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Premium defenders significantly underpriced?

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Football Hero
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Premium defenders significantly underpriced?

Post by Football Hero »

It seems clear to me now that FPL have really got their prices wrong for the top defensive options in the game.

For example, opting to go with a 6.0M Robertson, Mendy or Davies type and a 4.5M striker that sits on the bench seems to be a no-brainer when compared to going with a 6.0M Austin, Mounie, Gray or Iheanacho and a 4.5M defender that sits on the bench.

To begin with, Robertson and co. are virtually guaranteed to start each week, and assuming they stay injury-free, will rack up 15 or so clean sheets, get a goal or two and 6+ assists over the season. In comparison, the likes of Austin and co. are not guaranteed to start at all, (one or two bad games and you worry they will get dropped), and even a best case scenario with one of these players having a good season they may rack up 15 goals and 5 assists at best, but that will be vary rare though, much more likely will be around 8 goals and 4 assists with plenty of 1 point cameos along the way. So for essentially two groups of players all priced around 6.0M, the difference in points expectation is stark, perhaps as much as 50 to 70 points difference over the season.

Back in the day I remember the likes of Ashley Cole, Patrice Evra and John Terry in their pomp were starting the season at 7.5M. Vidic may have even been 8.0M one season. There were also plenty of weak but usable defenders at 4.0M. In recent seasons FPL seems to have reduced the price of the top performing defenders significantly and also attempted to raise the price of weak starting defenders to 4.5M, (Wan Bissaka and a few others aside where it's clear they have made a misjudgement on their starting chances). This has really made mid-range options like Maguire and van Aanholt, (nailed on with decent attacking threat but only average clean sheet prospects), un-ownable because while the 1.0M price upgrade over the 4.5M options seems fair, it is not worth choosing them over the 6.0M options like Robertson and Mendy when they are only 0.5M more expensive and have far higher cleansheet prospects. If Robertson and co. were 7.0M+ then someone like Maguire is well priced, roughly halfway between the two extremes.

It's similar with the goalkeepers too. What's the point of going for a rotation strategy with cheap goalkeepers when it only saves you 0.5M over going with a 5.5M premium keeper and a 4.0M rotter to sit on the bench? The 0.5M saved with a rotating pair will likely not help you make up for the points deficit that the premium keeper will give you and it's much higher variance too.

Thoughts?

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sukh0718
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Re: Premium defenders significantly underpriced?

Post by sukh0718 »

Miss the old days (around 2005) when the premium defenders actually worth their prices and actually delivered the points like the Chelsea's Calvaliho, Terry , Ashley Cole / Man Utd's Vidic, Evra etc.

Vidic @ £8.0 seemed overpriced but he used to score over 10s three weeks in a row and he was in the crazy form so it was a must to have him in the squad.

Let's see this 18-19 year's defenders and I know it is only after GW 1 but except Mancity's Mendy scoring 15pts @ £6.5 [great score compared to value] / Chelsea's Marcos Alonso scoring 11pts @ £6.5

Azpilicueta worth £6.5 getting 6pts,
Nicolás Otamendi £6.5 NOT even playing
Antonio Valencia £6.5 2weeks out due to injury
Virgil van Dijk £6 only getting Clean Sheet(6points)
Ashley Young £6 what's up with him
Laurent Koscielny £5.5 unknown return date

Simply, it is not good enough.

It is a disaster/blizzard year to put money on defenders and I will not invest any in defenders positions as they are ;

1. PRICED RUBBISH
2. NO DECENT PLAYERS
3. NOT DELIVERING ANY CLEAN SHEETS
4. FOOTBALL IS A SCORING GAME NOT DEFENDING GAME THESE DAYS
5. BRING BACK VIDIC

and so on. Let's be wise and put efforts on Midfielders and Forwards. Time and Money wasting on Defenders have always been a worst strategy.

I had finished 10,000's in the past using this strategy and guys I tell you to note this.

* rotate between five £4.0 - £5.0 cheap Defenders
* have decent 3 Forwards
* have decent 3~4 Midfielders
* rotate between two £4.0~ £5.0 cheap Gollies or have one premium decent Gollie.
and I swear you this will work and you'll end up in a good ranking. NOTE THIS GUYS

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No Way Jose
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Re: Premium defenders significantly underpriced?

Post by No Way Jose »

So one of you is saying they are u deroriced and one saying they are overpriced?

carver
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Re: Premium defenders significantly underpriced?

Post by carver »

Robertson and Mendy were priced cheaper than expected due to lack of minutes last season also lack of clean sheets on Liverpool part.

I don't think this means that all premium defenders are underpriced and you really need the clean sheets to come in to score big and there is always a little unpredictability on teams being able to keep clean sheets. It will only take a run of games where a top team keeps conceding the odd silly goal for you to start questioning owning the premium defenders.

Robertson isn't even a must have though because TAA is 1m less and you can only have 3 Liverpool .

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Klopp-o-matic
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Re: Premium defenders significantly underpriced?

Post by Klopp-o-matic »

As the first poster said: I think the points return of a Robinson 6.0 will be higher than any 6.0 forward (unless u catch every 6.0 forward in form and transfer them with eachother at the right time), since it more likely for a premium defender to get 10-15 cs (and some assists and maybe a goal here and there) than it is for a low priced forward to score 10-15 goals. And lets not even compare 5.5 defenders with 5.5 forwards.

So this season i tried to put money in the defence:

Ederson
TAA, Stones, Luiz, Tarkowski, Robertson

If one of them have a really hard fixture I'll use my 6.0 forward currently on the bench as 1st sub (currently Ihenacho). Next game Luiz (playing ARS) will make room for Ihenacho (playing WOL).

No idea if it will turn out good but liked to give it a try.

I never finish good in this game though. Use to start every season very good but always forget about the team/dont have time to play from mid season/christmas.

By rotating 4.5 defenders u can still get the cs's just by picking the ones with good fixtures and I am aware of that.

Played 5-3-2 the first round btw.
Last edited by Klopp-o-matic on 15 Aug 2018, 08:45, edited 1 time in total.

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DonTanTilla
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Re: Premium defenders significantly underpriced?

Post by DonTanTilla »

Should I just ignore comments by people with less than 50 posts?

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Klopp-o-matic
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Re: Premium defenders significantly underpriced?

Post by Klopp-o-matic »

DonTanTilla wrote: 13 Aug 2018, 11:15 Should I just ignore comments by people with less than 50 posts?
That was unnecessary rude :(

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math!
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Re: Premium defenders significantly underpriced?

Post by math! »

Rotating 5 cheapo defenders doesn't seem like a great idea, even if it worked in the past. Robertson, Davies, Mendy all 6.0m fullbacks who will get quality crosses in to quality finishers. Alonso 6.5m early days but could bag a few goals again this year and some assists.

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Re: Premium defenders significantly underpriced?

Post by Resonare »

They are underpriced to a certain degree. The thing is, one season doesn't justify a massive price tag. Even with Salah, he should really cost more but doesn't because he lacks history. Compare his value with Kane and Lukaku and you'll see that fpl places an additional cost on players who have consistently performed.

With that being said, if you're sure that players like Salah, Robertson, Mendy etc will perform despite the lack of extensive history then they become a big bargain.

HungryHungrySuarez
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Re: Premium defenders significantly underpriced?

Post by HungryHungrySuarez »

I feel it's too early to be making this kind of assessment. Defenders generally did well this week. Not sure this means they'll still be topping the points table in 3 weeks time.

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Re: Premium defenders significantly underpriced?

Post by Football Hero »

HungryHungrySuarez wrote: 13 Aug 2018, 13:04 I feel it's too early to be making this kind of assessment. Defenders generally did well this week. Not sure this means they'll still be topping the points table in 3 weeks time.
They don't need to be topping the points table though. They just need to be solidly beating the 6.0M strikers and midfielders which is very likely to be the case.

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Re: Premium defenders significantly underpriced?

Post by Football Hero »

Resonare wrote: 13 Aug 2018, 12:25 They are underpriced to a certain degree. The thing is, one season doesn't justify a massive price tag. Even with Salah, he should really cost more but doesn't because he lacks history. Compare his value with Kane and Lukaku and you'll see that fpl places an additional cost on players who have consistently performed.

With that being said, if you're sure that players like Salah, Robertson, Mendy etc will perform despite the lack of extensive history then they become a big bargain.
The problem with these players being a bargain, is that when it is fairly obvious they are bargains, it kind of ruins the game. For example if say Aubemyang was mis-priced at 8.0M, on one hand ''Wow, what a steal, this is where Fantasy Football management is at, sniffing out the bargains!'', but then on the other hand, because it would be so obvious he was a bargain then he would probably in in 80%+ of all teams and every single competent manager's team, and this would be terrible.

Now looking at this season specifically, when I checked the competent managers within one of my main mini-leagues, I was shocked how similar our teams were, particularly defensively and this is in GW1 when there is normally the most divergence between teams. The templateness will only converge from here on out which makes for a poor game this season I fear.

For a healthy season, it is important that in the initial price list, there are no bargains that are fairly obvious as this hinders team diversity. I feel with these premium defender prices FPL have messed up and underpriced a lot of them.

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Re: Premium defenders significantly underpriced?

Post by ZeroRemorse »

math! wrote: 13 Aug 2018, 12:07 Rotating 5 cheapo defenders doesn't seem like a great idea, even if it worked in the past. Robertson, Davies, Mendy all 6.0m fullbacks who will get quality crosses in to quality finishers. Alonso 6.5m early days but could bag a few goals again this year and some assists.
Alonso's heat map vs Huddersfield wasn't positive, basically the only time he got into the box was the penalty.

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Re: Premium defenders significantly underpriced?

Post by Kevlar »

This made me think of the Optimal Team thread at the end of last season where Billy Bongo posted the squad that would have gained the most points if picked at the start of the season and had no changes. The team would have won the competition.

The squad had 4 starting defenders; Davies (5.5), Otamendi(5.5), Azpi(6.5), and Alonso (7.0) with a total starting value of £24.5m and Mariappa (£4m) on the bench. This season all these players cost 0.5m - 1.0m more than last season with the exception of Alonso who has dropped by 0.5m.
So are the defenders underpriced? No, not compared to last year, and this high performing squad was only viable by having Firmino bought cheap and Vardy scoring consistently.

Are the premiums underused whilst we try to juggle cheaper 4.0-4.5m defenders to allow us to cram in different attacking option? Yes, probably!

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Re: Premium defenders significantly underpriced?

Post by Valeron »

Was just a few months ago most were saying no chance to owning a Liverpool defender when they were 4.5m, now it’s all about Robertson being value at 6m. I don’t see that much has changed apart from some short-term trends. I’m still looking to put near maximum money in to my front 8 and go with 4 and 4.5m defenders I also consider underpriced.

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Re: Premium defenders significantly underpriced?

Post by MoSe »

Kevlar wrote: 13 Aug 2018, 13:55 This made me think of the Optimal Team thread at the end of last season where Billy Bongo posted the squad that would have gained the most points if picked at the start of the season and had no changes. The team would have won the competition.
to be correct, it was found out later in that topic that team was just one early WC template that guy had kept track of.
The posted "dead team" was not at all the one who'd have got "most" points:
with just a little tinkering it was easy to find it could be improved by several points, AR found another highest scoring in that topic and it wasn't yet definitely the highest possible one.

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Re: Premium defenders significantly underpriced?

Post by Pirlo's Beard »

Valeron wrote: 13 Aug 2018, 14:10 Was just a few months ago most were saying no chance to owning a Liverpool defender when they were 4.5m, now it’s all about Robertson being value at 6m. I don’t see that much has changed apart from some short-term trends.

Yes, apart from spending £75m on Virgil van Dijk and £67m on Alisson, really nothing has changed at all.

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Re: Premium defenders significantly underpriced?

Post by Resonare »

Football Hero wrote: 13 Aug 2018, 13:25
Resonare wrote: 13 Aug 2018, 12:25 They are underpriced to a certain degree. The thing is, one season doesn't justify a massive price tag. Even with Salah, he should really cost more but doesn't because he lacks history. Compare his value with Kane and Lukaku and you'll see that fpl places an additional cost on players who have consistently performed.

With that being said, if you're sure that players like Salah, Robertson, Mendy etc will perform despite the lack of extensive history then they become a big bargain.
The problem with these players being a bargain, is that when it is fairly obvious they are bargains, it kind of ruins the game. For example if say Aubemyang was mis-priced at 8.0M, on one hand ''Wow, what a steal, this is where Fantasy Football management is at, sniffing out the bargains!'', but then on the other hand, because it would be so obvious he was a bargain then he would probably in in 80%+ of all teams and every single competent manager's team, and this would be terrible.

Now looking at this season specifically, when I checked the competent managers within one of my main mini-leagues, I was shocked how similar our teams were, particularly defensively and this is in GW1 when there is normally the most divergence between teams. The templateness will only converge from here on out which makes for a poor game this season I fear.

For a healthy season, it is important that in the initial price list, there are no bargains that are fairly obvious as this hinders team diversity. I feel with these premium defender prices FPL have messed up and underpriced a lot of them.
Tbh, I think the opposite. A good amount of obvious bargains decreases variance (luck) and increases the effect skill has on rank which is what we want as a group generally more skilled at fpl than the general population.

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Re: Premium defenders significantly underpriced?

Post by Football Hero »

Kevlar wrote: 13 Aug 2018, 13:55

The squad had 4 starting defenders; Davies (5.5), Otamendi(5.5), Azpi(6.5), and Alonso (7.0) with a total starting value of £24.5m and Mariappa (£4m) on the bench. This season all these players cost 0.5m - 1.0m more than last season with the exception of Alonso who has dropped by 0.5m.
So are the defenders underpriced? No, not compared to last year
Last year doesn't matter too much though as I feel they were underpriced last year too. I am comparing more to 2008 - 2014ish where the scoring system was pretty much exactly the same as it is now, (the method for distributing bonus points has slightly changed, that's it really), yet the top scoring defenders who would get you 150 - 180 for the season were priced at 7.5M and now they are at 6.0M.

It's not like Ashley Cole and John Terry were returning 8 goals and 8 assists per season in addition to 15+ clean sheets. No, they were returning similar attacking returns to the best defender attacking returns now. Hence their price should be similar.

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Re: Premium defenders significantly underpriced?

Post by Football Hero »

Resonare wrote: 13 Aug 2018, 14:54
Football Hero wrote: 13 Aug 2018, 13:25
Resonare wrote: 13 Aug 2018, 12:25 They are underpriced to a certain degree. The thing is, one season doesn't justify a massive price tag. Even with Salah, he should really cost more but doesn't because he lacks history. Compare his value with Kane and Lukaku and you'll see that fpl places an additional cost on players who have consistently performed.

With that being said, if you're sure that players like Salah, Robertson, Mendy etc will perform despite the lack of extensive history then they become a big bargain.
The problem with these players being a bargain, is that when it is fairly obvious they are bargains, it kind of ruins the game. For example if say Aubemyang was mis-priced at 8.0M, on one hand ''Wow, what a steal, this is where Fantasy Football management is at, sniffing out the bargains!'', but then on the other hand, because it would be so obvious he was a bargain then he would probably in in 80%+ of all teams and every single competent manager's team, and this would be terrible.

Now looking at this season specifically, when I checked the competent managers within one of my main mini-leagues, I was shocked how similar our teams were, particularly defensively and this is in GW1 when there is normally the most divergence between teams. The templateness will only converge from here on out which makes for a poor game this season I fear.

For a healthy season, it is important that in the initial price list, there are no bargains that are fairly obvious as this hinders team diversity. I feel with these premium defender prices FPL have messed up and underpriced a lot of them.
Tbh, I think the opposite. A good amount of obvious bargains decreases variance (luck) and increases the effect skill has on rank which is what we want as a group generally more skilled at fpl than the general population.
How is it skill if there are obvious bargains though? That is a playing field leveller, not a way to increase the skill edge. If you're trying to imply that a skilled player can deviate from these obvious bargains to hidden better bargains, then the former group weren't really true 'bargains' to begin with, and so your point falls apart.

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Re: Premium defenders significantly underpriced?

Post by Billy Bongo »

"Tbh, I think the opposite. A good amount of obvious bargains decreases variance (luck) and increases the effect skill has on rank which is what we want as a group generally more skilled at fpl than the general population."

I regard myself as reasonably educated but that to me is just random words which dont even seem to form a sentence. Is there a translation available?

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Re: Premium defenders significantly underpriced?

Post by zipnolan »

I think he's saying that the differential between skilled players becomes more critical when the basic strategy is clear to anyone skilled. Everyone knows how to set up, but only the best know how to counter and develop at critical moments.

Not sure I agree with that, though. I'm also not sure that it's totally true this season rather than any other.

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Billy Bongo
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Re: Premium defenders significantly underpriced?

Post by Billy Bongo »

Is he talking about actual footballers or fantasy football managers?

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Re: Premium defenders significantly underpriced?

Post by zipnolan »

Managers - us. And he's saying that we (FISOers) have a better knowledge than others, which makes the number of variations in our play fewer, and the variations that make a difference more crucial.

I can sort of see it. In poker, until the boom, there were a lot of really poor players of Texas Hold 'em, for example. Now, with all the literature, everyone knows how to play ABC and to evaluate starting hands. So the key is to strike at the key moments, and that's what the best do.

Having said that, there are many ways to skin a cat, but most of them (at the present) involve captaining Salah.

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Re: Premium defenders significantly underpriced?

Post by Billy Bongo »

In the other hand group think can take over, and rotation disease can set in.

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Re: Premium defenders significantly underpriced?

Post by Resonare »

Football Hero wrote: 13 Aug 2018, 15:16 How is it skill if there are obvious bargains though? That is a playing field leveller, not a way to increase the skill edge. If you're trying to imply that a skilled player can deviate from these obvious bargains to hidden better bargains, then the former group weren't really true 'bargains' to begin with, and so your point falls apart.
The point is that having a good amount of bargains is the most optimal. Having no bargains increases the difference between most teams and therefore increases the effect of variance and lucky situations due to ownerships being higher in players who produce those lucky moments.

For example, if Laporte had gotten injured on 29 minutes and Otamendi was subbed on, scored and recieved 3 bonus points and a CS then there's no denying that would've been lucky. But Mendy being a bargain blocks Otamendi's ownership and would reduce the impact of this, while if he weren't there'd be more Otamendi owners who'd benefit from this.
zipnolan wrote: 13 Aug 2018, 15:58 Managers - us. And he's saying that we (FISOers) have a better knowledge than others, which makes the number of variations in our play fewer, and the variations that make a difference more crucial.

I can sort of see it. In poker, until the boom, there were a lot of really poor players of Texas Hold 'em, for example. Now, with all the literature, everyone knows how to play ABC and to evaluate starting hands. So the key is to strike at the key moments, and that's what the best do.

Having said that, there are many ways to skin a cat, but most of them (at the present) involve captaining Salah.
In poker, the lack of seasoned pros at the main event final table is a case in point. The field being full of amatuers and recreational players means that variance is extremely high. Put those pros in a field full of semi-pro players and they'll crush those levels because the variance is much lower and therefore the effect of skill is greater due to their inverted relationship.

Right now fpl is without a doubt a field full of amatuers. Obvious bargains help force those amatuers into behaving more in a semi-pro manner which makes the skill edge pros have greater, but to a certain degree. Have too many bargains and the reverse becomes true, which is why I said a "good" amount of bargains is best. So really a graph of bargains vs skill looks more like a bell curve.

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Re: Premium defenders significantly underpriced?

Post by Richt »

DonTanTilla wrote: 13 Aug 2018, 11:15 Should I just ignore comments by people with less than 50 posts?
Why was that even said? The post from Klopp-o-matic wsa very well written and some obvious logical thought was put into it!

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Re: Premium defenders significantly underpriced?

Post by Stemania »

Resonare wrote: 14 Aug 2018, 09:22 The point is that having a good amount of bargains is the most optimal.
A great example of this is Wan-Bissaka - the standout 4m defender bargain. FFS (a highly skilled community) just released an article aggregating their RMT posts from before GW1. Amazingly, the joint 2nd-highest owned player (!) was W-B on a huge 96% ownership, only beaten by Salah. Yet, even after the post-GW1 transfer flurry, his overall ownership is less than 20%. The more such bargains there are, the higher the population of talented FPL managers there will be in, say, the top 10k come the end of the season, i.e., the better all the invested FPL managers will do on average (so better for all us FISOers imo). :)

Picking between the 4.5m defenders or the 6m-7m strikers for example, where there is far less consensus in the community, is a bit of a crap shoot. And, to bring it back to the topic at hand, the struggles with the latter group is perhaps another reason that the equivalently priced 6m-6.5m defenders have seen successful in recent years. Ask someone to name the best 6-6.5m+ defenders before kickoff this year and you'd often hear the same names (Mendy, Robertson) - and this is reflected in the FFS percentages (84% and 72%). Ask someone to do the same for the best 6-7m striker and you could get five or so legitimate names back. Arnie, Tosun, King, Wilson, Zaha, even Mitro to some extent (none had over 50%). Besides the more generous defender pricing by FPL in recent years, there are so few premiums that really provide that great attacking threat that it makes them slightly easier to pick. Plus there's the bread and butter stuff like CS potential being more highly correlated to good fixtures than attacking returns are, making defenders more 'sure things'.

The premium defs have for a while been known to provide excellent 'value for money' on average (or at least, that's the position where you get the biggest increase in PPG per unit investment, if that's a metric of interest to anyone). But the thing is, there's so much more to consider - the premium defenders biggest problem is still the same: Despite being excellent value for money, their biggest drawback is the fact that the cheaper defenders are also perennially the best value for money cheap players (OK, so apart from cheap goalkeepers). Adding in the fact that cheap rotation systems allow you to gain 'extra value' from your cheap defenders in a way you can't readily do in the attacking positions in an FPL team, and that the best premium defenders are often progressive fullbacks/wing-backs who expend a lot of energy and can nowadays be prone to rotation around heavy fixture loads, then looking at pure 'value for money' becomes far more nuanced. This year it looks like there is a legitimate option of a three-way 4m defender rotation with WB-Peltier-Bennett, with at least one of them being in a decent looking defence in Palace, which is ridiculous. :shock:

I think it's a brilliant thing, because it's opened up many different legitimate strategies. Ville has gone for a three-way 4m from the start, for example, and burgarche's infamous 5atm premium defender-fest from 6 or 7 years ago is finally seeing more widespread play by players like AR with great success. So much more fun that half a decade ago when 3atb was the only real reliable option!

So while the expensive defenders have started well, and are for sure incredibly attractive, the cheap defenders have also started well and the premium's biggest enemy will be too many players like Wan-Bissaka. It's also worth noting that the 6.5m midfielders have also started excellently. I have to say that I've placed slightly more in defence this year that I traditionally would have (two prem defenders, and nearly went three), but don't really have much clue yet if I'll be sticking with it or not (or indeed investing even more). Love it. :D

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Re: Premium defenders significantly underpriced?

Post by Sutter Kane »

It all depends on the bargains. Gross, in a few weeks, may well turn in another season of excellence. Who knows which of the 5-8mn mids or atts will flourish. The answer to those questions shapes the defence imo. Should it be that way? I don't know. At the moment if there exist three 4mn starters permanently I'll find it hard not to WC into what Ville currently has. WB is too valuable to be perma-benched if Palace look decent defensively. And that even leads into possibility of playing 4 at the back with WB rotating with another 4mn, or even 4.5mn. Premium defenders have been creeping down in price over the years, so I think many are under-priced but circumstances each season will dictate whether owning even that kind of value will prevail in the end.

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Re: Premium defenders significantly underpriced?

Post by Billy Bongo »

Underpriced maybe, significant so, possible, reason to panic and spend and being them all in this early, no

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