Here’s a short article taking a quick look at whether you should spend your fantasy premier league £5.5m to £6.0m on a midfielder or a defender. There’s a table of stats to compare the 2 and a few words on the comparison.
fantasy premier league – £5.5m to £6.0m to spend – Defender or Midfielder?
If you can’t be bothered reading the main part of the article and stats there’s a “what does this mean” summary at the end with what I found out.
Firstly you maybe wondering why I picked such a narrow price range. It was mainly due to the cash I had left over if I upgraded Firmino to Aguero using the sale of the injured Arnautovic. By the way if you’re wondering how the maths work for that, it’s because I have a decent amount in the bank.
By the way you may want to read our defender player rankings article and our budget midfielder player rankings article
Method and stats definitions
Firstly the methodology isn’t meant to be statistically robust just something rough and ready to see what the results were. If you’re a maths major please look away now.
Essentially I picked the top 5 midfielders total score in the price range and compared them to the top 6 in the price range discounting Rudiger who isn’t nailed on.
I used a few different comparisons and then averaged them for the 5 or 6 players.
Stats:
PPG: Points per game straight from the fantasy premier league site
PP90: Points per 90 minutes played. This gives the points while on the pitch.
Cons %: The consistency %. This is the percentage of games played over a minimum time that a goal or assist resulted. Defenders also include clean sheets in this.
Expl %: The explosiveness %. This is the % of the same games that 10 or more FPL points were obtained in a match
The comparison tables
| Midfielders | Price £ | PPG | PP90 | Cons % | Expl % |
| Choupo Moting | 5.4 | 3.8 | 4.5 | 35 | 15 |
| Shaqiri | 6.0 | 4.0 | 4.5 | 43 | 5 |
| Gross | 5.8 | 4.4 | 5.2 | 32 | 14 |
| Albrighton | 5.6 | 3.5 | 4.4 | 33 | 10 |
| Doucoure | 5.3 | 4.2 | 4.2 | 13 | 9 |
| Average | 5.6 | 4.0 | 4.6 | 31 | 11 |
| Defenders | Price £ | PPG | PP90 | Cons % | Expl % |
| Monreal | 5.6 | 5.0 | 5.4 | 63 | 11 |
| Jones | 5.7 | 5.3 | 5.6 | 72 | 0 |
| Maguire | 5.5 | 3.9 | 3.9 | 50 | 4 |
| Davies | 5.5 | 4.9 | 6.1 | 50 | 19 |
| Koscielny | 6.0 | 4.5 | 4.6 | 50 | 6 |
| Vertonghen | 6.0 | 3.5 | 3.6 | 46 | 0 |
| Average | 5.7 | 4.5 | 4.9 | 55 | 7 |
So what does this mean?
So if you take the tables at face value then the results are pretty straightforward.
Defenders at this price give you better returns even when you just count pitch time and you have the advantage that the players are in better teams. They also give you a more consistent flow of points. However it’s probably true to say they lack the explosive ability of the midfielders. The spread of PPG and PP90 seems wider for the Defs than Mids though interestingly.
This does assume though that you have held these players over the whole of the season gone. I would say as a general rule that the defenders would be held for longer periods whereas the midfielders would be for shorter bursts of good fixtures. You may or may not agree with that. If you do agree with that then if you get your timing right in that short spell you could get the explosiveness and consistency by virtue of playing against the lower placed opposition.
Here’s who the 10+ FPL point hauls for midfielders came about against. WBA (3x), Brighton, Watford, Stoke, West Ham, Huddersfield, Leicester, Southampton and Man Utd.
Excuse the brevity but I hope you found that interesting
A poll
Thought while I was doing Polls this would be interesting too.
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