerable to the counter-attack in their Community Shield defeat to Crystal Palace the other day; and they have a much trickier opening run of fixtures than last year. So, although I think Alisson is again likely to be among the frontrunners for 'best keeper' over the season, it might be a bit risky to bring him in at the start. Pickford has been in outstanding form for the past few years, and has been monstering the 'saves' points; while the defence in front of him has proved surprisingly robust too - though not without its wobbles (Everton started last season really poorly, remember; that might happen again). And it's really hard to judge the 'difficulty' of Everton's fixtures: they are essentially a side whose ceiling is hanging on to a lower mid-table position and not getting sucked down into the relegation zone - they don't really have any easy opponents. I think Pickford might well come out on top of the pile for the third straight season, but not by enough of a margin to make him a clearly preferable pick over one of the cheaper options.  If Alisson should get injured, his new understudy Georgi Mamardashvili, at only 4.5 million, could become a very tempting pick.

While in most recent seasons it has looked smarter to start with two 4.5-million-pound keepers, this year the strongest options are probably Sels or Henderson (solid all-round teams on an improving trend, with very niggardly defences - and an outstanding pair of keepers too), who are now priced at 5.0 million. 

Robert Sanchez (also at 5.0) is proving a very popular choice this year as well, after his outstanding performance in the Final of the Club World Cup last month. However, I worry that there are still many weaknesses in his game, still a propensity to the occasional costly error. Although he looks to have taken some massive steps forward in recent months, it shouldn't be forgotten that for most of last season, many Chelsea fans and the vast majority of pundits were baying for him to be replaced - by anyone at all, even his not particularly impressive understudy, Filip Jörgensen. More importantly, though, with very strong defensive sides, you usually get a stronger points differential over alternate picks from choosing one of their defenders rather than the keeper; and sides at the top end of the table probably have a lot of attacking players you'd like to have too. So, even if Sanchez were to be the best keeper this year (and I very much doubt that), he still wouldn't be the best goalkeeper pick - because you have to save your club quota of three selections for other, even more valuable Chelsea options. This is the decisive argument against David Raya as well (that, and the fact that Arsenal are usually so good defensively that he doesn't get to make that many saves!).

Altay Bayindir would be a bold, left-field pick. 5.0 is expensive for a back-up keeper, but Onana's form has been so abysmal that he's completely lost the confidence of United fans - and perhaps of his teammates as well - and now looks very likely to be sold or dropped. I probably wouldn't take the chance on picking Bayindir until we know that's happening; but if it does, he could be worth considering. With their impressive new forward line, United could be a much more dangerous proposition this season; and they've usually managed to keep a fairly tight defence, even when the rest of the team was misfiring dreadfully over the last few years. (And apparently Onana has a 'hamstring problem' at the moment, which might keep him out for a few weeks [although I suspect that might just be a smokescreen for a transfer negotiation...]; so - Are you feeling lucky, punk?)

Liverpool's outstanding second-string Caoimhin Kelleher quickly became the most popular 4.5-million-pound pick after his move to Brentford. However, while he's likely to be a frontrunner for the number of saves (as was his otherwise fairly mediocre predecessor, Mark Flekken, last season), Brentford - reeling from the loss of their long-time manager and some of their best players over the summer - are widely predicted to be deep in the relegation fight this year. It will certainly be a very tough season for them; and even when their attacking dimension was looking more robust, they always leaked a lot of goals. Thus, I think that, excellent as Kelleher is, he's a very risky pick at this club. (Also, there's an injury question-mark over him at the moment....)

The other 4.5 options who've returned very well in recent years are Sa, Areola, and Verbruggen, and Petrovic might now join that roster - although it's a worry that they're all in sides who've struggled for consistency, and tend to concede rather a lot (not so much Bournemouth last year; but this time out, they're bound to have some struggles after having almost their entire defence poached during the summer!). And, unfortunately, they all have pretty tough early fixture runs. Wolves, I fancy, will probably come through the first 8 or 10 weeks the best - but it's a tough call.

Martin Dubravka at Burnley (who had an absolutely stellar defensive record in the Championship last year; but an awful lot of that was down to a superhuman season from their young keeper Jamie Trafford, who's now gone to warm the bench at City; and it's very doubtful if that robustness can hold up in the top flight anyway) and perhaps Karl Darlow at Leeds look like being 4.0 starters this year, which will make them popular budget-saving options.

If you choose to adopt the - risky, non-ideal - tactic of taking a non-playing 4.0 keeper to free up an extra half a million for another spot in the squad, the only sensible route to it is to take the club back-up to your first-choice keeper (that way, you have a guaranteed replacement if your starter ever goes AWOL). Bentley at Wolves is really the only good option here. However, there doesn't seem to be any point in doing that this year, when there are 4.0 starting options. (Kinsky, I think, is possibly the best 4.0 keeper, at least in overall context, since Spurs [yes, despite their horror show last season] are a much better team than Wolves or Burnley or Leeds; but I can't see any case for taking Vicario as your No. 1 pick. I actually think Kinsky is a better all-around keeper, and would have fancied him to displace Vicario as the starter sooner or later; but it seems they're likely to let him go out on loan.)

It's particularly worth keeping in mind the fixture pairings for choosing keepers - so that you can, if possible, guarantee that one of your picks will always have a home game.  On that basis, Henderson/Sa or Sels/Petrovic look the best options, with Areola/Darlow perhaps being a tempting - but much riskier - cheaper alternative.

Defenders

Arsenal are likely again to be way out in front as favourites to keep the most clean sheets and concede the fewest goals. Liverpool and Chelsea might give them a good run, though. Forest, Palace, Newcastle, Everton, and perhaps last year's disasters Spurs and Manchester United are likely to be the 'best of the rest' defensively. I don't think I'd look at any other clubs, unless they have a very good attacking full-back option.

Ben White - although it's been forgotten during his long injury absence last season - is always the best Arsenal option, when he plays. It's unfortunate that he might now face some rotation with Timber and Calafiori. Myles Lewis-Skelly - who looks like he might be getting the nod as the preferred starter at left-back? - or Timber, if we find him getting regular starts (probably only if there's an injury to someone else..) could be very tempting options at 5.5. Of the 'big two', Saliba, because of his pace, gets tasked with policing quick counter-attacks, and that leads to him often making unfortunate fouls which can result in yellow or even red cards. While Gabriel is almost invariably the main target man at attacking set-pieces, and is thus slightly more likely to come up with the occasional goal or assist. They're both likely to do very well on the new 'defensive points', with probably not much to choose between them on that. But overall, Gabriel almost invariably has a small but significant edge.

Manchester City seem to have lost their way badly on defensive solidity over the past couple of seasons. And in the Club World Cup this summer, they again looked very porous through the middle, especially against the swift counter-attacking style of Al Hilal, who caused the major upset of the tournament in putting them out in the 'Round of 16'. Pep has become far too reliant on superman Rodri being able to singlehandedly plug all the holes like the heroic little Dutch boy; but he's temporarily sidelined with another injury,... and suddenly engulfed in transfer rumours. If they lose him now, I wouldn't bet on them managing a Top Six finish. Even if they do rediscover their former invincibility, Pep Roulette is a very real hazard for FPL managers: the rotations at that club can be so frequent and so unpredictable that even their very best players cannot be relied upon to start every week. Ait-Nouri and Gvardiol are massively popular choices at the moment, because of their impressive numbers in the past for attacking contributions. However, Gvardiol now seems likely to be starting most games in the centre of defence, where he won't be able to get forward very much to threaten the opposition penalty area. And I fear Ait-Nouri, even if he manages to keep a regular start (and there is a lot of competition for that left-back slot), is likely to be much less productive than he was at Wolves, as Pep doesn't seem to like having his full-backs push all the way up to overlap with his wingers any more (although that makes you wonder why they bought him in the first place, as that is basically his whole game; but very often City's recruitment has appeared completely divorced from what their manager is actually doing on the pitch - remember Jack Grealish???). And for me, at 6.0 million, they're both far too expensive - for a likely points return that will almost certainly be significantly lower than last year (at least, if you leave out any extra 'defensive points' they pick up; Gvardiol is likely to be much the stronger of the two on that; but neither of them are going to be amongst the top performers on this new metric).

Liverpool's new defensive signings Frimpong and Kerkez are attracting a lot of interest; but they're both much stronger in their attacking contribution than they are as defenders (Frimpong, bless him, really isn't a defender at all, and is probably rather being groomed as an eventual successor to Salah), and so they both might be at some risk of minutes-sharing with Bradley and Robertson. Van Dijk is obviously their most dependable option; but he doesn't tend to chip in attacking points very much, despite his huge aerial presence at set-pieces in the opposition box, and I always feel that his colleague Konate, if he can stay fit, is going to give you almost as many points for half a million less. But I'm not convinced that any Liverpool defender is this year going to offer enough value to be worth one of your club quota picks, when they have so many strong attacking options: Salah, Wirtz, Gakpo, and Ekitike all seem very likely to be better picks from that club.

Marc Cucurella is obviously the most popular pick from the Chelsea defence, as he's probably the most nailed of their options, and sometimes offers a lot of attacking threat as well (although he is a bit of a naughty chap, and picks up a few too many cards for my liking). Gusto and James would be very tempting options too, if they weren't likely to be sharing minutes with each other (and it always feels like only a matter of time before Reece's hamstring pings again....)  Tosin might be a useful budget option at only 4.5; he might have a much better chance of a regular start now that Colwill's picked up a long-term injury (although new arrival Jorrel Hato could be the preferred replacement instead).

At Forest, we have the rare-ish phenomenon of their centre-backs being so outstanding that they easily eclipse their full-backs as the most desirable defensive option. Neco Williams doesn't have a secure start, and Ola Aina isn't pushed forward often enough to provide much of an attacking threat (although he's certainly got the capacity for that). But Milenkovic and Murillo are both likely to be amongst the top performers on the new 'defensive points', as well as favourites to keep a lot of clean sheets (Forest have had a bit of a ropey pre-season - but almost no-one could score against them!), and offering the occasional attacking threat. I might incline slightly towards the Brazilian - who carries the ball forward superbly, and is thus more likely to pick up the occasional assist and, even if he doesn't, will usually gain a slight edge in garnering bonus points; his colleague's numbers last year were boosted by a crop of headed goals, and I fancy he won't do quite that well again this time.

One fears that Newcastle may be badly unsettled by the ugly transfer saga surrounding Isak. And if they lose him (as now looks almost certain) and fail to secure a good replacement (also seeming dangerously likely) their prospects for the season could be derailed. Also, being back in the Champions League is likely to put a severe strain on their not-terribly-deep squad. So, I have all kinds of reservations about picking any of their players at the moment - reservations which have nothing to do with the quality of those players. Fabian Schar would usually be my favoured pick from the club: very dependable, and possibly the best goal-threat of any defender in the League, as he has a tremendous shot on him as well as being a good header of the ball. Dan Burn is a great all-rounder (and remarkably fair; for a big, scary, and somewhat clumsy-looking chap, he picks up very few cards); although, alas, there may be some doubts about how much he might get rotated with Sven Botman. Tino Livramento (now likely free of any risk of rotation with Trippier) and Lewis Hall (if he's shaken off the effects of a major injury last season) are tempting options too; but I worry that Hall may be priced out at 5.5 million (a pretty outrageous tag to put on someone who missed half of last season!).

At Palace, Daniel Munoz is obviously the top pick (we're probably lucky he was only priced at 5.5 rather than 6.0, after the season he's just had!); but Marc Guehi and Chris Richards are also tempting, being weirdly under-priced at just 4.5 million. The worry here, of course, is how disruptive the possible departure of Guehi would be.

At Everton, Tarkowski's frequently massive numbers on the new 'defensive contributions' metric is making him the most popular pick. Although I think his young partner Branthwaite is likely to do just as well (and be less of an injury risk), while full-back Jake O'Brien - one of the breakout stars of last season - is likely to offer a little more attacking threat, and is half a million cheaper at 5.0.

At Spurs, Pedro Porro's silky skills going forward beguile a lot of people; but in the past he hasn't actually been deployed in a very advanced role all that often (he had one real purple patch for goals and assists a couple of years ago, but that was during a handful of games when he was really playing as an outright winger because of injuries to all the other players who usually fill that position); Thomas Frank has, at times, seemed to like swashbuckling wingbacks, so that potential might be better unlocked in the Spaniard this season; but I worry that he's a bit of a big gamble at his price-point, probably not quite worth 5.5 million. Especially not when two of his colleagues, Udogie and Van de Ven, might produce as well or better, for only 4.5 million. I'd probably go for Van de Ven, as he's likely to hoover up lots of the new 'defensive points', and carries the ball forward so well, and often at pace, that he creates far more attacking threat than almost any other centre-back. (It's just a pity that his hamstrings seem to be so fragile. He's probably not someone you should be expecting to rely on season-long; just make the most of him, while you can.)

Although I am modestly optimistic about Manchester United's prospects for a substantial improvement this season, there's still too much uncertainty about their defence for me to fancy any picks from them. Diogo Dalot would have been the best option, but it now looks as though Amad Diallo might have displaced him as the favoured right wing-back. Patrick Dorgu hasn't yet found his feet at the club. And there still doesn't seem to be a settled back-three (although Noussair Mazraoui might be the most tempting option, as his versatility ensures that he could start almost every week - on the left, the right, or in the middle!).  I suspect I'll probably have a United defender by the end of the season; but for now, they're a wait-and-see.

Antonee Robinson is probably the best crosser of a ball among our current crop of full-backs. But, unfortunately, he hasn't yet recovered fitness after having a knee surgery at the start of the summer break. Also, of course, his output fell off a cliff in the second half of last season; and while an injury niggle might have been partly responsible for that, my greater worry is that Fulham are fundamentally too weak a club to maintain much consistency of performance over a long spell. They have been mostly managing to punch massively above their weight for the last few years under Marco Silva, but they're essentially a bottom-third side who just about manage to scrabble up into the top half - and that doesn't really make them a very tempting source of FPL picks from any position. I really like their Calvin Bassey too; but I wouldn't pick him until we see what Fulham's early-season defensive form shapes up like.

Bournemouth had a pretty impressive defence last season - but they've lost almost all of it; so, they're a completely unknown quantity going into this season. Sole survivor in central defence, Marcos Senesi, might be worth giving a thought, at only 4.5 million. And their new left-back, Adrien Truffert also looks very promising. But either of these would be hugely speculative picks - and they are better avoided at the start of the season.

Brighton's new left-back, the Belgian Maxim De Cuyper, is attracting a lot of FPL interest - but I'm a sceptic. He has racked up some very impressive attacking numbers - but that's only in the rather uncompetitive Belgian league. And he is, by all accounts, a pretty horrible defender. I'm not even convinced he'll start regularly for Brighton, unless all their other options are injured.

Aaron Wan-Bissaka has proven an extremely popular early pick this year, as a result of his hot flush at the end of last season, when he started getting forward a lot and supplying dangerous balls into the box (something he's not been at all known for in his career to date). He's an excellent one-on-one defender as well, so will probably do very well out of the new 'defensive points'. Unfortunately, I think West Ham's prospects for this season look fairly dismal: I'm not convinced by Potter as a coach, and they don't seem to have done anything to reinforce their squad yet. It's difficult to see them finishing far off the bottom - and, indeed, they might well go down, if any of the newly promoted sides prove to be half-decent this year. Again, I don't think you want to risk taking defenders from sides that are likely to struggle, and might lose a lot of games, concede a lot of goals.

Aaron Hickey at Brentford certainly looks the best 4.0 defender prospect on paper; but having hardly kicked a ball in two years, there must be doubts about whether he'll ever get back to the kind of level he was showing in his prime - or indeed if he will be able to reclaim the starting slot at right-back,.. or if the new manager will allow him to advance so aggressively down the flank as he did before. Burnley's new left-back, Quilindschy Hartman (crazy name, crazy guy...), is probably the best of the rest, and will presumably be an immediate starter. Leeds's Gabriel Gudmundsson and Burnley's Maxime Esteve also look set to be nailed starters at only 4.0 million, but I worry that they might be the sort of desperate budget-enabler picks that prove to be a false economy. It seems pretty unlikely that any defender from one of the promoted sides will keep many clean sheets or low goals-against tallies,.... or do that much under the new 'defensive points' regime, or pick up bonus points, or anything else....  You need the prospect of more than 1 or 2 points per game, even from a second back-up defender!

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

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

How to choose the INITIAL SQUAD - my ultimate 'How To...'

In the earliest days of this blog, in 2024, I dropped a couple of short preliminary posts on choosing the initial squad: one on the constraints of the budget, and one on the need to abandon any thought of trying to pick a team that would be balanced and workable in real life (all left-footers, all wide players, all short and cross-eyed.... it's all good: the only thing you're interested in is their Fantasy points return, not how thay might gel together on the pitch in reality).

Then I followed up with this,  the would-be complete 'How to....'.  

I'll probably repost this largely unchanged at the start of every season.

Of course, many of the specific examples first used in 2024 will be less and less relevant in subsequent years. I'll try to weed out/update most of them; but a few may remain - use your common sense.

Some basic principles....

Focus on midfield

Midifielders get a point more than 'forwards' (5, rather than 4) for every goal scored. They also tend to be rather more likely than most of the game's 'forwards' to register assists.... and pick up bonus points. And, unlike 'forwards', they get free extra points for clean-sheet bonuses (only 1 per game; but that can add up nicely over the season, especially in teams with stronger defences). And, outside of the top handful of high-priced players, they tend to be rather cheaper than the 'forwards', sometimes quite a lot cheaper. So, attacking midfielders with exactly the same number of attacking contributions as the leading 'forwards' tend to get 20 or 30 or 40 pts per season more! The best midfield options in the game usually offer you more total points, and certainly more points-per-pound, than 'forwards'. (There are rarely more than 3 forwards in the top 10 or 12 overall FPL points scorers; often, only 1....)

And the formation rules only allow you to play a maximum of 7 midfielders and forwards. So... you really want to play 5 goalscoring midfielders as often as you can (and thus only 2 forwards; sometimes only 1 forward!).

The game generously classifies a lot of outright forwards as 'midfielders' (they claim they do this on the basis of last season's 'heat maps' for the players, but I'm not convinced...): Salah, Gakpo, Cunha, Mbeumo, Ndiaye, Semenyo, etc. There are also a lot of wingers who may score - and assist - almost as much as (or even more than) most of the game's 'forwards': Gordon, Barnes, Saka, Martinelli, Kudus, Kulusevski, Johnson, Neto, Mitoma, Bailey, Malen, Garnacho, Diallo, Hudson-Odoi, Elanga, Doku, Bobb, Kluivert, etc., etc.  And then there are some highly creative midfielders who also offer a very strong goal threat: Palmer, Wirtz, Eze, Foden, Cherki, Bernardo Silva, Odegaard, Bruno Fernandes, Maddison (when he gets fit again), Gibbs-White, Rogers, etc.

Usually only a few of the very best 'forwards' will outscore any of these attacking midfield options. So, the midfield is where you need to focus most of your attention - and most of your budget.

Two playing goalkeepers, but not too expensive

Now, some people favour the strategy of taking a main keeper and a back-up keeper from the same club, to save a little money (a lot of the second-string keepers are only 4.0 million); the thinking being that you'll have a guaranteed instant replacement if your first choice should get injured or dropped.

There's something to be said for that. But many of the second strings aren't actually that good; and having a keeper change forced on you in the middle of the season naturally disrupts the rest of the team a bit, especially the defence; so, you might well get significantly weaker returns from that back-up keeper.

And more importantly, you probably want to try to keep even the best keepers away from the toughest fixtures: anyone could ship a ton of goals away to Liverpool or City or Arsenal, or maybe Newcastle and Spurs and Villa too... or any team that's currently in a hot run of scoring form. So, having two decent keepers that you can rotate around the most daunting fixtures can be very valuable. (at least 20-30 extra points per season; even if it doesn't also save you a few times from starting without a keeper, if your first choice has an unexpected problem, and you've left yourself without a back-up).

Almost all defences do much better in home games as well. So, it's worth considering a pair of keepers who largely alternate their home and away fixtures. This page on the FPL site shows you which teams are exactly fixture-matched in this way. But there are other combinations that work pretty well most of the time - for fixture difficulty as well as home/away advantage. Last year the Leno/Areola pairing fitted together very nicely.

So, I think trying to save money with a non-playing second keeper is a dangerous ploy, a false economy. But you also don't want to spend too much money on keepers. They don't score that many points overall (Jordan Pickford was the only one who made it into the 'Top 25' overall points-scorers in FPL in the last few seasons; often there are no keepers that high up the ranking...). And there tends to be less of a differential points spread between keepers: the top player occasionally opens up a bit of a gap on the field, but it's rarely more than 15-20 points, often a lots less. Hence, it's difficult to justify paying a 'premium' price for one of the very best keepers, when some of the 5.0 and 4.5-million-pound options will probably do almost as well (and maybe, if you're lucky, even a little better). [That holds for the start of the season, at least. In the last few months, you might have some more budget to spare - because you've grown your squad value, or because some of the premium players you started with have lost form or got injured - and you can then perhaps consider upgrading to one of the top-scoring goalkeepers.]

Also... Beware of keepers from the top sides! It is paradoxical, but... Arsenal in particular are so good defensively that their keepers rarely get called upon to make saves. And the 'saves' points can actually be as important - or even more important - to a goalkeeper's points total as his clean sheets. Teams down in the relegation zone often have keepers who produce quite decent points, even if they hardly ever manage to keep a clean sheet.

Beware of central defenders

Clean sheets are, of course, hugely valuable. Although in recent seasons, with Liverpool and even City losing a bit of their defensive solidity, there haven't been as many of them. Maybe only one or two teams will post really good numbers for that. Last year, only Forest, Arsenal, Everton (?!), and Palace managed more than 10 clean sheets,... and not many more; Arsenal's 18 in 24/25 was a freak we're not likely to see soon repeated.  But some lower-ranked teams can be unexpectedly resilient; and if no-one's managing better than 11 or 12, teams that might grab 8 or 9 suddenly come into contention.

However, all members of a defence get the same points for a clean sheet - regardless of how good a defender they are. (Most people would agree that William Saliba is Arsenal's best defender, and maybe the best defender in the League now - but he doesn't get any more points for that!)  So, the top-scoring defenders are almost always full-backs, especially very advanced full-backs (or outright wing-backs), because they offer a better prospect of some attacking returns - assists, and maybe even the occasional goal - as well as defensive actions. Admittedly, the additional 'defensive points' newly introduced this season could shake things up a bit; but while it will boost the overall returns for a lot of solid central defenders - but previously fairly unappealing picks for FPL - it's unlikely to elevate them above those who provide strong possibilities of attacking returns.

There are exceptions to this. There have been some defenders who mysteriously hoover up the bonus points every week (even when their side has lost!), because they get on the ball and play a lot of passes in addition to completing a lot of defensive actions: Cristian Romero was a prime example of that early on in his Spurs career, but subsequently dropped off a lot in their disastrous 24/25 campaign. (But NB: changes to the system for allocating bonus points introduced into FPL in 24/25, with defenders and keepers much more heavily penalised for conceding, means they now get far fewer bonus points in games where they don't keep a clean sheet; again, the new 'defensive points' might counteract that to a small extent - but last season, defenders got far fewer bonus points than previously.)  Some central defenders don't just step up into deep midfield occasionally, but go marauding all the way forward and contribute around the edge of the opposition box too (Antonio Rudiger was a monster for this at Chelsea a few seasons ago!). Some are so aerially dominant that they become 'agents of chaos' in attacking set-pieces and pick up a surprisingly large number of assists and goals that way (the late, great Tyrone Mings was a prime exponent; can he be again, now that he's finally back from that ACL injury?). And of course, most central defenders can occasionally be a goal-threat at set pieces (but you shouldn't get too carried away by that; very few defenders score more than 2 or 3 goals in a season; and even fewer do that in successive seasons; when defenders score 2 or 3 goals in a short space of time, it's almost always a transient streak.... not an emerging trend!).

Finally, as with keepers, there isn't usually that much of a differential points-spread between defenders (so, to some extent, it barely matters who you pick!). There are often a few players who are well ahead of the pack: we've seen some exceptional returns in recent years from Cancelo, Alexander-Arnold, and Trippier. But there's not usually all that much to choose between the best of the rest: two years ago Ben White ended up well out in front, but last year his appearances were heavily curtailed by injury. In general, very few defenders average better than 3.5 to 4.0 points per game, with 4.5 usually being the very best; and the extra points for defenders this year won't get that up by more than 0.25 to 0.5 points per game. Hence, it's very difficult to justify spending a premium price for a defender. You might go for one or two of them - people like Gabriel, Saliba, or Van Dijk, if they look likely to be fit and in-form. But there are usually a lot of good options at the 5.0 and 4.5 price points - and even a few likely starters at only 4.0 million.

Beware of central midfielders (BUT... they may have their place!)

Rodri and Caicedo and Rice are fantastic players, yes, fan favourites, and crucial to the way their teams play.... but they're not likely to get anywhere near the top of the FPL scoring charts. [Although, Declan Rice, increasingly being allowed a more progressive role last season, and becoming more of a regular goal-threat, and a fair old monster for the 'defensive points' too, could be set to become one the dark horse picks of this season.]

You only get 5 midfield picks; and, as I outlined above, there are 20 or 30 possibilities who are regular goal-scorers - most of these should comfortably out-point even the best central defensive midfielders (if they stay fit and in-form...). Although, again, the new 'defensive points' might slightly alter this calculus, as a few central defensive midfielders could well earn 40 or so extra points like this.

And, yes, there might be exceptions.... (There are always some exceptions to every 'rule'!)  There are some central midfielders who are more box-to-box, and get involved in the attacking third as well quite a bit (e.g., Bruno Guimaraes or Alexis Macallister). There are some who at least sometimes play a much more advanced role - and/or may be on set-pieces or penalties. There may be others who are transitioning into a more progressive role where they will sometimes go on a bit of a scoring streak (e.g., Declan Rice). And there are some who have the happy knack of coming up with just a few goals a season, but somehow always in the most crucial games (Rodri!). Now, none of these are usually likely to be anywhere near the 'Top 10' FPL points-scorers in midfield, but... if you look at the points-per-pound return  (select the 'Value (season)' option for the display on the FPL stats page), you tend to find players like Rice, Rodri, Guimaraes, Soucek and Andreas Perreira up near the top of that chart.

So...  for the 4th or 5th midfield spot, when your budget's starting to get a bit thin, players like this are worth considering. But you certainly want at least 3 of your midfield picks - and, if possible, 4 or 5! - to be regular goal-scorers. And, as the season goes on, you'll be looking to rotate new players into these last two slots pretty regularly, to try to keep taking advantage of players who are hitting a short spell of hot form.

Value-for-money

That 'Value (season)' stats listing on the FPL website is one of the most valuable tools for squad selection. You always want to be thinking about getting the most bang-for-your buck from every pound of your squad budget; and this page will help you make choices to do that. If you're torn between two options, bear in mind that the one with the higher points total last season might be unreasonably priced. If his rival has only slightly fewer points, but a much better points-per-pound return - he's probably the one you should go with.

However, some of the super-premium players are worth having, regardless of their unimpressive points-per-pound. Haaland's points-per-pound figures are bound to be fairly terrible. Salah's aren't great either, even last season, despite his record-shattering total. But players like these offer you the prospect of a huge overall points return. Moreover, they return uncommonly reliably, 'blank' relatively infrequently; and they usually produce quite a few really huge hauls each season - which it can be painful to miss out on.  Palmer and Saka, and perhaps a few others, now seem to have joined this elite corps of players too - players who are 'above budget': you have to consider including them regardless of how much they cost or what their points-per-pound value is.

But as you go through the selection process, the value-for-money consideration becomes more and more important. When you only have 5 or 6 or 7 slots left to fill, and your budget is down to perhaps 30 or 35 milllion, it is absolutely vital to target the players who offer you the highest points-per-pound.

Forwards??

The approach to selection here varies greatly from year to year. A few seasons back, we had a weird situation where almost none of the weaker teams had a decent forward, and just about all of the more promising options (Vardy, Bamford, Ings, Calvert-Lewin,...) missed most of the season with injuries - leaving Harry Kane as just about the only worthwhile forward pick for long periods. There happened to be a lot of high-returning attacking full-backs that year too, so we found ourselves often going with a 4-5-1, or occasionally even a 5-4-1 formation - but that's a bit of a freak.

Three years ago, it was looking like Haaland was an inevitable pick for everyone, massively ahead of any of his rivals (except perhaps for Kane, who was getting ready to depart). But then Ollie Watkins began to show that he was a significant force too; and the season before last he actually out-pointed Haaland (though only because the lanky Viking missed two months of the season with injury). Alexander Isak has also established himself well ahead of the field, but is unfortunately mired in an unseemly transfer wrangle at the beginning of this season, and likely to be unavailable for a while. 

Since, as I explained above, it's usually not a good idea to start more than 2 of your strikers (as there are plenty of goalscoring midfielders to choose from, who give you more points for the same goal contribution - and often for slightly less money too), you can probably save money with your third striker pick and go for a promising prospect in the 5.5-6.5 range. [As it happened, there were so many good performances in this price bracket last year - with veterans Wood, Welbeck, Raul and Vardy suddenly showing great form again early in the season, as well as strong newcomers Delap, Strand Larsen, and Evanilson - that you could in fact take all three strikers from the cheap end of the spectrum. With so many of the usually high-scoring midfielders having a spotty start to the year, it even became attractive to start all three strikers quite often! This, again, was a real freak circumstance. 3-5-2 is almost invariably the strongest default formation; 3-4-3, only an occasional variation,]

I feel that the 'mid-priced' forwards are often priced out of contention, if the premium/super-premium options (or one of them anyway) really prove irresistible, and there's lots of good value to be found in the lower price brackets. This year, however, with Jarrod Bowen being reclassified as a 'forward' for the first time, Joao Pedro looking very dangerous immediately on joining Chelsea, and three promising newcomers joining the league in Ekitike, Sesko, and Gyokeres - there's rather more choice in this category than there has been for some time.

These days, whether or not we feel we can afford Haaland (plus 2 or 3 other top-price players, such as Salah, Palmer or Saka) is invariably the huge pre-season question for FPL enthusiasts.

Beware false economies - you NEED your bench!

A lot of FPL managers fall in thrall to the concept of the 'budget enabler': the idea that it's worth getting a few players at the cheapest possible price-point because it will give you a little bit more to spend on your starting eleven. Now, sure, it is useful - necessary, even - to have a few very cheap players to make the budget work for you. (This year, I'd probably go for 2 goalkeepers at only 4.5 each, 1 or perhaps even 2 defenders at 4.0, and most of the rest at 4.5; and a very cheap third forward and fifth midfielder.)

But a lot of people just grab blindly for the very cheapest options, without giving any thought to whether they bring any value to the squad. As I said above, every pound of that initial 100 million is important; every single one of them needs to be put to work. If you have a bench stacked with reserve-team players who will never get a start, you are storing up trouble for yourself!

The rate of injuries in the modern game has become insane over the last few years. Even 15 or 20 years ago, serious hamstring problems would only crop up a few times a season at any club, and ACL tears were quite a rarity across the entire League; last year, almost every single club had 3, 4, 5 players ruled out with injuries like that at any one time. I once had to replace 55 players over a season because of injury (about 20 more than my previous worst season!); and that was serious injuries, not just minor knocks that might sideline someone for 2 or 3 gameweeks. You might get some sort of injury problem almost every week.... sometimes 2 or 3 or 4 in one week! And they often happen at the last-minute (even sometimes in the pre-match warm-ups!!), giving you no opportunity to transfer the affected player out. If you don't have a playing bench, sooner or later - probably sooner - you are going to find yourself putting out a team of only 10 (or 9, or 8...) men, and haemorrhaging points as a result.

And with so much pressure on the (these days, entirely inadequate) number of Free Transfers, you can't afford to waste those on short-term changes: if a player has a minor knock, or a suspension, or is likely to be rested for one weekend after some gruelling European ties, or just faces a particularly unpromising fixture next... you want to drop him to the bench, not move him out of the squad. That kind of thing also happens a lot.

So, by all means look for some ultra-cheap players to fill out the squad. But make sure they are regular starters - or at least have a decent chance of becoming so.  And try to get the best players you can: there are still choices to be made, even at these very low price-points. And it is worth paying just a little bit extra for a bench player who can actually give you a chance of some decent points, if you need to call on him.

Have an eye to 'investment picks'

On a related point to that last one... Another fatal drawback to choosing cheap players who don't play is that they become toxic assets. A lot of managers have probably included them because they mistakenly believe that they will play, or at least hope that they will; and they will start selling them off when they discover that they are nowhere near to getting a start (or they just discover early on how badly they need a proper bench!) - and their prices will crash.

It is essential to try to steadily boost your squad value - so that, after a few months, you might have an extra 2 or 3 million pounds available with which to upgrade your squad... perhaps get in one more of those coveted premium-price players that you couldn't quite afford at the start of the season (and/or upgrade your bench a little!).

In order to boost squad value, you need to avoid any players whose price is likely to drop (or quickly get rid of them if their price starts dropping), but seek out players whose price is likely to rise. These are what I call 'investment picks'. You might not actually fancy them for a long-term hold; you might never put them in your starting eleven, except in an emergency - but they can help you to grow your budget. The best prospects for this are usually fairly cheap. (Cheap players are usually lower-owned initially, but also more attractive as new acquisitions because of their accessibility. And price increases are mainly dependent on the percentage change in ownership - so, a relatively low-owned player who quickly gains 100,000 or 200,000 more owners is likely to shoot up in price.)  They are often conspicuously under-priced - either because they had a disappointing season last year (perhaps just because of injury absences, rather than actually playing poorly when they did turn out), or because they're new to the League (transfers in from overseas, or promoted youth team players) and no-one really knows how good they might be yet. And they're often on the brink of breaking into the first team, but it's not clear if they're quite there yet. If you can correctly anticipate that someone is going to get a run in the first team because of an injury or a crash in form for the usual starter.... you've got a good 'investment pick'. 

Watch out for budget 'windfalls'

A lot of people seem to be grumbling at the moment that there aren't as many good options available at the lowest price-points as there have been in some previous seasons (I'd disagree with that, but...). Perhaps the main reason for that is that it's still too early. Late transfer activity usually brings in some very good new potential picks, often attractively priced down at around 5.0 million, or even 4.5 million - or, occasionally, if you're very, very lucky, at 4.0 million. The 'poster boy' for this phenomenon is, of course, Cole Palmer, who went from perpetual bench-warmer at City to instant Ballon d'Or fodder with Chelsea (well, you know, if they'd had any European football that year...). But in recent years we've also seen Areola's sudden promotion over Fabianski in goal for West Ham, and Neco Williams making an eve-of-season transfer from the Liverpool bench to a start with Nottingham Forest. So, 4.0-million pound starters, even, occasionally, quite good ones, can just drop in your lap out of nowhere right before the Big Kick-Off.  Be patient, and keep your fingers crossed.

In particular, keep an eye on low-key domestic moves. Very often 'Big Six' clubs will sell or loan out some of their surplus squad players or rising youth team stars to one of the lower-table or newly promoted sides: these can be particularly useful low-budget picks. But such moves often happen very late in the day; and they don't usually make big headlines.

And FORGET about 'differentials'!!!

This is another topic that should one day get a post all of its own (maybe a whole series of 'em!). Suffice it to say that I find this one of the most worthless, the most exasperating, the most overused and misused of all FPL jargon terms. The problem with it is that most managers seem to have a very muddled idea of what it really ought to mean: for most of them, in fact, it seems to be primarily interpreted as: 'Avoid good players because a lot of other managers will have them...'  This is, of course, self-harming nonsense. Utterly BATSHIT CRAZY, in fact.

People glance through the forums where FPL obsessives (like me, I know...) are frenziedly sharing their draft squads (already: long before the season starts!), and if they see someone with several of the same players they have, they moan, "Oh, he's got ALL the same players as me." (NO, he doesn't; he might have 6 or 7 or 8 of the same players; but that's it.)  Then he finds one or two more who also seem to have some of the same players as him, and moans again, "EVERYONE has the same squad as me."  (NO, they don't. A lot of managers may have many of the same players as you.... but NOT  EVERYONE.)

Even the guys or gals who are most like you in their picks probably have no more than 7 or 8 of the same players. That means you have at least 3 unique picks in your starting eleven. And probably an entirely different bench. And maybe different captain and/or vice-captain picks as well. Your teams/squads are perfectly well differentiated. Even across the whole 10 million or so teams that will be regustered over the next few weeks, it is extremely unlikely that there will ever be more than a relatively small handful - and in many gameweeks, absolutely none at all - that are an exact match for yours. (And probably only ever for the starting eleven, not the whole squad. And that will only ever be a one-off, for one gameweek. NOBODY is going to duplicate your team for the entire season,... or even for two weeks in succession.)

Stop fretting about how many other people might be choosing a particular player. Just choose the players you think are going to bring in the most points... and see how you get on.

GOOD LUCK TO EVERYONE  FOR THE SEASON AHEAD!!!

A scale of points

 

Following on from last week's observations on the significance of 'price steps' in FPL, here are a few thoughts on the similar tiering of points performance.

Of course, you don't know what points totals players are actually going to reach until the end of the season. And many of them will come up short of these thresholds because they've missed a significant number of games while injured or out-of-favour. 

Before the start of the season, you have to make your best guess as to what each player's final level is likely to be.  And then during the campaign, you have to try to calculate for yourself what end-season total a player is tracking for, if he's producing reasonably consistently while he has a regular start. 

You're looking for what a full-season total would be, on the basis of recent form.

Also, obviously, the 'levels' below aren't absolutely rigid: their boundaries are blurry - the top-end of one bracket is usually interchangeable with the bottom of the one above. However.....

I like to think of FPL player points-potential in the following steps or levels:

Level 0:  Less than 120 points for the season

Not worth considering. AVOID like the plague. Unless they happen to come into a really hot streak for a brief spell! That can happen to almost anyone....

Level 1:  120-139 pts

You really only want to consider going this low for your 4th and 5th defender spots, who are primarily for back-up only, and who you hope you might rarely or never call on. However, you assuredly will have to use both of them sooner or later (and not only for a possible Bench Boost!), so you should only consider going this low on points potential in your initial squad. Even these marginal positions need to be upgraded to Level 2 as soon as is convenient.

Level 2:  140-159 points

You want both goalkeepers and all your defenders (even the two back-ups!) to be solidly in this category - and, ideally, towards the upper end of it.

Level 3:  160-179 points

You'd like your top keeper choice, and at least one or two of your defenders to make it into this category - but that's a very big ask; it might not be possible every year. (Although there's much uncertainty at the moment arising from the abrupt introduction of the new 'defensive points'. It is possible that rather more defenders, and even a few defensive midfielders might just about get up to this level, thanks to the extra points now available to them.) But at the very least, you'd expect those players to be around the Level 2/Level 3 cusp.

It is very likely that your 2nd and 3rd forwards and your 4th and 5th midfielders will only be at this level for the season (perhaps even a little lower!); but these are the slots you need to be most often rotating, to try to keep catching players who are coming into hot runs of points-scoring form. That can elevate your effective returns for these squad slots to Level 4, or even perhaps Level 5.

Level 4:  180-199 points

You hope that your three best midfielders, one or two of your best forwards, and perhaps occasionally - if you're lucky - one exceptionally high-performing defender might get up to this level. If they do, they're probably players that you can hang on to for an extended spell; sometimes - though rarely - a full season-long hold.

Level 5:  200-219 points

This is starting to get into the realms of 'wishful thinking'. Only a handful of players ever get up to this kind of level for the season; and it is possible that, in certain years, no-one will. However, you have to watch out for the season-projection on emerging form, and recognise that some players will produce at this level for only a short run of games at a time. Try to be on them when they do!

Level 6:  220-239 points

This is now a very rarefied level. Only a few of the very best players are capable of getting this high. And you probably can't afford all of them. The big challenge at the start of the season is trying to identify the players likeliest to have a chance of reaching this exceptional level of long-term performance, then figuring out which of them look most likely to start the season strong,.... and frantically juggling your budget to see how many of them you can fit in.

Level 7:  240+   (God-like)

Now, of course, a top player who has a really outstanding season can get well beyond this, sometimes even edging up close to 300 points. And Mo Salah last season managed over 100 points more than this (but that was a once-in-a-generation freak, shattering even his own previous best by a huge margin!!). But, in general, this is an absolutely outstanding level, which not may players will attain even once in their careers. Only an elite few - Salah, Haaland, Palmer, the only members of the 'club' at the moment - have the potential to do so regularly. But a few others might be able to join them at these dizzying heights: Foden (if he can find his way again), Saka (if he can stay fit all season, and is unchained from the right touchline a bit more often), Wirtz (though probably in a year or two, rather than in his debut season), and maybe Eze (if he can stay fit and in-form, and enjoy slightly better luck; he really deserved at least a 200-point season last year...).

Who's likely to perform at these various levels this season?  Well, I'll try to give that some thought over the next few days. 

It's still really a bit too early to be thinking about choosing the initial squad!

But.... GOOD LUCK TO EVERYONE FOR THE COMING SEASON!!!

The Community Shield 2025 - What did we learn?

Well, as usual, not that much. It's the first 'competitive' match of the year, but it's still only pre-season. The Premier League competition is a whole different beast.

Both teams put out what looked like a 'full-strength' side, a fair indication of how they're likely to line up next weekend (unless Liverpool have poached any more top players from other clubs before then....). The Liverpool new boys all looked quite sharp. And it seemed to be quite an entertaining game, open and often end-to-end, with several good chances for both sides.

Some of The Sheep are already bleating nervously about Salah having scuffed his only decent chance on goal straight at the keeper, and then skying the opening penalty in the climactic shootout. But that's nonsense; he had a pretty decent game. 

If anyone were giving slight cause for concern, I'd say it might be Wirtz, who, apart from feeding Ekitike on the edge of the box for the opening goal, appeared fairly anonymous in the match - at least on the fairly brief highlights I've been able to find so far. I don't have too many concerns about his long-term impact, but I've always feared it might take him a while to settle in and find his feet in the new team - and he might thus not be a great pick for the initial squad.

In fact, it was ultimately the 'smaller' side who looked more hungry for it, and provided the most eye-catching performances. Mateta, Sarr, Wharton, and, of course, Henderson in goal, were all absolutely outstanding.

That might be the major takeaway from the game for early FPL contemplation. Folks who were feeling pretty set on the idea of trebling up on Liverpool, with picks like Alisson, Frimpong (don't get too excited about his goal: it was a complete fluke!), Van Dijk, Macallister, Wirtz, Gakpo, and even Ekitike heading up many people's shopping lists,... might now be thinking about Henderson, Munoz, Guehi, Wharton, Eze, Sarr, and Mateta instead.

EDIT: My man Adam Clery was very quick to put out an excellent video dissecting why Palace were ultimately so much better in this game than Liverpool. This is the kind of thing that I think is essential preparation before beginning to make any decisions about this season's FPL squad.

But it's still really too early to be thinking about any of that. (New injury news is emerging daily. And there are still a few big transfer stories unfolding....)

Just find some highlights of the game to enjoy - and then chill out a bit longer. DEADLINE DAY is Friday: that's when you should pick your opening squad.

Remember - it's mostly LUCK!

Oh dear, oh dear - the blowhards on the Facebook forums and such always want to try to claim that this FPL divertissement of ours is almost entirely a game of skill, you know - not really any luck in it at all; not very much, anyway. And anyone who suggests otherwise is obviously just bitter at their own lack of success, yadda, yadda, yadda....

Of course, like almost everything they hold true in relation to the game, that is complete bollocks.

Sadly, this viewpoint has a potent appeal for many people; it becomes a kind of perverse Article of Faith for legions of them. Anybody who has one good season wants to believe that it was entirely down to their superior intellectual acumen. Anyone who has a few good seasons back-to-back (though probably they've just had a few modestly good ones in a run of five or six or seven years, and exaggerate that record of success a little - to themselves, and everyone else) easily persuades themself that this uncanny consistency is proof - proof, dammit - that it wasn't just luck. Alas, no. It might not have been entirely down to luck; but luck certainly played a big part - because it always does in this game. And you can be lucky a few times in a row (try flipping a coin for speedy proof of this axiom).

Or take a look at the poker hand above. What skill is involved in getting that? And how much luck? (Yet that is almost as common an occurrence as people scoring above 2,600 in FPL.)

Consider all the possible sources of luck in each gameweek's results. How often do players get injured (sometimes, at the very last minute)? Or, even more gallingly, miss a game for some seemingly much more trivial - and utterly unforeseeable - reason: a stubbed toe or a tickly cough or a silly spat with their manager.... or their girlfriend? Or because of some perverse and unfathomable tactical switcheroo the manager suddenly wants to try out this week? How many times do great and in-form players suddenly unaccountably have a stinker,.... while a player who's been in the doldrums produces a monster haul out of nowhere? How many times do the officials somehow miss pretty clearcut-looking penalties,.... or give really soft ones,.... or send someone off mistakenly, or at least harshly,.... while others of their colleagues somehow turn a blind eye to egregious straight red-card fouls or second yellows? This kind of shit happens almost every week; often, it happens several times in the same week. [I tried to document these sorts of things through every gameweek last season, for the first time; and damn, even I was surprised by how bad it was!]

Consider the further sources of luck outside of the football itself. How often do accidents of Fate keep you from watching a match, or perhaps even make you miss an FPL deadline? How often does that damn glitchy website itself unaccountably lose supposedly 'saved' changes - leaving you without the transfers, or the captaincy selection, or the bonus chip play you thought you'd made for that week? How often have you tried to leave your weekly changes a bit too close to the deadline and found that the FPL app or website is overwhelmed by the volume of traffic and no longer working? These are all varieties of 'ill luck' too (though you should be able to avoid most of them with a little more care and caution!).

Consider your own annual totals in FPL. If you're reasonably serious about the game and you've been playing it for a few years, you probably get a very similar score in most years. You can easily spot your median level, and you don't often stray from that by more than 100 points or so up and down each year - perhaps usually quite a bit less than that. And yet, occasionally, perhaps just once or twice in a run of many years - you've had a score that is way outside that normal range, hundreds of points higher (or, sometimes, lower). Did you suddenly become more skillful that year??  Did you somehow 'forget' that new level of skill you seemed to have attained, when you slumped back to your previous average sort of score again the following year??  NO, it was luck.

Consider the global champions. Most of them are just the same. Most years they score 2,200, 2,300, perhaps once or twice they've managed 2,400: very respectable and consistent, but nothing amazing. Then they suddenly come up with an extra 400 or 500 points to claim the global crown. And the next year, as often as not, they crash out of the top 100,000 again, perhaps even sometimes out of the top million; they fall back to their previous level,... perhaps even have an unusually bad year to follow.....

Once you've reached a good level of knowledge about the game, and are watching a lot of football every week, and taking care over all your decisions - there isn't that much scope for improving your decision-making any further. Of course, there's some. But my guess is that, if you're usually reaching somewhere up around 2,400 points (without being conspicuously lucky in any way!), you're pretty near maxed on the potential of the 'skill' element. [If your 'level' is only 2,300, or 2,200, or 2,100, yes, there are probably still some areas where you can improve. But I'm pretty sure that - in most years (of course, the available points pool changes from year to year; though not usually too drastically, unless there's been a rule change...) - somewhere between 2,400 and 2,500 points (and probably most often at the very lower end of that range) is where luck takes over.

At the upper end of the 'ability range', then, the scope for 'skill' to make a difference is probably not much more than 100 points per year (year after year, my two chief antagonists and I almost invariably finish within a much narrower distance of each other than that). But the scope for 'luck' to make a difference is almost unlimited. The global champ's +500 variance over his norm is unlikely to be the peak lucky score in the year (because, if he's normally getting 2,300+, he's in a relatively small group of consistently good players, no more than a few hundred thousand out of the many millions who now play the game every year). It is very likely that, at least in some years, there are a few people who register +700 or +800, purely by virtue of their exceptional good fortune. (That might put them up near the top of the rankings if they're usually half-decent players who can manage around 2,000 points; it will put them in a very good final position even if they're 'noobs' or 'casuals' whose natural score should only be something like 1,800 points!!)

Consider the consequences of this, for the distribution curves of 'luck' and 'skill', and how they interact. The iron laws of statistics, unfortunately, dictate that above about 2,400 points, there are going to be progressively more people who are only averagely skillful (or perhaps even not very skillful at all!) but exceptionally lucky,... and progressively fewer people who are exceptionally skillful and only above-averagely lucky. 

Hopefully, the handful of managers at the very top of the tree will usually have quite a high level of skill as well as an extraordinary level of luck. (Last year's champion wasn't that impressive, but he was no slouch either.)  But everyone in the top 100,000 has necessarily been extraordinarily lucky; and an awful lot of them have been more lucky than anything else.

Finally, consider this little 'thought experiment'. Imagine an FPL mini-league of 100 perfectly matched players. They might not be 'perfect' players but they are very smart and very serious about the game, and there is no discernible difference in 'skill' between any of them (an unrealistic scenario, of course; but bear with me - it's a thought experiment). Moreover, they all play the game in complete isolation from each other, and from any external sources of advice; they each make their own selections based on their knowledge of football, without trying to second-guess what their opponents may be doing. (Again, unrealistic, perhaps.... But it's how I try to live!)

At the end of the season, do they all have exactly the same score? Of course not. There is almost certainly a clear 'winner' and a clear 'wooden spoon' recpient - with probably a span of at least 100 points, maybe 200 or 300 points between them. In the middle, where the majority of competitors are clumped together, there may several places where a few of them have exactly the same score. But towards the extremes of the distribution, at the highest and lowest ends, things will be much more spread out - with often several points separating two positions.

How to account for this divergence of results, if they're all equally skillful? Well, you have to accept a few premises here (but I hope they're all pretty straightforward and indisputable): a) There are no 'right' selection solutions in a game like FPL (because no-one can see the future); b) There are only 'most likely to be successful' solutions in FPL; c) 'Mostly likely to be successful' solutions in FPL are rarely unique; for most selection conundra there are several possible alternatives which are equally valid; d) 'Most likely to be successful' solutions in FPL do not always succeed; very often, in fact, some of the 'least likely to be successful' solutions do!

Therefore, presented with the same challenges every week, a group of people with identical skills in the game will make some of the same decisions as everybody else, but some different ones (though all seem to have equally valid chances of success, before the event). Some of those different choices work out well, and some work out badly. Aggregated over the season, a few players have done very, very well, and some - with exactly the same input of knowledge and skill - have done pretty badly.

Now, multiply that tiny sample by 100,000, and allow for much greater variation in both luck and skill (because - shock, horror! - bad decisions have a greater chance of being 'lucky'; or rather of having a 'lucky impact' on the overall competitive landscape, because although the chance of a successful outcome for a poor choice may be very small, it will happen sometimes - and when it does, its impact can be very large).

That is the game of Fantasy Premier League.

It is NOT a pure meritocracy. Don't try to kid yourselves that it is.

This year's EARLY 'Sheep Picks'

 

Last year, in the early days of this blog, I put out a couple of posts highlighting a few of what I thought were the most obvious 'bad picks', and some of the less obvious 'bad picks', in early drafts being widely circulated online in the week or two before the first kick-off.

They attracted an awful lot of criticism in some of the online forums (well, more unthinking disparagement, really; because people don't like to have their prejudices challenged), but I stand by them. They all in fact (even the few that massively outperformed expectations!) panned out much as I had predicted, and my rationales for questioning the wisdom of their selection at the start of the season were proved to be sound. 

I highly recommend revisiting those two posts, as I tried to frame them in terms of the broader reasons behind why such misguided choices can become so excessively popular. They are still, I think, among the most valuable pieces of general advice I've penned on this blog.

However, I subsequently launched my occasional series of 'Sheep Picks', discussing other strangely over-popular choices from time to time during the campaign. And I think another review of perhaps unduly popular early picks in pre-season this year is best accommodated under the same banner. So, here goes...

These, it seems are the most popular early choices this year. (At least, they were a week or so ago, But although the overall numbers and some of the relative positions may have changed, I think this is still pretty much the 'top ten' at the moment.)

Most owned FPL players ahead of the 25/26 season

While they are all obviously very good players and very tempting FPL picks, and there is a strong case for all of us taking around 3 or 4 of these,.... it does seem that a great many FPL managers are taking many more than that - which, I think, is probably a serious mistake.

And there are persuasive arguments to be made against each of them, even the hallowed Mo Salah. So, I will now attempt to - briefly - do that; though sometimes in the devil's advocate capacity, rather than necessarily stating my own view.

Mo Salah - He had a freakishly good season, a record-shattering season last year: there's no way he can exceed that, or, probably, even get close to it again this year. Moreover, he's 33 years old now, and some loss of edge in his pace and/or stamina, and a slightly greater vulnerability to muscle injuries is pretty much inevitable: for some players, the post-30 drop-off in athletic performance kicks in a bit later than for others, and is very gradual at first; but it happens to absolutely everyone - and sometimes, it's like falling off a cliff. There is very much a non-zero risk that that will happen to Salah this season. Also, it's bound to be unsettling to have so many new personnel joining the side this year, and probably to have some major shake-ups in tactics following on from that. Salah had a particularly productive rapport down the right with Trent, who's now gone; and also with his frequent counterpart on the left flank, Luis Diaz, who's now gone; and he was starting to develop such an understanding with Dominik Szoboszlai, who's likely to be one of the players whose minutes are most heavily hit by the new arrivals (if he does continue to get regular starts, it seems likely to be in a deeper midfield role, rather than as a '10' or a progressive '8'). And, at the very least, he's likely to find that the creative focus of the team gradually shifts away from him towards the new star, Florian Wirtz. There can be no doubt at all that Salah's season haul this year will be substantially lower than it was last year - the only question is, by how much? I fear it could be much, much lower: still very good (maybe 220-250 points?) - but is that enough to justify his eye-watering 14.5-million asking price??  Probably not.

Joao Pedro - Everyone's suddenly getting super-excited about his prospects at Chelsea - not unreasonably - after his stupendous performances in the semi-final and final of the Club World Cup (I share some of that excitement; I can still feel the bruise on my jaw from having it hit the floor so many times watching those games). However, prior to this, I had seen him as perhaps more of a utility player: able to deputise for Delap or Jackson as a central striker on occasions, but more likely to start on one of the wings, or sometimes perhaps in a more central 'No. 10' kind of area, or simply to be held in reserve as a wily 'lock-picker' option who can be brought on from the bench. And those doubts still persist: Liam Delap is an expensive and very promising forward signing who can be expected to get at least pretty substantial minutes as a conventional 'No. 9'; if he's starting some games, where does that leave Joao Pedro? And the Brazilian, despite the promise he's recently shown as a main striker, is not a natural 'No. 9' - has rarely played in that role previously, doesn't have a prolific goalscoring record in his career in England thus far. Moreover, with Chelsea back in the Champions League this year, and having a host of forward options to draw on, it is dangerously likely that just about everyone - except, probably, Cole Palmer - will face quite a lot of rotation,... which could completely undermine their FPL value. Joao Pedro looks like a very risky beginning-of-season pick - until we see just how often he's going to start, and in what role.

Cole Palmer - This is the player I find it hardest to make a powerful case against, the one I think is closest to a start-of-season must-have. He was close to or ahead of Salah and Haaland in FPL returns for most of his first season-and-a-half at Chelsea, and showed the potential to be even better (he's had at least one game where he could conceivably have come up with a 40+ points haul!). Doubters and haters, reluctant to acknowledge his talent, pounced on his steep drop-off in productivity after Christmas last year as 'proof' that he'd been a flash-in-the-pan. That was utter nonsense, of course: I felt that, for the most part, he'd still been playing very, very well in the second half of last season, was still creating a lot of chances for himself and others, and was still regularly Chelsea's best player - but he just couldn't have much impact when the rest of the team around him had become a dysfunctional mess. Could that team dysfunction manifest again this season? Well, it's possible: but Maresca seems to have found a balance of personnel and a system of playing that really clicks now - and they will take enormous confidence from their superb performance in the Club World Cup. My continuing worries are that, with such a rich squad, we might see a bit too much rotation, and thus rarely if ever see a settled starting eleven. (I think Palmer will always start in the League, if fit; but he might be having to adapt to a different set of players around him and a slightly different style of playing almost every week.) Also, of course, there's a significant risk that he - and his teammates - will still be weary after their big summer tournament,... and comparatively short of conditioning immediately pre-season. Chelsea, although they have the most inviting early run of fixtures of any team, might well be a bit slow out of the blocks this year.

Florian Wirtz - I am a huge admirer of Wirtz's talent, and I think he is the biggest foreign arrival in the Premier League... well, certainly since Haaland, but perhaps more properly since Bruno Fernandes. And I don't think there are any serious doubts that a world-class talent like his will have any major problems in ultimately adapting to the intensity and physicality of the Premier League. However, he will almost certainly take some time to settle in to his new surroundings, to get used to his teammates and become completely comfortable in his new role. And it's generally unwise to double-up on a club in one position; many will no doubt prefer more established Liverpool attacking players - and likely much more prolific goal-threats - Mo Salah and Cody Gakpo (and indeed, possibly also their more outright forwards: Hugo Ekitike... or Alexander Isak!). I think Wirtz will have a big season at Liverpool, and is probably the most underpriced player in FPL this season. However, he might not start to show his full potential for 6 or 8 or 10 weeks.... And this is a case where club differential calculations must come into play: however good he is, there are probably other Liverpool players you should take instead.

Aaron Wan-Bissaka - This is one that probably strays from the merely potentially doubtful/arguably risky into outright 'bad pick'.  Yes, he's a very good defender, who is likely to see his season's total get quite a nice lift from the new 'defensive points'.  And he did enjoy a bit of a purple patch at the end of last season, starting to get forward down the flank a lot more, and actually supplying quite a lot of dangerous balls into the box. That, however, was very untypical of his normal game: the attacking dimension to his play has always been regarded as his major weakness (perhaps a little unfairly; but still, that is the reputation that has dogged his career...). I do like Wan-Bissaka as a player; and I think he could prove to be a decent option among the cheaper defenders this year. But it should be remembered that defenders will always earn most of their points contribution not from attacking returns or from the new 'defensive points' but from keeping clean sheets and not conceding too many goals. And Wan-Bissaka, through no fault of his, looks likely to be a pretty terrible option on that front. West Ham were dismal, relegation-worthy last season; they didn't really show any significant signs of improvement under the new management of Graham Potter, and they haven't yet done anything much to bolster their squad for this season. It's difficult to envision them at the moment finishing any better than 16th or 17th; and if any of this year's promoted sides prove to be half-decent, they might well be going down. You really don't want defenders from a club like that. And that makes Wan-Bissaka a very big risk for an initial squad pick.

Alexander Isak - The unfortunate controversy surrounding his possible move to Liverpool has soured his relationship with fans (not just Newcastle's, but around most of the country), and exiled him from team training in pre-season. If he stays at Newcastle (now looking very unlikely), the legacy of all that ill feeling will have a very negative effect on his reception in home games, and on his relationship with teammates, and that's almost bound to interfere with his concentration and confidence. And if he does go to Liverpool, it's not at all clear how he'll fit in there: like Arsenal, they've played without a conventional central striker for a long time. He might not even start every game, as Slot rations his resources across domestic and Champions League campaigns; and even if he does, he'll be sharing the pool of goals with Salah, Gakpo, Ekitike, Wirtz, and others. It seems unlikely this ugly situation will be resolved before next week's kick-off; and even if it is, he's not likely to be sufficiently match-fit, or to have been able to get in enough time training with teammates, to be able to start the first game. I think Isak is one of the best handful of strikers in world football, and I've been very glad to have him in my FPL team for most of the past two seasons; but I wouldn't touch him with a bargepole until the dust clears from this messy transfer saga.

Caoimhin Kelleher - Yes, an outstanding young keeper, and perhaps, on pure ability, the best of the 4.5 options this year (although there are others with a claim). But he's got to settle into a new club. And that is a club who've had a very poor defensive record over the past two seasons, and who are reeling from the disruption of losing a number of their best players and their long-time manager this summer. At the moment, the talk around Brentford is not whether they can challenge the upper half of the table again, but whether they can avoid relegation (and a lot of pundits are not offering a positive answer on that!). These might be prime conditions for Kelleher to rack up massive numbers of 'saves' points - as his much less capable predecessor Flekken did last season; but to produce a really good goalkeeping points tally in FPL you really need to put together a few clean sheets as well, and not often concede too many goals. Even last year, that was a calculus that was poised on a knife-edge for Flekken. And this year, things seem to be an order of magnitude worse for Brentford: they are likely to be struggling for survival for much of the season - and if a few things break against them, that might be a struggle they end up losing. (I think they'll survive, but maybe only by the skin of their teeth. There are probably at least two or three of the current EPL teams, as well as all three of the promoted sides who will almost certainly be as bad, or a bit worse.)  And, oh, he's injured already. That's what you get for picking a squad way ahead of the deadline...

Jeremie Frimpong - Great going forward, but not much of a defender; really more of a winger, who does his best at tracking back and helping out in his own penalty area - but that's really not his forte at all. To get the best out of him, Slot probably needs to play him more as a wingback, in a 3-4-3 set-up; but he's not yet shown any signs of wanting to make that change to his basic tactics. The manager has in fact dropped hints that he perhaps sees Frimpong more as a replacement for Salah, in the long-term. But what does that mean for Frimpong's role in the squad in the interim - when they have an excellent young right-back in Conor Bradley. who also deserves some decent minutes? Some rotation is almost inevitable, I would think. It is indeed even possible that Frimpong will be - or will become - mainly a shock option off the bench, to rest Salah later in the game, or provide a different attacking dimension to Bradley when they're still chasing a result.  I'm a fan of Frimpong, and intrigued to see how things might go for him at Liverpool. But it's always a big gamble to go for a player who's newly joined a club and is still finding his feet; that's even more the case with a player like this, who doesn't have such an obvious fit into the way the team has played previously: either he's got to change his game, or the team has; probably a little of both - and that's almost always a bit of a painful process at first.

Mohammed Kudus - Damn, part of me hates to speak against these players, because they're all ones I have a big soft spot for....  But as I've said above already, players joining a new club are always a big gamble. And you don't really want to be gambling too much - or perhaps at all - in the inital squad (if you make too many 'big bets' that all go wrong, you can be left having to use your Wildcard after only 3 or 4 weeks!!). The uncertainties and risks are particularly acute with Kudus, because he's had a pretty up-and-down career in the Premier League so far, hasn't really yet shown his best - not with any consistency, anyway. And the club he's joining, Spurs, are coming off one of the worst seasons in their history,... and adapting to a new manager. If Kudus and his teammates and the Spurs fans quickly take to each other, if he's given respect and responsibility in the team, if he gets a regular role on the pitch that suits him (I think I'd rather see him in the 'No. 10 space' than out on one of the flanks; perhaps more possible, now that Maddison's got a long-term injury), then, yes, he could become a very promising FPL player this season. But I think that will take time, it's unlikely to happen immediately. And those cheaper 4th and 5th seats in midfield are usually better rotated fairly frequently, to constantly take advantage of players who are hitting a hot streak of points-scoring form. I would bet that Kudus will be that at some point during the season; but not for all of it,... and probably not at the start of it.

Rayan Ait-Nouri - I worry that a player like this may be particularly at risk of the notorious Pep Roulette. After all, Pep has blown hot-and-cold in recent seasons as to whether he even wants to have full-backs, in any 'conventional' sense. Moreover, Nico O'Reilly and Rico Lewis have both acquitted themselves very capably in that position; and Josko Gvardiol was often a bit of a monster there - and could perhaps be moved back into the role if other central defenders are fit this season. Even if Ait-Nouri is the preferred starter, he's surely rather unlikely to start every game. And Pep's recent preference has been for his full-backs to slot into midfield, rather than pushing all the way forward down the flanks to overlap the wide attackers and try to provide balls directly into the box (Ait-Nouri's strong suit). So, I fear that, even in the improbable eventuality that Ait-Nouri proves to be an almost ever-present for City this year, he's likely to have far less attacking impact than he did in his best spells with Wolves. Moreover, there are a few things still fundamentally broken with this team, and they might take a while to 'fix'; at the recent Club World Cup, the problems in central midfield were just as evident as they were for most of last season, with unfancied Al Hilal able to cut them open at will on the counter-attack. None of City's defenders, even if they appear to be 'nailed' starters, really look like very tempting options from the point-of-view of defensive returns this season. On top of all that, the club's creative talisman over the past decade, the majestic Kevin DeBruyne, is now departed; his heir-apparent, Foden, unfortunately seems to have done a Wilshere; and their crucial defensive midfield lynchpin Rodri is out again with a new injury. I thought City were lucky to scrape back into the Champions League places last season; at the moment, I'm very doubtful they can do any better this year. All of that makes Ait-Nouri a very dubious pick. I might have taken a chance on him, if he'd only cost 5.0, or maybe even 5.5 million - but at 6.0 million, NO WAY!!!

Heck, I've very nearly convinced myself that none of these is worth having for the start of the season.

Certainly none of them are incontrovertible must-haves; there are very decent alternatives to be considered in every instance. All of them represent a very high degree of risk, for various reasons, in the opening few games; and risk like that is better avoided, or at least minimized. We might take 2 or 3 of these players, I think, perhaps 4; but any more than that would be extremely dangerous.

The shape of things to come...?

The Athletic's breezy young Scots tactics guru (one of my favourites!), J. J. Bull, put out this video a couple of weeks back, discussing five major shifts in tactics he expects to see becoming important during the coming season. Well worth a look.

As if we didn't have enough to ponder with the protracted transfer sagas over the likes of Gyokeres, Sesko, Isak, Watkins, and Jackson, and the early injuries to Maddison, Colwill, Kelleher, Rogers et al, the colossal spending on squad rebuilds by a few clubs like Liverpool and Manchester United, the decimation in this transfer window of some poorer clubs like Bournemouth and Brentford and Wolves, and the cautiously whispered possibility that perhaps not all of the promoted clubs will be completely hopeless this year,... we also have major tactical evolutions to take into consideration.

Also, it seems, there are to be a number of other - mostly peripheral/cosmetic - changes being introduced this season, a couple that are actually tweaks to the rules of the game.  So much to take on board!!!

Damn, being an FPL manager is almost harder than the real thing....!

On the brink....

 

Yes, it's that time again.

The Community Shield game - English football's traditional curtain-raiser event to herald the imminent resumption of the Premier League - will kick-off at Wembley this Sunday afternoon, at 3pm, BST (that's 2pm UTC, because English clocks 'go forward' during the summer months). It's a 'super cup' kind of affair, between last season's winners of the two main domestic trophies, the Premier League Championship and the FA Cup. This time, of course, that's going to be Liverpool v Crystal Palace.

This charity fund-raising game had long been dismissed as just another meaningless 'friendly'. But in recent years, the participating clubs have been mostly starting to take it much more seriously - seeing it as potentially a rather more serious and useful test than the majority of pre-season games (largely on overseas 'goodwill' tours, where youth players often get as many minutes as the established starters), and an opportunity to throw down an intimidating marker to their rivals for the season ahead.

There might be a bit more intensity to this year's game if we had Arsenal or Chelsea or Manchester City in it, one of the teams expected to put up the best challenge to Liverpool retaining their league crown. Palace will probably again be content with a mid-table finish in the league. But on their day, they can be very dangerous. And they already pulled off something of a 'giant-killing' feat at this venue just a few months ago when they got a deserved win over City in the Cup Final.

It could be a very, very good game, I think.

And it will be (would be...) interesting to get a close-up view of the new-look Liverpool for the first time, after this frenzied summer of transfer activity.

But, unfortunately, most of us will probably never know what the new Liverpool are looking like, or how good the game was - as TNT Sports, a pay-per-view media behemoth, has just acquired the rights to the event, and it won't be appearing on any of the UK's terrestrial channels this year - as it has done, as far as I recall, for decades now. Very sad.

I suppose we'll probably be able to dredge up some highlights on Youtube eventually, but that won't really give us a proper picture of how the game unfolded, or a feel of the occasion. (Oh, it seems there should be a proper highlights show on the BBC in the evening. That should be quite a bit better. Um, nope! I'm sure I'd seen a highlights programme on the Beeb advertised only a few days before, but it did not happen. The TNT rights-purchase seems to have happened at the very last minute, creating a lot of confusion as to what additional TV coverage there might still be. What a mess.)

Even if the big day out at Wembley excites little interest in itself for some football fans, it does serve as a useful reminder to everyone that the beginning of the new football season is drawing near.

After this game, sometime next week (not too soon!), we can finally start thinking about selecting our FPL squads for this year.