Here’s a fantasy premier league defensive rotations article where we look for the best £4.5m defensive rotation pairs and throw in a couple of 3 way rotations as well
Fantasy premier league defensive rotations – looking for the best cheap defensive pairs
If you can’t be bothered reading the whole article there’s a pairs rotation summary table near the end which is pretty self explanatory.
A recap on why?
This can be used for your goal keepers or your defenders
In FPL you have 5 defensive positions.
As a general rule premium defenders from sides such as Man City, Man Utd and Spurs will play every game and cost generally minimum £5.5m.
Cheaper defenders in the £4.5m range can improve performance by being picked in pairs or threes (as opposed to randomly) in such a way to maximise good fixtures and improve the probability of clean sheets. Alot of rotation pairs you see written about focus on overall fixtures and perfect home and away rotation. I’ve done this purely looking to maximise clean sheet possibilities over various time frames
The objective of this article is to look for defensive rotation pairs with £4.5m defenders.
You would use this pair as an additional defender position in your starting defence.
A word of caution though in that fixtures themselves are no guarantee of clean sheets. You need to balance that against the defensive strengths of the teams.
The clubs
Here’s the clubs which have playing £4.5m defenders that are in scope are as below. I wont add the GKs for the moment
Bournemouth – Charlie Daniels
Brighton – Lewis Dunk
Cardiff – Bamba
C Palace – Tomkins
Fulham – Ream
Huddersfield – Zanka
Newcastle – Yedlin
Southampton – Cedric
Watford – Kabasele TBC
West Ham – Ogbonna
Wolves – Boly
The process
I will look at a number of different pairs and rank them by the number of positive fixtures they generate. A positive fixture is defined as a home match against one of the following teams and is coloured in green
Southampton
Huddersfield
Brighton
Newcastle
Burnley
Watford
C Palace
Bournemouth
Wolves
Cardiff
Fulham
The table
I’ve divided the table into 3 groups of game weeks as these could be natural wildcard weeks. After 4 and 8 are the international breaks. 12 was a natural extension
Pairs Summary table
| GW1-4 | GW1-8 | GW1-12 | GW 5-12 | |
| WAT/WHM | 4 | 7 | ||
| FUL/WHM | 4 | 5 | 7 | |
| BOU/CPL | 5 | |||
| CAR/WAT | 5 | 8 | 5 | |
| CRY/WOL | 5 | 5 | ||
| SOU/WHM | 7 |
So if you’re pre planning to Wildcard after GW4 then your best pair is Watford/West Ham or Fulham/West Ham.
If you’re planning after GW8 then there are 4 to choose from
If you have no fixed idea and want flexibility then it’s either Fulham/West Ham or Cardiff /Watford
By the way I struggled to find something that worked well with the Huddersfield and Newcastle defences both of which I quite liked. I tried multiple options and didn’t really come up with anything suitable.
Three way rotation
I had a quick look at a few 3 way rotations. You would use this with a pair of premiums to make a 3rd defender for a back 3.
I put together the best 2 defensive teams in my view of Wolves and C Palace and then added to them Brighton, Newcastle and West Ham to that pairing. I then added Watford to try and maximise good fixtures which it did giving 10 out of 12 with the next best three being 8 fixtures.
Here’s the results:
The FFGeek team
As you’ll see if you’ve looked at my recent article you’ll see I’ve gone for 4 premium defenders so rotation isn’t a requirement in my defence.
In goal I’ve gone for Fabianski of West Ham and Patricio of Wolves. As you can see that’s not one of the featured rotations and only produces 2 greens in each of the 2 sectors. In fact after GW7 it doesn’t rotate home and away. I have an open mind over my wildcard so I really chose a GK I like in Fabianski and a defence I think will work well in Wolves. That for the moment offset the lack of rotation.
I hope you find this useful
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