Best Budget Defenders

[Aldershot Rejects]

I'm not even convinced that there are any rotations giving better than 4ppg that don't involve Middlesborough.

Basically then if you are looking for a rotation for your 3rd defender start with Middlesborough and find someone that fits well with them.

I believe Stoke rotate excellently with Middlesbrough.

Good spot, that would work as well.

[Ruth_NZ]

I just looked through your team week-by-week...

I'm a bit embarrassed at all my donkey mistakes being scrutinised (the whole Holgate-Baines affair ) but that's what I put my FPL button there for, after all - I even advocate and actively lobby for everyone else to link it actually!

Ah, MoSe. I don't look at other peoples' teams that way, I have enough errors of my own. I had Bony in my team for 11 weeks at an average of 3.3 PPG. I got myself in knots with my BB and ended up doing completely the opposite of what I intended. And I had Sanchez-gate when I managed to remove him, miss 37 points in 2 weeks and then pay 0.4m more and take a hit to get him back.

Trust me, I can match you error for error.

Actually I was only looking at your defenders week by week really and seeing how the stability of having 2 of 3 of them delivering 6+ points most weeks has helped your team. In the first part of the season I was lucky to get a 2-pointer in defence. It was truly awful. Even now, having focused on it more, I am still only averaging 3.55 PPG from defenders, at one point it was an abysmal 2.7 PPG. Your 4.24 PPG from defenders is a substantial difference over 21 weeks, something over 40 points. Fortunately I have done better on captaincy than you, otherwise the gap between our 2 teams would be bigger than the 19 points difference there currently is.

[Aldershot Rejects]

I just looked through your team week-by-week...

I'm a bit embarrassed at all my donkey mistakes being scrutinised (the whole Holgate-Baines affair ) but that's what I put my FPL button there for, after all - I even advocate and actively lobby for everyone else to link it actually!

Ah, MoSe. I don't look at other peoples' teams that way, I have enough errors of my own. I had Bony in my team for 11 weeks at an average of 3.3 PPG. I got myself in knots with my BB and ended up doing completely the opposite of what I intended. And I had Sanchez-gate when I managed to remove him, miss 37 points in 2 weeks and then pay 0.4m more and take a hit to get him back.

Trust me, I can match you error for error.

Actually I was only looking at your defenders week by week really and seeing how the stability of having 2 of 3 of them delivering 6+ points most weeks has helped your team. In the first part of the season I was lucky to get a 2-pointer in defence. It was truly awful. Even now, having focused on it more, I am still only averaging 3.55 PPG from defenders, at one point it was an abysmal 2.7 PPG. Your 4.24 PPG from defenders is a substantial difference over 21 weeks, something over 40 points. Fortunately I have done better on captaincy than you, otherwise the gap between our 2 teams would be bigger than the 19 points difference there currently is.

Interesting stuff which made me look at my own record. Over the season it is 3.82 PPG, since my wc in GW6 it's 4.03 PPG, since GW15 when I deliberately put more money into my defence it is 5.14 PPG and over the last 2 GWs it is 8.83 PPG. Let's hope this trend continues. Incidentally, the occasions when I have played 4/5 defenders (mainly of necessity the average has been under 3 PPG).

It seems entirely reasonable to target 5+ ppg for the rest of the season (at least for my first 3 defenders).

[Ruth_NZ]

Interesting stuff which made me look at my own record. Over the season it is 3.82 PPG...

Yours is 3.82, mine is 3.55. You can look at that and think it is just a small difference. But it isn't. Multiply it by 3 (sometimes 4) and you aren't far off a point per week, or 18-20 points over the season so far. This is why I said a few weeks ago that improving defender PPG was one of the best ways to climb the rankings. Very few FPL managers really look at it, they are mostly fixated on the headline-making attackers.

It seems entirely reasonable to target 5+ PPG for the rest of the season (at least for my first 3 defenders).

Well, I have been told that is ridiculous but you are right, it really isn't. 5+ PPG from playing defenders is pretty common for top 100 finishers. They don't all do it but most do, at least that has been the case over the last couple of seasons.

[Football Hero]

Interesting stuff which made me look at my own record. Over the season it is 3.82 PPG...

Yours is 3.82, mine is 3.55. You can look at that and think it is just a small difference. But it isn't. Multiply it by 3 (sometimes 4) and you aren't far off a point per week, or 18-20 points over the season so far. This is why I said a few weeks ago that improving defender PPG was one of the best ways to climb the rankings. Very few FPL managers really look at it, they are mostly fixated on the headline-making attackers.

It seems entirely reasonable to target 5+ PPG for the rest of the season (at least for my first 3 defenders).

Well, I have been told that is ridiculous but you are right, it really isn't. 5+ PPG from playing defenders is the norm for top 100 finishers. They don't all do it but most do, at least that has been the case over the last couple of seasons.

I've just checked my ppg for my defenders this season and I am averaging 3.98ppg with them, but despite that I am up there in the overall league, so I wondered whether this was why I was a bit behind the top guys who are running hot for the season, so I've checked the leader of FPL expecting to see a massive ppg for his defenders, (he's a whopping 39 points clear of second place), and his defender average is only 4.21ppg which is well short of 5.0ppg, in addition second place has 4.40ppg and third place has 3.99ppg.

So now I'm wondering whether this 5.0ppg target is nothing more than a pipe dream and is unrealistic, particularly when to start with defenders don't have a 'base' score of 2 points just for turning up, they frequently score 0 and 1 point instead. Not only that, but in most weeks their points ceiling is typically 6 to 9 points and you only occasionally see double figure scores from defenders.

So bringing all of that together, I would say that if you can get 4.0+ppg then you are doing very well, 3.75-4.00ppg is decent, and less than 3.75ppg means that you are not doing well enough.

[Aldershot Rejects]

Alonso, Baines, Rose have all produced over 5 ppg this season. Just stick with those three

[Football Hero]

Alonso, Baines, Rose have all produced over 5 ppg this season. Just stick with those three

They're a tad too expensive to have all three and what do you do during the 17 gameweeks these guys missed?

[Aldershot Rejects]

Alonso, Baines, Rose have all produced over 5 ppg this season. Just stick with those three

They're a tad too expensive to have all three and what do you do during the 17 gameweeks these guys missed?

They may seem too expensive but I think that all three are great value for money and the marginal gain for spending the extra on them outweighs the marginal loss of having less money to spend elsewhere.

I'm hoping that they won't miss any other games.

[Football Hero]

Alonso, Baines, Rose have all produced over 5 ppg this season. Just stick with those three

They're a tad too expensive to have all three and what do you do during the 17 gameweeks these guys missed?

They may seem too expensive but I think that all three are great value for money and the marginal gain for spending the extra on them outweighs the marginal loss of having less money to spend elsewhere.

I'm hoping that they won't miss any other games.

Yeah, but not utilising your other defender spots is bad, (and lazy), imo, so going with those three means that you're playing them pretty much every week and having two spots that are duds.

[Aldershot Rejects]

Alonso, Baines, Rose have all produced over 5 ppg this season. Just stick with those three

They're a tad too expensive to have all three and what do you do during the 17 gameweeks these guys missed?

They may seem too expensive but I think that all three are great value for money and the marginal gain for spending the extra on them outweighs the marginal loss of having less money to spend elsewhere.

I'm hoping that they won't miss any other games.

Yeah, but not utilising your other defender spots is bad, (and lazy), imo, so going with those three means that you're playing them pretty much every week and having two spots that are duds.

Rotation is greatly over-rated in my opinion. I'd much rather have 3 defenders who reliably deliver the points but then I'm just lazy

[Ruth_NZ]

I've just checked my ppg for my defenders this season and I am averaging 3.98ppg with them, but despite that I am up there in the overall league, so I wondered whether this was why I was a bit behind the top guys who are running hot for the season, so I've checked the leader of FPL expecting to see a massive ppg for his defenders, (he's a whopping 39 points clear of second place), and his defender average is only 4.21ppg which is well short of 5.0ppg, in addition second place has 4.40ppg and third place has 3.99ppg.

So now I'm wondering whether this 5.0ppg target is nothing more than a pipe dream and is unrealistic, particularly when to start with defenders don't have a 'base' score of 2 points just for turning up, they frequently score 0 and 1 point instead. Not only that, but in most weeks their points ceiling is typically 6 to 9 points and you only occasionally see double figure scores from defenders.

So bringing all of that together, I would say that if you can get 4.0+ppg then you are doing very well, 3.75-4.00ppg is decent, and less than 3.75ppg means that you are not doing well enough.

Are you doubting my veracity? Moi?

The number of clean sheets is down so far this season. That was particularly the case in the early weeks. So 5 PPG so far would be an unrealistic expectation and unless the CS rate equalises faster than it is likely to then 5 PPG overall may be hard to achieve this season at all.

That doesn't mean that it can't be achieved over the 2nd half of the season, however. It's not that I am trying to suggest a hard target, rather to reflect on the importance of working on it.

[Turd Ferguson]

5 ppg seems ambitious.

To put it into context, that's 190 points over 38 gameweeks. Last season Bellerin scored 172 and Alderweireld scored 166. If they score 5 ppg, but they only make 32 appearances, you still need to muster 5 ppg from those other 6 gameweeks.

This season Alonso looks like he will break 190 (he wasn't in the squad until GW6 and has averaged 6.5 points per gameweek since then), but it's unlikely that anyone else will. Azpi is just shy, at 4.90 per gameweek (note this is per gameweek, not per game or appearance).

This implies that if you want 5 ppg, you can't just sit on 3 premiums. You either need to rotate effectively with your bench or you need to switch between premiums with your transfers.

Or maybe the teams that get 5 ppg from their defenders are just lucky .

[Football Hero]

I've just checked my ppg for my defenders this season and I am averaging 3.98ppg with them, but despite that I am up there in the overall league, so I wondered whether this was why I was a bit behind the top guys who are running hot for the season, so I've checked the leader of FPL expecting to see a massive ppg for his defenders, (he's a whopping 39 points clear of second place), and his defender average is only 4.21ppg which is well short of 5.0ppg, in addition second place has 4.40ppg and third place has 3.99ppg.

So now I'm wondering whether this 5.0ppg target is nothing more than a pipe dream and is unrealistic, particularly when to start with defenders don't have a 'base' score of 2 points just for turning up, they frequently score 0 and 1 point instead. Not only that, but in most weeks their points ceiling is typically 6 to 9 points and you only occasionally see double figure scores from defenders.

So bringing all of that together, I would say that if you can get 4.0+ppg then you are doing very well, 3.75-4.00ppg is decent, and less than 3.75ppg means that you are not doing well enough.

Are you doubting my veracity? Moi?

The number of clean sheets is down so far this season. That was particularly the case in the early weeks. So 5 PPG so far would be an unrealistic expectation and unless the CS rate equalises faster than it is likely to then 5 PPG overall may be hard to achieve this season at all.

That doesn't mean that it can't be achieved over the 2nd half of the season, however. It's not that I am trying to suggest a hard target, rather to reflect on the importance of working on it.

We're only down by about 12 CS in total from last season's average, and that 12 will be split across all the teams on average, meaning that you wouldn't be able to pick all of those additional CS's up anyway, so it wouldn't improve your average that much.

There's no point in looking at an average in just the second half of the season when both halves of the season count, and even then, 5.0ppg is almost certainly not sustainable for your defenders, considering even the leaders of FPL this year, who will have ran far better than most, are not anywhere close to that average.

[Ruth_NZ]

Clean Sheets and Averages Per Season

2016/17 106 (Average 25.2%) after 210 games
2015/16 215 (Average 28.3%)
2014/15 224 (Average 29.5%)
2013/14 232 (Average 30.5%)
2012/13 200 (Average 26.3%)
2011/12 206 (Average 27.1%)

Teams Achieving 40% or better Clean Sheets

2016/17 Chelsea, Spurs (2) after 210 games
2015/16 Arsenal, United, City, Leicester (4)
2014/15 Chelsea, WBA, Southampton (3)
2013/14 Chelsea, Arsenal, City, Everton, Southampton (5)
2012/13 City, Liverpool (2)
2011/12 United, City, Newcastle (3)

What can be said about those numbers? The clean sheet average is still down this season although it is creeping back towards par. Over the first 8 weeks there were only 36 CSs (22.5%); since then there have been 70 in 13 weeks (26.9%). Defender PPG will undoubtedly have been suppressed by this, especially in the early season.

Over the last 3 seasons, at least, there have also been more teams hitting the 40%+ level for CSs than in this season so far. And they have generally included at least one team with cheaper defenders for FPL purposes (Leicester 15/16, WBA 14/15, Southampton 13/14). The nearest this season are Middlesbrough on 7 CSs (33.3%); they also have good defensive stats and a team built to be solid so maybe they are a good bet for the last 17 gameweeks. The lack of performing cheap defender options so far would be another reason for a depressed defender PPG. WBA have been particularly disappointing (to me at least as I have had Foster and Evans all season); they only have 3 CSs (14%) so far.

[Football Hero]

No one's denying that the ppg would increase if there had been 29% of clean sheets instead of 25%, but it would only increase the average by about 0.25-0.30ppg or so, not 1.00ppg.

For instance I have 263 points from 66 defenders so far. Let's say I pick up an extra 4 CS from the 12 that we are down in total, then that is 16 extra points. We'll be generous and say I get an extra BP for each of those CS, so that's an additional 20 points in total.

263/66 = 3.98ppg

283/66 = 4.29ppg

The difference is 0.31ppg in this example.

So yeah, there's no way anyone can hit 5.00ppg average from defenders, it's just impossible.

[Ruth_NZ]

Maybe the teams that get 5 PPG from their defenders are just lucky.

I think there is a definite element of that, even over a whole season.

I was chatting with Greenwindmill on FFS recently. He finished 67th a couple of seasons back and had a defender PPG of around 4.4, so less than most of his rivals. But he had a huge captaincy number, nearly 8 PPG (doubled) and that compensated.

To get into the top 100 you have to have a lot of 50/50 calls fall right and that means some luck is involved. More than is required to reach the top 10k, say, because the variance isn't quite so big at that level.

If I have anything to say here it is only that defender PPG is more important and deserves a higher prioritisation than many managers give it.

[Ruth_NZ]

There's no way anyone can hit 5.00ppg average from defenders, it's just impossible.

OK, I have restrained myself so far but that's enough.

You have taken what I have said way too personally and as a result have effectively accused me of lying.

I am not talking about your team. I have little interest in your team to be frank. You haven't linked it so I know nothing about it. But I have looked at season stats of top 100 teams on the FPL Statistico over the last couple of seasons and many of them have achieved 5+ PPG from defenders. I know it is possible because I have seen it.

I have no wish to denigrate anyone else's performance or to comment negatively on their team. Either you can take something from what I have said or you can't. If not then ignore it. But I don't much appreciate being called a liar.

[Football Hero]

There's no way anyone can hit 5.00ppg average from defenders, it's just impossible.

OK, I have restrained myself so far but that's enough.

You have taken what I have said way too personally and as a result have effectively accused me of lying.

I am not talking about your team. I have little interest in your team to be frank. You haven't linked it so I know nothing about it. But I have looked at season stats of top 100 teams on the FPL Statistico over the last couple of seasons and many of them have achieved 5+ PPG from defenders. I know it is possible because I have seen it.

I have no wish to denigrate anyone else's performance or to comment negatively on their team. Either you can take something from what I have said or you can't. If not then ignore it. But I don't much appreciate being called a liar.

I haven't taken what you've said personally at all and I don't understand why you would think that, I just believe your idea of aiming for and achieving 5.00ppg for defenders, season after season is unrealistic.

You are looking at a few teams that finished in the top 100 in the past during one-off seasons. However finishing in the top 100 in any given season requires a huge slice of luck, and no one can achieve such a finish consistently. Aiming for the top 5k or 10k on a consistent basis is reasonable, (e.g Ville), but basing what is generally achievable in a blanket sense, on what a few lucky top 100 teams that ran ridiculously hot over 38 games managed to achieve, is not appropriate imo.

[Weisenwolf]

In general terms I agree; certainly after the madness of the first few weeks is over. What I mean is that if I NEED the funds I will ride with 3 defenders a playing forth and a dead weight. I would still not want the three playing defenders to be dross; it's more about D4 & D5 and in any event I'm now persuaded that a fully playing bench is probably worth the £1M'ish it would cost.

Yep. "The madness of the first few weeks", though.

I read an article on TL's blog about his form tables. What he has discovered is that their usefulness in the first 8-10 weeks of the season is very limited and then they become much more reliable. Basically he is saying that you can't rely on last season's form as a guide.

Personally I have noticed that I generally start to do better from 8-10 weeks in. It happened this season as well. And I usually have my strongest run from around GW20-30. I wish I could figure out a way to get that first 8-10 weeks right. Maybe being very reactive and jumping a lot of price-rise bandwagons is the best way? Certainly I played the first quarter of the season too passively this time (though there were other reasons for that).

In many ways I think nailing your GW1 squad is one of the hardest things to get right in FPL.

Current circumstances further reinforce the point. Baines is now flagged, Bellerin remains flagged and the Bruntosaurus is hardly guaranteed 90 minutes so I'm at risk here. Fortunately my D4 & D5 are now Daniels and Chambers so it's is highly likely I will still field 3 playing defenders unless all of the former don't play.

[djskope]

Looks like my new signing Holgate just got a bit more 'nailed'.. a bargain at 4.1 with juicy fixtures

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/38655487

[Ruth_NZ]

Current circumstances further reinforce the point. Baines is now flagged, Bellerin remains flagged and the Bruntosaurus is hardly guaranteed 90 minutes so I'm at risk here. Fortunately my D4 & D5 are now Daniels and Chambers so it's is highly likely I will still field 3 playing defenders unless all of the former don't play.

Yep. Although I think your 1st choice three will probably all play. Bellerin is back in full training. Baines is another hair-trigger flag, Koeman said "normally he will be OK for the weekend". With Brunt I'm not sure if WBA ever said he was injured, did they? But you have great cover anyway.

[Ruth_NZ]

I haven't taken what you've said personally at all and I don't understand why you would think that...

Here's why I think that:

I've just checked my ppg for my defenders this season and I am averaging 3.98ppg with them, but despite that I am up there in the overall league...so now I'm wondering whether this 5.0ppg target is nothing more than a pipe dream and is unrealistic. I would say that if you can get 4.0+ppg then you are doing very well, 3.75-4.00ppg is decent, and less than 3.75ppg means that you are not doing well enough.

I have 263 points from 66 defenders so far. Let's say I pick up an extra 4 CS from the 12 that we are down in total, then that is 16 extra points. We'll be generous and say I get an extra BP for each of those CS, so that's an additional 20 points in total. 263/66 = 3.98ppg; 283/66 = 4.29ppg. The difference is 0.31ppg in this example. So there's no way anyone can hit 5.00ppg average from defenders, it's just impossible.

So, your refutation of the idea that 5 PPG from defenders is an achievable target is based on your own team this season and little else. You seem to have taken the idea that you may be under-performing in this area as an affront.

I just believe your idea of aiming for and achieving 5.00ppg for defenders, season after season is unrealistic.

That was never my idea. It is a slightly arbitrary target to aim for, that's all. I know it is doable. Therefore I have something to benchmark performance against. I don't expect to achieve that this season, for sure. Not overall. But the point of a target is to help you improve. Not for it to be easy to achieve.

You are looking at a few teams that finished in the top 100 in the past during one-off seasons. However finishing in the top 100 in any given season requires a huge slice of luck, and no one can achieve such a finish consistently. Aiming for the top 5k or 10k on a consistent basis is reasonable, (e.g Ville), but basing what is generally achievable in a blanket sense, on what a few lucky top 100 teams that ran ridiculously hot over 38 games managed to achieve, is not appropriate.

Well, maybe that's a difference between me and you. My aim each season is to win FPL outright. I never expect I will do it but I can have some fun trying. Therefore I like to use the kind of performance levels that get a team into the top 1k or top 100 as a benchmark. I don't mind if I fall short because that gives me something to analyse and maybe learn something from. But I would rather measure my effectiveness against those parameters than easier ones. Quite simple really.

You, on the other hand, have nothing to worry about, by your own definition you are "doing very well" on defender PPG. Congatulations. Just please don't be disturbed if I choose to use benchmarks that are harder to achieve.

[Aldershot Rejects]

Whoops, didn't mean to open a can of worms.

For what it's worth I'm still aiming for 5ppg for the rest of the season (not the season as a whole). Yes I may not manage it but I don't think it is a bad benchmark to aim for. Having said that I think it leaves you with a fairly small pool of players to draw from - hence my comment about Alonso (currently 6.5 ppg), Baines (5.1 ppg) and Rose (5.3 ppg)/Walker (4.9 ppg). Other options probably include Cahill/Azpil (both 4.9 ppg), Daniels (4.7 ppg) and even Coleman (4.3 ppg) if Everton can keep up their defensive improvement.

Basically to get 5ppg from an individual player, you need a 50%+ cs record and a decent flow of point from other sources (Baines only has a 33% cs record but his flow of attacking pts/bps is exceptional).

[Ruth_NZ]

Or you can invest a bit more and use rotation to help. Clean sheets are a big part of defender points, even for those with big attacking edge. Having a couple of solid cheapies - Chambers and Pieters perhaps - along with 3 premiums or semi-premiums means you can bench one of the more expensive defenders occasionally.

I will probably bench Alonso next week @ Liverpool, for example, and let Evans start for me instead.

[Football Hero]

So, your refutation of the idea that 5 PPG from defenders is an achievable target is based on your own team this season and little else. You seem to have taken the idea that you may be under-performing in this area as an affront.

Are you serious? Are you really going to miss out all the stuff that I posted about the other top three teams this season being nowhere near that figure, to try and misrepresent my position and make it seem like I have only looked at my own team so that you can make an incorrect comeback about me taking something personally; well that is rather silly if you are going to do that, and I didn't expect someone like yourself would need to do this.

That was never my idea. It is a slightly arbitrary target to aim for, that's all. I know it is doable. Therefore I have something to benchmark performance against. I don't expect to achieve that this season, for sure. Not overall. But the point of a target is to help you improve. Not for it to be easy to achieve.

A target needs to be realistic to achieve or there is no point to it. Anyone can dream up unachievable targets and then wonder why they haven't achieved them. You say you know that it's doable, but you haven't shown anyone be able to hit 5.00ppg for their defenders over say 5+ seasons or 200+ gameweeks, you have just looked at some of the very luckiest teams that lucked into a top 100 spot over a period of 38 gameweeks and for some reason think that it is repeatable over the long run.

Please tell me that you do realise that a large sample size and doing something repeatedly over a long period is everything right, and that 38 gameweeks is not anything close to the long run? Why else do you have players of fairly decent skill and knowledge come top 2k one year, and then the next year they are struggling to make the top 100k? Has the competition suddenly got a lot better, or is it because 38 gameweeks is such a small sample that trying to garner anything over that kind of period is futile since the element of randomness and luck has not evened out yet?

By your logic, for example:

I managed to score 33 points from 3 defenders last gameweek, so I racked up an 11.00ppg average. As a result, I should now 'know' that 11.00ppg is something that is achievable, so that is my new target and I will judge all future performance against this. I mean I achieved it once, and first place in FPL achieved 13.00ppg this week so I know that 11.00ppg is more than doable right?

I think it's clear to anyone how silly and unachievable that is, so would there be a point in me creating an arbitrary, unrealistic target? Of course not, and that is the point I am trying to get through to you, that talking about a target that essentially only the luckiest teams can achieve, and even then only in the short term; is not a reasonable figure to draw up as a rule of thumb or benchmark.

We're trying to come up with a workable figure here, something that could potentially be useful to everyone, a barometer for measuring if someone is spending enough attention on their defence or not, so let's actually try and find a figure that is reasonable for a decent manager to achieve over the long run ok...

Well, maybe that's a difference between me and you. My aim each season is to win FPL outright. I never expect I will do it but I can have some fun trying. Therefore I like to use the kind of performance levels that get a team into the top 1k or top 100 as a benchmark. I don't mind if I fall short because that gives me something to analyse and maybe learn something from. But I would rather measure my effectiveness against those parameters than easier ones. Quite simple really.

You, on the other hand, have nothing to worry about, by your own definition you are "doing very well" on defender PPG. Congatulations. Just please don't be disturbed if I choose to use benchmarks that are harder to achieve.

Everyone's dream each season would be to win FPL, but there is no one that truly is aiming to do that as their only actual target and in reality they will pick a more achievable target as their true benchmark for which they judge their success, such as coming in the top 5k and winning their mini-leagues, (unless of course they get beaten in a mini-league by a mate who has a freak season but even then, you will know that your mate will be crushed by you in future seasons so it is no biggie and you can make your peace with it, so long as you yourself hit your top 5k goal etc.)

You are the same Ruth, if you finish top 5k you will be delighted and unlike what you suggest, you will not actually be thinking ''damn, why did I not win FPL this year, there were 2,589 players that were better than me this year, what the hell?!''

[Valeron]

Ville is considered the best FPL player but he's never even finished in the top 10 in years of playing, think he's a bit of a bottler to be honest.

[Ruth_NZ]

@ FootballHero

OK. You had your say, I had mine. Let's leave it there then.

[Shevchenko]

Me myself personally thinking that 5 ppg is highly influential, desireable and achievable through rotation of 5 playable defender that can covers each other AND any 5th midfielder or 3th forward well, and can be somewhat the most important differential, mainly because it is much more predictable than gambling or punting on a random player.

[Mav3rick]

The whole 5ppg target debate is timed well for me as I look at what to do with Holebas (do I upgrade him to someone like Baines or do I keep him part of a cheap defender rotation with Friend?), whilst I admire the target I also don't know if it's achievable without a large slice of luck. You can pick the "right" players, but they just may fail to return the points, or you can bench at the wrong times. PPG is such a crude metric and if we're talking about looking forward and trying to make 5ppg in the future, well we try to do that anyway don't we it just doesn't work out for the most part?

I trust Ruth's analysis of the top 100 to be correct, but without checking it myself my immediate thought would be that those players have just got lucky to reach that kind of level, I don't really think it's something you can aim for, not beyond the idea of trying to have defenders with good fixtures/form, which we do anyway.

I can though see sense in taking a step back and specifically looking closely at how you can realistically boost your defensive points, especially when we're also distracted by the latest shiny thing up front. But you can also look at it from another angle, so instead of considering last years top 100, FPL Geek follow each week 10 managers who have each finished top 10k for the last 3 years, so that's 30 top 10k finishes in total with an average ranking of about 2k. Their full article is here but here's some summary information:

GW21 Defensive selections:

Alonso is in 8/10 FPL managers teams
Amat/Lenihan are in 8/10 FPL managers teams
6/10 have a WBA defender (not including Foster)
Jones, Holebas are in 4/10 FPL managers teams
Pieters is in 3/10 FPL managers teams

The "representative" defensive structure at the moment is therefore: premium, 5.0, 5.0, 4.5, 4.0.

FFGeek don't give out the Ids of the team's they track (though it probably is the top players in the FFS HoF) so I can't run them through FPL Statistico, but those defences don't strike me as the kind of upgraded 5ppg level that we're talking about here, they look like traditional value squeezing defences to me. So I guess it comes down to which type of player you want to try to emulate, and if it's the latter, how you improve on the defensive side without impacting on the overall team.

I expect the top managers teams to react to Everton's fixtures though, so I expect to see more Baines, Colemans, Williams or even Funes Mori from this week on. I also think that their structure lines up pretty well with the fixtures in front of us or just past (WBA's run, Jones has been on a good fixture run his spot is perhaps free for Evertonisation, Holebas is just the backup really and could be Pieters, Friend, whoever).

It's probably an interesting exercise to suggest who could'would be dropped from that kind of system in order to boost the the defence to 5ppg.

Bearing in mind that I would expect the top teams to be including Everton cover now (I suspect for that Jones/Holebas spot) then the sort of template were up against is probably Alonso, McAuley/Brunt, Williams/Baines, Holebas/Pieters, Amat.

[Football Hero]

@ FootballHero

OK. You had your say, I had mine. Let's leave it there then.

Easy to say when you likely realise that you're losing the battle on this particular issue.

For what it's worth, I like a lot of your content and I enjoy reading your posts, you're a great contributer.