FPL TEAM SELECTION BREAKDOWN BASED ON PRICES AND POPULARITY

Fantasy Premier League is back, yeahhh!!! Oh, wait, I’m more than 8 days late but I’m sure you haven’t fixed your teams. Those many drafts keep you frustrated as they are either lacking the coverage you need or the big players you want.

I’m not here to ease your stress, at least not yet. I just want to take a first look at the players on offer and look at the popular options in each price bracket.

GOALKEEPERS

There are 4 prices of goal keepers in the game. This makes the position the easiest to pick in this article. The 4 prices are divided into Premiums (5.0, 5.5) and Budget (4.0, 4.5). There are strategies that support use of each category of goalies but like I said, I’ll be picking the most popular (highest by team selected by) which gives us David De Gea (5.5)-26.1% and Ben Foster(4.5)-20.6%. Both start the season with nice fixtures and although it may not be the best double pick considering cost, they are the two most selected goalies.

FPL squad by most selected in price ranges

DEFENDERS

Since there are 5 slots for defenders and 7 prices, the last 3 prices (6.0, 6.5, 7.0) are combined as the premiums due to having lesser number of players and fewer spread in that range and David Luiz(6.0)-20.4% is the popular pick. Then the high ends(5.5) with Trippier-17.6% emerging. Moving into the mid price of 5.0, Bournemouth raiding left back Charlie Daniels-19.8% beats all comers and is justified by some smooth starting fixtures. Budget(4.5) defender Ben Mee-13.7% is the pick from a resilient Burnley defense whose top scoring goalie Heaton has been upgraded to 5.0.  Finally, Swansea’s Angel Rangel-18.9 is the most popular Cheapie picked by managers. Every year there is a hassle to get that enabler that we could bench every week without worry to enable us have bigger options up front as he is the closest we have to that at the moment.

MIDFIELDERS

This has the biggest poll of players and biggest rotation risks so it is usually very spread when it comes to making picks. The five slots are measured from the smallest with each having a range of 1.0m apart from the Budget(4.5, 5.0) and Premiums(10 and above). In between, we have highends (8.5 – 9.5) from which Spurs 18 goal midfielder Alli(9.5) with a whopping 38% of managers making him a near essential pick. His percentage is 8% more than the next midfield pick. Just below them are the mid priced (7.0-8.0) which had flying palace winger Zaha(7.0) and his good starting fixtures winning 21% of managers hearts.  For budget mids (5.5-6.5), last season’s antagonist Nathan Redmond (6.5) -11.3% has somehow managed to make managers forget the horror he put them through with Southampton’s superb starting fixtures turning heads.

Back to the top with the premiums, De Bruyne (10.0)-17.5% beats close marker Sanchez by 0.5% to emerge top pick by managers. The midfielder who has dropped 0.5 in price and topped the league for assists last season starts with okay fixtures and its no surprise he is so picked as he is the most nailed on city attacker. At the tail end, Chelsea loanee loftus-cheek(4.5) – 16.4% seems to be the go to guy in the cheapie zone. The zone that brought pain to many managers after discovery of last preseason Capoue scored goals from manager’s bench. We hope we get it right this time.

FORWARDS

Given 3 slots, the forward picks are shared from the Budget (4.5-6.5) giving us Gayle (6.5) with 11.3%. The striker who hit form in the championship and starts with a superb set of fixtures which managers hope will propel him. For Mid priced (7.0-9.0), Rooney(7.5)-20.8 is the surprise winner beating Firmino with 0.6% of managers. It is quite surprising considering that everton have one of the worst fixtures at the start and Rooney isn’t assured of starting in the striker position.

With top teams buying strikers over the summer, the Premium (9.5 and above) was one to watch. New man utd boy Lukaku(11.5)-45% who has frequently been trolled in the past for selective performances is the highest pick across the whole game. With at least 10% more managers selecting his than nearest challenger Kane.

Encouragingly, all the aforementioned players can be entered into an FPL team with a total cost of 98.0 mill and 2.0 in the bank to give room for slight personnel changes if need be.