Here’s our fantasy premier league 2 team £4.5m defensive rotations article. It’s a revisit of an earlier article designed to help you maximise points from your cheap defenders and minimise valuable funds on the bench
fantasy premier league 2 team £4.5m defensive rotations revisited
Firstly a warning. It’s quite a long article so go to the summary at the end if you can’t be bothered with the detail
Background
You may have seen my earlier article on 2 team rotations. Now that were closer to the start of the season it’s becoming clearer what the rotation options are. Therefore I thought it was a good time to update the article. However there are still teams where the situation isn’t clear so we cover that as well
Why defensive rotation pairs?
The idea with fantasy premier league 2 team £4.5m defensive rotations is to use them so 1 player will be in your team in the gameweek with a good fixture and the other on the bench. The idea is that you plan in advance to identify the pairings that maximise the amount of good fixtures you have each gameweek. History shows that 60% of clean sheets come at home so that’s where the fixture emphasis should be.
However, there’s no need to look for a scenario where every fixture is at home. It’s a balance between home fixtures and the best fixtures overall. Also remember that you have a wildcard in the first half of the season. So there’s no need to look for a pair for longer than the first wildcard duration as an absolute maximum. Many managers will have a fixed position for using the wildcard. Many will want to use it after GW3 opens for the international break 2 weeks of price rises.
If you have a fixed view then plan your team accordingly. If you don’t build in some flexibility to how long the rotation should last. Personally I think I will use my wildcard around GW10. Thats when I feel comfortable that there’s enough stat data to evaluate everyone.
Defensive rotation examples
Here’s some examples
1 premium defender who plays every week and 2 rotating pairs in a back 3
3 premium defenders and a rotating pair of defenders in a back 4
In both situations again you would want the rotation pairs to be no more than £4.5m to avoid too much money on your bench unnecessarily
Solid £4.5m options
Here is the list that I think is fairly solid for gametime. Obviously things can still change.
Brighton – Sutttner and Dunk
Burnley – Mee
Huddersfield – Schindler
Newcastle – Dummett or Yedlin if Yedlin is fit
Stoke – Johnson
Swansea – Naughton
Watford – Prodl
The monitor list
Here’s the list which is not solid but still possible. Needs more monitoring
Bournemouth – Francis (Can’t see this)
C Palace – Tomkins, Kelly and Delaney
Everton – Holgate
Liverpool – Trent Alexander Arnold
WBA – Hegazy
West Ham – Masuaku, Collins
Everton and Liverpool should really stand alone although value suggests they could rotate.
The previous best pairings schedule
This one was in my earlier article. You can see the best pairings over various time frames:
However as you can see there are issues with WBA and C Palace who are the cornerstone of these rotation pairs. If Palace or WBA do get a secure £4.5m defender I will go with it but otherwise I will use another pairing. WBA at least have a secure £5.0m option in Dawson. Who knows what Palace are doing? They seem to be playing a back 3 alot in pre-season supposedly just to get used to it in case they want to use it. Despite having 4 CBs the back 3 includes a CM in Milivojevic? The RWB has been Townsend. Could you upgrade to£5.0m Ward or Dann for security? I’m not even sure you could. If there are any Palace fans reading this who understand the situation better than me then please put something in the comments below
An updated summary schedule
So here’s a new summary schedule only using those £4.5m players that are fairly secure above. So I’ve gone through all 28 potential options believe it or not . The schedule was done on the basis that home games against the following teams:
Watford
Swansea
Bournemouth
WBA
Stoke
C Palace
Newcastle
Brighton
Huddersfield
Burnley
Look away now if you don’t like Burnley or are expecting fantastic results because it’s not pretty
I did warn you. Only Burnley /Watford has the prospect of 2 clean sheets in the first 3 and only 2 combinations have 4 potential clean sheets in the first 6.
Here’s the long version. The green is the potential clean sheets and the orange is the best fixture in the gaps where there are no potential clean sheet fixtures. The number 1 underneath matches the green and shows a potential clean sheet. Many of the options don’t rotate home and away. If this is the best 7 options you can imagine the other 21.
Summary and FFGeek view
I’m going for the best of the certain options in Burnley and Watford ie Mee and Prodl for the moment. I’ll be monitoring the Palace situation to see if there’s any clarity over the 3 potential £4.5m options and the WBA option of £4.5m CB Hegazy. However I’m sticking to the decision of not paying £5.0m for a rotation defender. Especially if the principal formation I will be playing is 3-4-3.
There’s also Holgate of Everton and Trent Alexander Arnold of Liverpool who have a chance to start GW1. TAA maybe a little Clyne injury dependent but there is a group of Liverpool supporters disenchanted with Clyne who think that TAA maybe able to hold his place. I would expect both Liverpool and Everton defenders to play each week. Everton have tricky fixtures to start but Liverpool I would trust each week. However their price does mean rotation is feasible and I’ll monitor that too.
Hope you found the article useful
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