The best FPL defenders for 24/25

The Stuff You Should Know

🤝 Arsenal on verge of signing Riccardo Calafiori, Villa sign Amadou Onana from Everton.

👀 Southampton agree deal to sign Ben Brereton Díaz (Romano).

🧤 Chelsea sign GK Filip Jørgensen but Maresca “happy” with Sanchez.

🤕 Man United’s biggest summer signing, Leny Yoro, out for a “considerable period” after picking up a muscle injury.

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Keep reading for a Hall-of-Famer Gameweek 1 draft.

Alright?

If your FPL team is a Christmas dinner, goalkeepers and defenders are the vegetables.

Nobody’s traveling to Norfolk to pick up a particular breed of carrot. People don’t get up at 4am to marinade a cauliflower. Your vegetables probably aren’t going to be the headline act.

But the best Christmas dinners have to get the veg right too. Do you see where this metaphor is going?

From honey-roasted bargains to garlic-fried premiums, consider this newsletter your recipe to an excellent start-of-season defence.

The optimal 24/25 Gameweek 1 defence.

This section was originally at the bottom of the email, but then we thought “hang on, that’s not very lazy-friendly.”

We’d recommend reading the analysis below, but if you’re too busy or lazy, an optimal defence for Gameweek 1 will probably look something like this:

We still have midfielders and forwards to balance this with, but these picks make use of the excellent budget defenders on offer and picks out Gvardiol as the most tempting premium.

Still, there are plenty of options this season. Let’s look at some of ‘em.

The best goalkeeper.

In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re lazy bastards, so our typical advice is to pick one starting goalkeeper, play them every gameweek and shove a cheap £4.0m alternative on your bench until you’re ready to Bench Boost.

Some managers prefer to buy two decent goalkeepers and rotate based on fixtures. In our relatively extensive experience, any extra FPL points gained from this strategy don’t usually outweigh the extra money, brain power and heartache of making that decision every gameweek.

The curious case of Matt Turner (£4.0m)

With a 24.6% ownership at the time of writing, Matt Turner is the most owned goalkeeper in the game at the moment.

But don’t buy him expecting him to play. He almost certainly won’t.

So why are managers still buying him? There’s a bit of FPL lore we need to explain here:

FPL Lore: be cautious with the bargains

The danger of buying any player at the lowest end of their position’s price range is that they can be awkward to replace if they drop in price.

A £4.0m goalkeeper can easily be swapped for another £4.0m goalkeeper. But a £3.9m goalkeeper? If you want to sell them, you’ll need extra money in the bank for a replacement.

Players drop in price if managers sell ‘em. So it follows that the more ownership a player has going into Gameweek 1, the more likely they are to drop in price if they don’t end up playing - more managers are going to sell them off.

So if you’re shopping down the bargain aisle, it’s generally better to focus on lower-owned players. If they turn out to be a disappointment (as bargains often do), at least you can swap them out without too much headache.

Back to Turner. So far, there’s absolutely no reason to buy him. He probably won’t play and he’s owned by loads of managers.

But there’s a chance he’ll move clubs - possibly to a team outside of the Premier League. If that happens, he becomes price-locked.

In other words, because he’s no longer eligible to play, he can’t drop in price for anyone who owned him prior to his move. That’ll make him easier to sell when managers finally decide they want an alternative.

Rest assured, plenty of Turner owners won’t have realised this. Make sure you get rid of him from your draft before the Gameweek 1 deadline if he’s still at Nottingham Forest.

The best set-and-forget goalkeeper

The second-highest owned goalkeeper is less curious: it’s Arsenal’s David Raya (£5.5m).

We don’t love it.

That’s not because Raya is a bad goalkeeper. There’s a good chance he’ll be up there with the top scoring shot-stoppers by the end of the season.

It’s because owning Raya means you can only own two of Arsenal’s outfield players. It just feels like a decision you might later regret.

Jordan Pickford (£5.0m) ticks all the boxes for us. At £5.0m, he’s affordable, reliable and scored more points than any other goalkeeper last season. His opening fixtures are solid too (BHA, tot, BOU, ast, lei, CRY).

Oh, and he also plays for Everton, a stubborn mule of a team that isn’t likely to tempt you with too many outfield options anytime soon.

Emiliano Martinez (£5.0m) is also intriguing, but Villa are another that might offer more exciting opportunities elsewhere on the pitch.

We quite like Mark Flekken (£4.5m) as the best of the £4.5m options, but his opening fixtures are rubbish.

Defenders - the bargains (£4.0m).

As the Professor outlined in his quite excellent defender analysis earlier this week, £4.0m defenders are no longer a rare trinket surrounded by deadly booby traps.

This season you can nip down to your local supermarket and find a whole aisle of them, ready to eat straight away or freeze until you’re peckish.

But who are the best ones?

Valentin Barco (Brighton)

Brighton’s 20-year-old left-back is widely expected to play in Pervis Estupiñan’s place for around 2 months whilst the Ecuadorian recovers from an injury.

Yerson Mosquera (Wolves)

Wolves loaned out centre-back Mosquera to Villarreal for the latter half of last season, where he was a regular starter (and actually scored two goals in 14 games too).

He’s being tipped to replace the departed Max Kilman but, at just 20-years-old, it’s unclear as yet whether he’ll be trusted so soon.

Wout Faes (Leicester)

A regular Leicester starter who had a decent Euros for Belgium too. Should probably be £4.5m.

Defenders - mid-priced gems (£4.5m).

Not the sexiest position on your team, but your mid-priced defenders usually demand more transfers than the premiums or the bargains. Choosing them well from the outset can save you pain further down the line.

The wealth of £4.5m options.

We discussed these a few weeks back. There are plenty of excellent, reliable £4.5m defenders who play for relatively robust defences.

Joachim Andersen, Ezri Konsa, Marc Guehi and Vitalii Mykolenko are all great examples, and we’ve listed them in order of our preference.

Conspicuous in his absence is Dan Burn. Newcastle’s man is a great option providing he starts, but he’ll have competition from the talented Lewis Hall (£4.5m). There are more nailed £4.5m options: if you play with fire, you might get Burned.

Defenders - pricier options (£5.0m+).

As The Professor described in his latest newsletter, we wouldn’t usually consider a £5.0m a premium, but such is the wealth of cheaper options that it feels quite extravagant to be spending more on your backline.

It’s a bit like ordering the mixed grill in Wetherspoons.

Josko Gvardiol (£6.0m)

We think Gvardiol is worth owning if you can afford it.

32% of managers agree, and we can see that ownership increasing as the deadline approaches - the FOMG (Fear Of Missing Gvardiol) will only intensify.

Much of his affordability will depend on whether you own his £15.0m colleague, but assuming he doesn’t “do a Cancelo”, it’s likely he’ll play a big part in City’s title defence next season. His attacking return potential and Man City’s penchant for clean sheets could make a mockery of £6.0m.

Pedro Porro (£5.5m)

Porro is an exciting defender to own. You’re never bored as a Porro owner, even if that means last-minute clean sheet robberies and the occasional rotation.

Still, Porro’s 11 attacking returns (3 goals 8 assists please Carole) last season speaks volumes. If Spurs can improve on their seven clean sheets, Porro will almost certainly improve on his 23/24 tally (136 points).

Trent Alexander-Arnold (£7.0m)

Trent hasn’t been this cheap since the 19/20 season. He actually started last season a whole £1m more expensive, and finished the campaign priced £8.4m.

It’s a big, Sports Direct-esque, all-stock-must-go reduction in price.

But is the product defective? Not that we can see.

The Dutch manager in the room is Arne Slot, whose utilisation of Trent remains unclear. Will he be afforded the attacking freedom that he enjoyed under Klopp? Is the midfield experiment over? And what of Conor Bradley (£5.0m), who deputised so well in his absence last season?

These questions mean that a generous £7.0m price-tag hides an element of risk. 21% of managers have chosen to take it, and with Liverpool’s excellent opening fixtures, it’s easy to see why.

Arsenal’s defenders (£6.0m - £6.5m)

Owned by just over 40% of managers, by far the most popular defender in the game is William Saliba (£6.0m).

Anyone who follows football - even casually - will understand why a dependable Arsenal defender would be so popular in FPL, but it’s surprising to us that he’s attracted so much attention at that price.

The Arsenal man managed just three attacking returns last season. That means you’re very much investing for the clean sheets alone - always a precarious position to be in.

The imminent signing of Riccardo Calafiori will likely strengthen Arsenal’s defensive rigidity further, but it’s hard to know for sure what impact he’ll have.

Ben White (£6.5m) managed nine attacking returns last season, making him the second-most expensive defender in the game.

In ordinary seasons, this would feel like a great price, but all pricing must be viewed through the lens of the alternatives, and the alternatives are cheap this year.

Is White worth £2.0m more than Andersen? £1m more than Porro? We’re not so sure.

No Professor around here today I’m afraid. We thought we’d share James Cooper’s Gameweek 1 draft today instead.

Who is James Cooper? Well, he’s ranked in the top 20 FPL managers of all time, and he’s also on our LazyFPL premium team.

His job? To hang out in our WhatsApp chats and dish out solid gold advice.

(It’s a great time to upgrade to LazyFPL premium btw: you can do it here if you like.)

Here’s his team so far:

Look at how little he’s invested in his defence - just £30m on seven players. Truly a budget backline. David Dickinson would be proud.

The benefit, of course, is a stacked midfield and frontline - one that includes Mohamed Salah, Bukayo Saka and Erling Haaland without breaking a sweat.

Btw, this team view is from Fantasy Football Hub’s My Team. What you can’t see is the team rating or the option to suggest transfers. Using it is easy and free - try it here and see what it thinks to your Gameweek 1 draft!

Other Stuff We Found Interesting

1. OfficialFPL have released ranking badges. Thoughts?

   

2. Russell Martin, Southampton’s manager, has said he refuses to “set up camp” against good teams like Man City, even if that means getting beat sometimes.

3. Mikel Arteta has said it’s unlikely players who featured in this summer’s international tournaments will start the season late.

4. Fulham’s Rodrigo Muniz (£6.0m) expected to be on pens (The Scout).

Right, I’m off for a much-needed BBQ.

Midfielders next week. Excited? So are we.

In the mean time, stay lazy.

The LazyFPL team.