Here’s Joseph Crilley with his fantasy premier league formation analysis article looking at the merits of different FPL formations. Joseph finished last season with an overall rank of 13k
FANTASY PREMIER LEAGUE FORMATION ANALYSIS – TIME FOR 4 AT THE BACK?
3-4-3 has always been the classic formation to use in FPL, especially to start with in GW1. However, recently I have been seeing a lot of comments on Twitter regarding this season being a good time to move to a new formation. 3-5-2 was used fairly frequently last season but there’s been some mention of 4-4-2 and 4-3-3 as well. You will see the Geeks latest team is a 4-3-3 formation. There is a belief that premium defenders are able to outscore similarly priced midfielders and forwards, therefore making 4 at the back a good option. In this article, I will be looking into the different formations in detail to assess which is best.
Basis of Analysis
It’s worth noting this article is for forming your GW1 squads only and there will be a fair amount of generalisation as to how managers allocate their initial £100m budget. As the season goes on, team values change and we will discover undervalue players which alters how we look at our formations. I will be using price categories listed in the table below:
I believe the majority of managers will use a similar set of core players in their GW1 squads. Specifically, there will 11 types of players that are constant in each squad. To remind again, this is very general but I have used my current team that I built from this analysis to show an example:
Referring to the table above, I am going to presume that the attackers will be formed of a minimum 3 midfielders and 2 forwards. This leave 4 players (1 def, 2 mid, 1 fwd) to take the rest of the squad of 11 in the table above to 15 with £22.5m to spend. The best make up of those 4 players will determine what formation is used. I have ruled out using 5 at the back as this seems a little extreme to me but the four possible formations will require this:
3-4-3 = cheap def, cheap mid, mid-price mid, mid-price fwd
3-5-2 = cheap def, mid-price mid, mid-price mid, cheap fwd
4-4-2 = prem def, cheap mid, mid-price mid, cheap fwd
4-3-3 = prem def, cheap mid, cheap mid, mid-price fwd
Put simply, we will use 2 cheap options around £4.5m for our bench leaving around £13m to spend on the other 2 players who will be either mid-price attackers or premium defenders for our starting XI. Now we need to seek the best combination of these players to find our ideal formation.
Cheapies
First, we will look at the cheap players. Now, these players are designed to spend most of the time on the bench. However, I still think it is important to look at because they may well be required, especially considering the increase in rotation we have seen in recent seasons. The £4.5m options are below:
Position Options
Defender: Dunk, Mee, Yedlin, Naughton, Simpson, Johnson, Britos, Zanka, Tomkins and others
Midfielder: Loftus-Cheek, Carroll, Chalobah, Romeu, McArthur
Forward: Fletcher
As you can see, there are several defender options who all possess a decent chance to pick up points thanks to clean sheets. The midfielders are limited but there are some potential gems. Carroll should be on Swansea’s set-pieces once Sigurdsson leaves and the former Chelsea boys, Loftus-Cheek and Chalobah, could be good choices at their new clubs. Forward options are, frankly, pathetic; Fletcher is the best of the £4.5m players but even he won’t be anything like a regular starter. You’d have to pay an extra £0.5m for that luxury and even then, I can only see Jordan Ayew, who looks even close to being a starter.
To me, this could be a factor as to why 3-4-3 remains the most popular formation with it requiring 1 cheap defender and 1 cheap midfielder.
Mid-price players
Now this is where the real points will be generated for your team. We’re looking for 2 players in around the £6-7m bracket that will generally fill the remaining spots in your starting XI. Some options are presented with stats in the table below. These options are the players with the highest points per game that are regulars and fit for GW1. I also avoided duplicating teams in one position. Fantasy returns is a combination of goals and assists plus clean sheets for defenders.
It’s very interesting to see how well defenders perform here in comparison to the attackers (note Milner’s points have been updated for if he were classified as a defender last year). I have not even included the likes of Rose, Azpilicueta, Cahill, and Coleman who all had a PPG of over 4.5.
For the forwards, I had to reach higher than £7.0m to find enough decent options. If we were to do the same for midfielders, we would also have Son (5.1 PPG), Pedro (4.6 PPG) and Lallana (4.5 PPG). Now of course, the newly promoted players such as Gayle and Knockaert aren’t included who often provide good points within this bracket. However, for the £7.0m bracket, the simple facts are this: the total number of defenders in the mid price bracket with a PPG over 4.5 is 7, midfielders 2 and forwards 0.
Findings
If we’re looking purely at PPG for the starting players, the best combination is Alonso and Stanislas to form a 4-4-2 formation. Obviously, this is not the only metric that we should look at to pick our teams but I think that’s it’s certainly interesting to see this result. Also, we would need to find a £4.5m midfielder and forward to go on our bench which as we saw, is not ideal. These are what I think the best combination for each formation in my team with £13.5m to spend is:
3-4-3 = Naughton, Carroll, Zaha, Austin
3-5-2 = Naughton, Zaha, Stanislas, Fletcher
4-4-2 = Alonso, Carroll, Stanislas, Fletcher
4-3-3 = Alonso, Carroll, Chalobah, Austin
I would certainly prefer Alonso over other £7.0m options so it looks like 4 at the back may be the way to go this year! Personally, I like all of my GW1 squad to be starters in case of any issues arising so I’m not convinced by utilising a £4.5m forward.
Conclusion
The defenders seem to perform best in both categories which causes a bit of an issue. If you were to choose a premium defender for your team, it may be a hindrance to your bench. However, there seems to be a vast number of premium options so I personally like the idea of starting with 4 at the back. Then it becomes a choice of whether you want a mid-price midfielder or forward. 4-3-3 becomes quite likeable here because it allows you to choose a striker which you can always change if a good option emerges such as Dwight Gayle. Also, there is a chance your 4.5 midfielder could ‘do a Capoue’ and start the season well to be a genuine rotation option for your team.
Obviously these thoughts are all based on historical stats which won’t be a completely accurate prediction. I like the look of 4-3-3 but this is not definitive and everyone has their own opinion on the best way to start the season. Feel free to comment below on how useful this information has been and what formation you’re thinking of starting the season with.
Below is a draft of my latest team applying this logic:
Thanks Joseph excellent article
Buy our 57 page Ebook “a guide to fantasy premier league 17/18” with loads of graphics and detailed stats on 150+ players from last season. Only £3.00
the FFGeek league code is 5379-1967
Try the new way of playing fantasy premier league football by clicking DraftFantasyFootball.co.uk here or on the banner below. It’s free to play.
Follow us on twitter and facebook for article updates and news
