The best defenders for GW1 🛡

👀 Hugo Ekitike joins Liverpool.

🤝 Viktor Gyokeres joins Arsenal.

🛡 Today, we’re helping you build a backline that even your chiropractor would envy.

🏆 Join our free cash league if you haven’t already. The code is ygvli7 if you’re old school. Prizes and eligibility here.

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It’s a little-known fact that the UK’s Ministry of Defence was originally established to advise on the best £4.5m defenders in FPL.

The government has since distanced itself from giving out free FPL advice (though, thankfully, the Department of Budget Forwards is still going strong). Today, we’re here to fill that void.

Along with news updates from the past week, we’re giving you the lazy low-down on who to consider when you’re building your backline. From luxury full-backs to bargain bucket centre-backs, save this email to avoid FPL humiliation.

We don’t often discuss the team behind LazyFPL Premium, but it’s much more than just The Professor. How’s this for a line-up of contributors?

James Cooper - According to the FPL Premier Tools Hall of Fame, he’s the 20th-best manager in the world.

James Owens - The data guru. Four top 5k finishes in his past seven seasons.

Chris Green - An ‘eye-test’ manager whose squad more often than not looks a bit different compared to the template. Top 5k rank last season.

Ross Jenkinson - Three top 50k OR finishes in his past 5 seasons, including 229th in 2020/21, while playing with the crutch of having to pick Manchester United players because he supports them.

Oh…and The Professor - Our resident smart manager. Never finished outside of the top 100k, and never stops banging on about that fact.

They’ll all be sharing their teams, advice and chip strategies throughout the 25/26 season, exclusively for LazyFPL Premium members. Join today and enjoy a direct line to their brains:

Those familiar with LazyFPL will know that we’re usually curators, not creators. Our job is to equip you with excellent research so you can make your own decisions, not to tell you what to do (like we’d ever know).

Here are two graphics we found that’ll help you make better decisions when picking defenders, and provide useful context for the rest of this newsletter:

1) Defender average points last season if defensive contributions were a thing.

This was created by @WhatTheF__PL and shows how defenders in each price bracket would’ve faired last season if defensive contributions had been around.

2) Defender pairings

Defender rotations allow you to alternate players between the bench and your starting XI based on their fixtures. This table from FPL SEBV suggests some nice ones:

No Gameweek 1 team is complete without a £4.0m defender who has a chance of starting a few games. These are the sacrificial lambs that enable you to afford the players who might actually score points.

They’re hard to find, but that’s why we’re here. Constantly keeping watch, like a Teemu Batman. Below we’ve listed three of them, but we’ll keep you updated in later newsletters if any of this changes:

Lazy Summary: Maxime Estève, Gabriel Gudmundsson, Joe Rodon.

1) Maxime Estève (£4.0m, Burnley).

E-Steve: The same effects as a normal Steve, but reportedly better for your health. We mentioned him last week, but to jog your memory, he was Burnley’s Player of the Season last season, and he’s nailed to start.

2) Gabriel Gudmundsson (£4.0m, Leeds).

Good man's son? Didn’t realise I had a kid.

Gudmundsson will likely be Leeds’ first-choice fullback, and loves to get forward. A £4.0m defender with attacking prospects? Show us the adoption forms.

3) Joe Rodon (£4.0m, Leeds)

Like most guests on The Joe Rodon Experience, we don’t expect more than a couple of decent points made every 90 minutes.

Still, the centre-back played every Championship minute last season, and there’s nothing obvious to suggest that’ll stop in the Premier League.

Below you’ll find some £4.5m - £5.0m defenders that good managers are looking at. We’ve listed them in order of who we like the most, sort of like they’re our friends on Myspace.

Summary for the lazy: Marc Guehi, Ola Aina, Aaron Wan-Bissaka, Destiny Udogie, Ezri Konsa.

🥇 Marc Guehi (£4.5m, Crystal Palace)

A move to Liverpool (as is rumoured) could make a mockery of Guehi’s £4.5m pricetag, but would also make him a much bigger rotation risk. At Crystal Palace, he benefits from assured starts and would’ve scored the second-highest points per game last season in his price bracket if defensive contributions were included.

🥈 Ola Aina (£5.0m, Nottingham Forest)

We flagged Aina last week. Call us Craig David because, seven days later, we still fancy him.

The full-back impressed last season and finds himself £0.5m cheaper than his centre-back colleagues, Nikola Milenkovic and Murillo. He’ll start the season with a nice run of Brentford (H), Crystal Palace (A) and West Ham (H).

🥉 Aaron Wan-Bissaka (£4.5m, West Ham)

On first glance, the fact that Wan-Bissaka is currently the highest owned defender in the game might seem odd. It certainly was to us. But when you look at his numbers, it makes a little more sense.

Firstly, no £4.5m defender scored more points last season than the West Ham man. If you’re filtering by “£4.5m defenders" (which only takes about 7 hours on FPL’s new interface), he’ll appear at the top by default.

Secondly, he starts the season at Sunderland. Thirdly, he somehow managed to quietly accrue eight attacking contributions last season, including two goals and six assists.

Beware, though: trickier fixtures against Chelsea (H), Nottingham Forest (A) and Spurs (H) follow Sunderland.

4️⃣ Destiny Udogie (£4.5m, Spurs)

Udogie is a slightly U-dodgy pick at the moment, mostly owing to an injury that’s keeping him from taking part in Spurs’ tour of Asia.

If he gets some pre-season minutes, he could be a great pick for an appetising Gameweek 1 fixture against newly promoted Burnley. The Super Cup takes place three days prior to that match, so that’ll give us a decent clue.

5️⃣ Ezri Konsa (£4.5m, Aston Villa)

Currently the second-most selected player in this price bracket, Konsa feels underpriced, but for all of his qualities, he only managed 103 points last season.

He gets onto this list by virtue of being a nailed-on centre-back for a decent side.

Picking defenders is a bit like picking the numbers on Countdown. If you’re playing on hard mode, you can go for five low-priced picks, but generally, it’s nice to throw in a couple of higher numbers too. Four from the bottom and one from the top, please, Carole.

There are very few drafts that we’ve seen (and, after last week’s email, we’ve seen plenty) with more than one premium defender at the moment, which makes the choice all the more pertinent.

Here are our favourites.

Summary for the lazy: Murillo, Josko Gvardiol, Virgil van Dijk, Marc Cucurella.

🥇 Murillo (£5.5m, Nottingham Forest)

For this section, we’ll hand you over to our guest contributor, 70s singer Tony Christie:

Is it the time to own Murillo?
We heard his xG is a bit low.
But you should still look at Murillo.
His CBIT is legendary.

Ah yes, let us introduce you to CBIT - FPL’s hot new acronym. It stands for Clearances, Blocks, Interceptions, and Tackles and it’s how defensive contributions are measured.

Murillo had a very high average CBIT last season. He might not score as many goals as his colleague, Nikola Milenkovic, but last season, he would’ve scored more points per 90 than any other defender if CBIT counted.

🥈 Josko Gvardiol (£6.0m, Man City)

Nobody is safe from Pep Guardiola, apart from barber shops. His rotation can strike when you least expect it, but Gvardiol is among the safer picks. The Croatian started 36 games last season and had five goals and the most FPL points of any defender to show for it.

According to last season’s data, he’s also the most likely of City’s defenders to benefit from defensive contributions.

🥉 Virgil van Dijk (£6.0m, Liverpool)

There’s plenty of excitement about Liverpool’s incoming full-backs, Milos Kerkez and Jeremie Frimpong, and probably for good reason.

But we tend to err on the side of lazy when it comes to picking new arrivals: It’s much easier (and usually more effective) to pick a tried and tested club stalwart. And players don’t get more stalwarty than Virgil. He stands to benefit from CBIT and loves a towering header.

Textbook stalwart behaviour.

4️⃣ Marc Cucurella (£6.0m, Chelsea)

Cucurella would’ve been a differential last season, but he’s currently the sixth-most selected defender in the game. That’s owing to five goals and two assists last season, as well as a pretty nice fixture run to start the season (Crystal Palace (H), West Ham (A), Fulham (H)).

Oh yeah, those guys.

Caoimhin Kelleher (£4.5m, Brentford) is the most popular goalkeeper at the moment, which is annoying because he definitely has the hardest name to spell out of them all (at least Kepa Arrizabalaga is phonetic).

Some FPL pundits find it odd that Kelleher is the most popular pick, but he’s one of the few £4.5m goalkeepers who looks set to play every game, and his predecessor, Mark Flekken, was a good budget option last season too.

Honestly, our system for picking goalkeepers is essentially “build our entire team, then see which keepers we can afford at the end”.

A word of warning: Unless you’re planning an early Bench Boost*, we’d strongly advise against picking two playing goalkeepers. It’s cheaper and less stressful to pick one and pair him with a £4.0m goalkeeper that probably won’t play.

*Stop panicking: We’ll talk about chip strategy ahead of Gameweek 1.

Look, we’re not saying this is optimal, but it’s enough to avoid ridicule in the group chat. And, ultimately, isn’t that what we’re all striving for?

We’ve got what ought to be five starting defenders (Udogie is a bit of a risk, but we’ll know more nearer to the Gameweek 1 deadline), an all-Brentford goalkeeper pairing that should protect from any surprises, and we’ve spent a modest £31.5m on the lot.

Which leaves plenty for the mediocre bunch of pricy midfielders we’ll be bringing in next week.

Viktor Gyokeres ➡️ Arsenal

Viktor Gyokeres, scorer of 39 goals in 33 league games last season for Sporting CP, has joined Arsenal. We’ll cover him in more depth in our forwards newsletter, but some initial thoughts:

We don’t have his price yet, but it’ll probably be released today (Monday).

Hugo Ekitike (£8.5m) ➡️ Liverpool

The former Frankfurt striker scored 15 goals in the Bundesliga last season, and has been priced at a tantalising £8.5m by the FPL powers that be.

As promising as he is, it’s unclear whether he’ll get regular starts at his new club. Part of that is due to strong rumours surrounding Alexander Isak’s future, and part of it is because Liverpool tends to be fairly fluid with their attacking picks.

A quick round-up of some notable pre-season action:

Liverpool 2-4 AC Milan

Florian Wirtz started upfront in this game, and Jeremie Frimpong and Milos Kerkez played the second half. Cody Gakpo and Dominik Szoboszlai scored the goals.

Arsenal 3-2 Newcastle

Anthony Elanga scored for his new club six minutes into this game. Jacob Murphy also scored for both teams. Goals from Mikel Merino and Martin Odegaard (penalty with Bukayo Saka subbed off) completed Arsenal’s win. Alexander Isak is not with the team.

Manchester United 2-1 West Ham

Bruno Fernandes scored a brace, including a penalty, against West Ham at the weekend. Jarrod Bowen scored West Ham’s only goal. Matheus Cunha featured, but Bryan Mbeumo didn’t. Niclas Fullkrug started upfront for West Ham, with Bowen sitting behind him.

Right you are, then. Next week, we’re focusing on your midriff. If we have time, we might also look at the best midfielders.

Stay lazy,

The LazyFPL Team.