Goalkeeper – 9.0m-9.5m
There are two schools of thought on how to pick goalkeepers for FPL. You can either pick the first choice keeper at a club that will be challenging for the title and likely to keep clean sheets (De Gea/Allison/Ederson/Lloris), and then find a 4.0m player to sit on your bench and keep it nice and warm all season.
Alternatively, you can look for a rotating pair. This uses the possibility of switching keepers every week to gain a favourable run of fixtures. The 20 teams are split into 10 rotating pairs (such as Liverpool/Everton, Arsenal/Spurs, Man City/Man United), so the two sides in each pair will never play at home the same week as each other. This means you can find a pair of goalkeepers that will always have the home advantage, although that won’t always lead to an enticing set of fixtures. There will be a lot more on rotation pairs in my upcoming fixtures article!
Defence – 25m-30m
Defenders are getting a lot of attention in this season’s FPL due to a perception that the midfielders and strikers have been overpriced. As we discussed above, this has led to suggestions of abandoning the previous norm of 3 at the back and buying 4 or even 5 defenders that you would expect to start every week. It’s a dangerous game because a defender’s main source of points (clean sheets) can be wiped out instantly with just seconds to go in a match, whereas attackers’ points are safe once they’ve got the goal/assist.
Depending on how much cash you’re willing to sink into your defence, the standard method of choosing 5 players for your back line involves 1 or 2 premium defenders who will play every week (Robertson for 7.0m, Laporte for 6.5m, Digne for 6.0m etc) and 1 or 2 rotating pairs of defenders for 4.5m each. If you’ve got 2 premium defenders and a rotating pair then you round out the squad with a 4.0m defender, preferably who will start for their team just in case, but this player will be your third choice substitute for the season.
However, this season I’m looking at starting with a big back 3, almost certainly the 3 mentioned above, with a rotating pair of cheaper defenders to start in either a 4-4-2 or 4-5-1. I’ll be spending around 28.5m on my defence and I could persuade myself to spend even more before the season starts.
Top Options
Andrew Robertson, Virgil Van Dijk, Trent Alexander-Arnold (7.0m, 6.5m, 7.0m)
Liverpool were an incredible force last season; they scored the 3rd highest points total in Premier League history and won the Champions League! A lot of that was based on the incredible turn around in their defence from an error-prone laughing stock in 2017/18 (Lovren, Mignolet) to a tight, organised wall marshalled expertly by VVD and Allison in goal. Robertson and TAA offer extra threat as they each recorded over 10 assists! If they seem expensive for defenders, just remember what I mentioned earlier, any other player with over 200 points last season now costs 11.0m or more.
Aymeric Laporte (6.5m)
Laporte was the rock upon which Pep’s defence was based last year. Despite a rotating partnership with Stones, Komany and Otamendi, he was consistent and assured throughout the season. He also out scored his attacking counterparts in Man City’s DGWs, with double clean sheets topped up by bonus points and attacking returns. If you pick one City defender it just has to be this man.
Lucas Digne (6.0m)
After a slow start at Everton, Digne picked up the pace at the end of last season and finished with an impressive 158 points, hence the 6.0m price tag! His underlying stats justify that outlay, as he created more chances than any other defender and Everton’s 14 clean sheets was only beaten by Liverpool and Man City.
Ben Chilwell (5.5m)
His teammate Pereira often gets more interest inFPL, but I like the look of Chilwell more this season thanks to his 0.5m price advantage. The young left back has been going from strength to strength at the Foxes and now under the tutelage of Brendan Rodgers he could really push on and become an FPL force.
Charlie Taylor (Burnley, 4.5m)
Burnley’s players have received a small drop in prices after they had a much tougher time last year. This has often been cited as a result of the strains of early Europa qualification, but I would also argue the impact of losing Heaton and Pope to injury would have been huge for their defence. I think they will bounce back this year and return to the tough, well-drilled defence we knew and loved in previous seasons. Mee and Tarkowski are both 5.0m, so Taylor gets the nod as an ideal member of a 4.5m defensive rotation.