Here’s our FPL defensive rotation article where we look for £4.5m defensive rotation pairs that rotate well over the first 10 gameweeks. By GW11 I suspect a reasonable proportion of FPL managers would have used their first wildcard.
FPL defensive rotation – looking for £4.5m defensive rotation options.
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A recap on why rotation pairs?
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, Liverpool and Chelsea 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 (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 fixtures over 38 gameweeks and perfect home and away rotation. I’ve done this purely looking to maximise clean sheet possibilities over a time frame of the first 10 gameweeks.
You would use this pair as an additional defender positions in your starting defence plus say 3 premium defenders
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 what I expecting to be playing £4.5m defenders that are in scope are as below. I wont add the GKs for the moment
Aston Villa – El Mohamady or Taylor/Targett
Bournemouth – Adam Smith
Brighton – Dunk
Burnley – Taylor
C Palace – Dann for part due to injuries (to be monitored)
Newcastle – Lascelles
Norwich – Godfrey or Aarons
Sheffield United – O’Connell or Egan
Southampton – Bednarek (to be monitored)
Watford – Mariappa or Cathcart to be monitored
West Ham – Fredericks, Balbuena or Diop
Home clean sheets by team in 18/19
57% of clean sheets last season were at home so this is where we’ll be concentrating on. This is to give you a rough feel of home defensive strength. Taken from the excellent site soccer stats.
The teams that failed to score away in 18/19
This will show you the weakest attacking teams away from home.
So how am I assessing the best rotation pairs?
I’m am going to assess the best rotation pairs by looking for home games against the following teams:
Brighton, Southampton, Newcastle, West Ham, Burnley, Villa, Norwich, Sheffield, Watford and C Palace.
While Bournemouth failed dismally away from home I feel they have enough fire power not to be a good clean sheet prospect this season. While C Palace performed well away from home they massively outperformed their expected goals so I’ve treated them as a good opponent. I’ve also treated Watford as a good opponent as I feel they are unlikely to perform as well away from home this season.
I’ve marked the fixtures against the teams above in Green.
Here’s where there are 6 good home fixtures
Here’s where there are 5 good home fixtures
Hope that helps your thinking with cheap defenders. Here’s the link to the full google spreadsheet schedule of options
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