Thomas Vermaelen is unquestionably the defender with the greatest goal threat in the premier league. In my mind he deserves to be in the team of the season despite not being one of the highest point scorers in the Barclays premier league format, despite being in a team that conceded more goals than 7 other teams and was 6th in the clean sheet rankings and also started out at £7.0m as an elite defender. He was also a questionable figure in many eyes, often being caught out position wise and roaming forward at the wrong moment. However real football criticisms matter not in fantasy football and the 6 goals was by far the highest goal scoring feat for any defender and the bonus points inevitably followed these goals (as they tend to do in the Barclays format) making him the highest points per game scorer equal with Vincent Kompany for regular starters.
Heres the stats:
Points: 132
Games: 29
Points per game: 4.6 (highest with Vincent Kompany for regular starters)
Clean sheets: 10
Goals: 6 (highest defender)
Bonus points: 14 (highest defender)
Price range: Start £7.0m. Lowest £6.7m Highest £7.3m
% owned 8.7%
However, despite all my eulogising I’m not really thinking of owning him next season. £7.0m for a defender in a team with a questionable ability to keep clean sheets on the basis of anticipated attacking returns is just not really attractive to me. Attacking returns are more unreliable than you think (look at Robert Huth and Leighton Baines this year) and if I was to part with this amount for a defender then it would be on anticipated clean sheets not goals. I just cant see this with Arsenal unless Mertesacker can stabilise the defence significantly next season.
