Welcome back to Fantasy Premier League and welcome back to FISO!
Looking at the top of the Premier League table at the end of last season, you could be forgiven for thinking that it was almost a replica of the season before that. As they have done in six of the last seven season, Manchester City finished on top, followed by Arsenal. The Gunners once again lost out to their skyblue Manchester rivals, though they did manage to limit the gap to the top to just 2 points, compared to the 5 points between the top the season prior. At this point in the pre-season last year, we asked ourselves whether or not Arsenal would be able to compete for the title until the very end once again? Now we are asking themselves, will this be the season in which the Gunners finally bring the Premier League title back to North London, for the first time since the legendary 2003-04 season?
Now, on to more serious business, because the Fantasy Premier League has undergone a significant facelift in the build-up to the 2024-25 campaign. We recommend FPL managers to explore the changes in detail, but we’ll already list them here below to give you a head start:
Banking 5 free transfers: This season, fantasy managers can save up to FIVE free transfers instead of the usual two. In other words, great news for the patient managers and the big planners. On top of that, however many free transfers you have saved up will NOT be reset to zero after activating either a Free Hit or a Wild Card.
Mystery Chip: Talking about Chips, we’ve got a new one this season! It’s called the Mystery Chip and fully in line with its name, it’s use is well… a mystery. FPL towers say that all will be revealed towards January 2025, so keep an eye out for that.
Updated points-scoring: Good news for goalkeepers with a penchant for goalscoring, because a goal by a goalie will be worth 10 points this season, up from 6 points last season. As far as the Bonus Points System (BPS) goes, a saved penalty is now worth 9 BPS (down from 15 BPS). Also, conceding a goal now results in -4 BPS for goalkeepers and defenders. For any player, a goal line clearance is now worth 3 BPS, a foul won 1 BPS and a shot on target 2 BPS.
New look: The design of the in-game FPL pitch has been improved as well, copying the format that is already being used in FPL Challenge.
The Premier League 2024-25 season is set to kick off on Friday, August 16th, at 20h00 (UK time), when Manchester United host Fulham at Old Trafford. The free to play FPL or pay to play games like FanTeam (which has a £200,000 prize fund) are ideal ways of following the Premier League action.
In the build-up to gameweek 1, we will be taking an in-depth look at each of the 20 teams competing in the Premier League this season, including a general team preview, a tactical preview and some FPL recommendations per side. In this sixth part of our Season Preview series, we’re taking a look at newly promoted Leicester City and a Liverpool side under new management after 9 years under Jurgen Klopp.
LEICESTER CITY – General preview for 2024/25
Relegation to the Championship last season was a big disappointment for anything and everything Leicester City, but it didn’t take the club long to get over it. They brought in manager Enzo Maresca to replace Dean Smith and it didn’t take the Italian very long to make his mark on the squad. Where more than a few fans and followers were perhaps expecting an upper-mid-table finish for the Foxes, Maresca’s men exceeded expectations in the always heavily competitive Championship by finishing top of the table, one point clear of Ipswich Town, and therefore clinching automatic promotion back to the English footballing elite just one season after their relegation.
With 46 league games, and the domestic cup competitions on top of it, the Championship is one of the most intense and exhausting leagues in Europe. This makes Leicester’s performance last season all the more impressive, because they did not “just” finish first. They did so in style, playing a dynamic build-up-focused kind of football with plenty of movement all over the pitch. This resulted in the second-most-effective attack in the league (89 goals, behind Ipswich Town’s 92 goals), but also the league’s best defensive record, conceding just 41 goals in 46 games. The big question will be how the Foxes will turn up this season under manager Steve Cooper, but more about that in the tactical preview below.
First, a quick look at Leicester’s transfer stories so far this summer, because manager Enzo Maresca was not the only important figure to leave the club following their recent promotion. Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, last season’s player with most direct goal involvements in the squad (12 goals and 14 assists) followed the Italian to Stamford Bridge for a fee of about £30 million. Besides the midfielder, no real first-team candidates were sold, though familiar Leicester names like Kelechi Iheanacho, Harry Souttar and Marc Albrighton did leave the club for free. On the incoming side, most money so far has been spent on right winger Issahaku Fatawu (£14.5 million from Sporting Lisbon), central defender Caleb Okoli (£12 million from Atalanta Bergamo) and midfielder Michael Golding (£5 million from Chelsea Under-21). Fulham’s Bobby de Cordova-Reid was brought in on a free.
Leicester City: Tactical preview 2024/25
In terms of tactics and how we expect teams to line up come Gameweek 1, Leicester are one of the hardest to predict. Of course, we have seen Steve Cooper in the Premier League already, at the helm of Nottingham Forest, but newly promoted Leicester is a whole new challenge on its own. Especially seeing as the club sold one of their key players to Chelsea earlier this summer. Then again, the Englishman has shown that he knows how to keep a promoted side in the Premier League, which will be Leicester’s main objective this season.
Big part of this is thanks to Cooper’s overall pragmatic approach to tactics and style of playing. Leicester played in a 4-3-3 under Maresca, but the new manager is known to prefer a defence with three in the back, for example in a 5-3-2 or 3-5-2 formation, but he often uses a more flexible 4-2-3-1 as well. One of the most important characteristics these formations have in common is an important role for the wing-backs, who provide width and attacking threat on top of their defensive duties. Cooper also tends to play with a defensive double pivot in the middle to ensure greater defensive stability. While it remains to be seen how the Foxes will face their Gameweek 1 challenge (home against Spurs), we are fairly certain that the new Leicester manager will have his side playing a slightly less attacking and more controlling playing style, more focused on defensive security in comparison to his Italian predecessor.
LEICESTER CITY – Potential FPL picks
To be honest, we don’t see much potential in the Leicester squad at the moment, at least not from an FPL point of view and not until we have at least seen a league game or two. Having said that, and knowing how Steve Cooper likes to play, there might be some value in the wing-backs. The first Fox on our scouting list is therefore right-back Ricardo Pereira (£4.5m), who is a nailed-on part of the starting eleven. The Portuguese defender, who has often played as a winger in the past as well, played 39 Championship games last season in which he managed 3 goals and 3 assists. On top of that, Ricardo already has 102 Premier League matches under his belt, in which he scored 7 goals and 13 assists. He is not a bad option at his current price, but it should be taken into account that Leicester’s opening set of fixtures this season is far from easy.
Issahaku Fatawu (£5.5m) was just 19 years old when he joined Leicester City in the Championship last season, on loan from Portuguese side Sporting Lisbon, but he showed zero signs of stage fright. The Ghana international quickly conquered a starting spot under Enzo Maresca and repaid that trust with goals and assists. With 6 goals and 13 assists in 40 league games, to be exact. His loan made permanent for about £14.5 million earlier this summer and it doesn’t look like his playing time will diminish under Steve Cooper. The former Nottingham Forest manager likes his teams to break at speed and if there is something Fatawu has in abundance, it’s speed. Add to that his ability to take on a man by either going on the inside or the outside, and you’ve got an exciting young prospect who could very well be a surprise in the FPL this season, at a bargain price.
Finally, the Leicester roster is a rich source of true bargain defenders, the kind that is priced at £4.0m while still being starters basically every game. We have gone with Wout Faes (£4.0m), but his partner in the heart of the Foxes’ defence Yannik Vestergaard is a very similar fantasy pick. The reason we have gone with the Belgian international is that we feel he will be coming into the new season with lots of confidence. First, there was the promotion with Leicester as a nailed-on starter and after that, he ended up being one of the best performers for Belgium at EURO 2024. The Red Devils were eliminated by France in the Round of 16, but Faes played every game and proved decisive in the group stage. While we don’t expect Leicester to keep a lot of clean sheets this season, at least not initially, we think that, if you’re looking for a £4.0m starter, you could do a lot worse than the Belgian defender.
LIVERPOOL – General preview for 2024/25
Gameweek 1 will be the first gameweek in almost nine years in which we won’t see Jurgen Klopp by the Liverpool bench. One of the most experienced Liverpool bosses of all time announced his departure halfway throughout last season and since then, the search for his successor dominated most of the Liverpool news. The job eventually went to the talented and tactically gifted Arne Slot, who in the years prior had worked on returning Dutch giants Feyenoord back to some of their former glory. Sometimes called “the Liverpool of the Netherlands”, thanks to their working-class history and their no-nonsense approach to football, the Dutchman might be the perfect signing for the Reds. More about that in the tactical preview below, though.
Because even though Klopp announced his departure well before the end of the season, Liverpool still needed to perform at the very highest level. While they could not keep Manchester City from winning the Premier League once again, finishing 9 points behind the champions in third place, the Reds did clinch the League Cup by beating Chelsea in the final. In the FA Cup and the Champions League, the Reds made it to the quarter-finals, and while the overall result of the 2023-24 was not bad, they will be looking to improve under new management in the upcoming season.
While you would expect a new manager to bring in some new faces, Arne Slot so far has not welcomed any signings. That’s right, Liverpool have not yet spent a single pound during the summer transfer window. Having said that, the Reds have not generated any transfer income yet, either. They did release goalkeeper Adrian, right-back Calvin Ramsay and veteran central defender Joel Matip, while the gifted but often injured Thiago Alcantara retired from professional football.
Liverpool: Tactical preview 2024/25
We all know by now how Liverpool used to play under Jurgen Klopp. On their best days, they were an almost unbeatable pressing machine spearheaded by a deadly forward trio, usually led by Mohamed Salah. The objective was to regain the ball as soon as it was lost and to immediately look for the vertical pass, preferably before the opposition managed to re-position themselves, which could easily result in high-intensity games with lots of goals on both sides.
Under Slot, we expect Liverpool to sacrifice some of this verticality to accommodate the Dutch manager’s more possession-based playing style. While the starting 4-3-3 formation is likely to remain, the approach to games will differ considerably. Slot likes to attack and he likes to do so with an energetic style overall, but his Liverpool will focus more on controlling the ball and building up from the back. The presence of the likes of Trent Alexander-Arnold and compatriot Virgil van Dijk definitely fits this style. Seeing how Liverpool will line up this season and to what extent they will be able to immediately compete for the silverware under their new manager will be one of the most interesting things to keep an eye on this season.
LIVERPOOL – Potential FPL pick
We are starting our list of potential Liverpool FPL picks with a pick that is perhaps a bit risky in terms of his starting spot in the first eleven, but going by the pre-season so far, it looks like Arne Slot is counting on Diogo Jota (£7.5m) to lead his attacking line. We say this because the Liverpool roster also features the likes of Darwin Nuñez and fellow Dutchman Cody Gakpo, who were often used in the number nine spot by Klopp. Should Jota get the nod though, then he provides us with a very affordable option into one of the league’s most dangerous attacks, at least in terms of potential. An additional risk when it comes to picking Jota is the proneness to injury he has displayed in the past two seasons. As a result, the Portugal international got just got just 26 league starts over the past two seasons. Then again, in those 26 appearances, he managed an impressive 17 goals and 11 assists. He is fit as of this moment and featuring heavily in Liverpool’s pre-season, so bringing him in for an opening run that includes Ipswich (away) and Brentford, Nottingham Forest and Bournemouth (all at home) in the first five games could be a shrewd move.
From a potential bigtime bargain to the most premium defender in the official fantasy game: Trent Alexander-Arnold (£7.0m) is also on our scouting list. Actually, he is around the top of that list, considering the fact that Liverpool open the season at Ipswich Town, followed by a home game versus Brentford, a visit to Old Trafford, back-to-back home games against Forest and Bournemouth, and then a visit to Wolves. That runs screams both clean sheets and attacking returns for a player like Alexander-Arnold, whether utilised as a right-back or a playmaking midfielder. This also explains why his current ownership has already exceeded the 22%. He is expensive, yes, but if you keep in mind that in the past six seasons (apart from last season) he recorded well more than 150 FPL points, he could be a real value pick in defence.
If we’re being honest, we were planning to include Dominik Szoboszlai in this list as we feel the Hungarian might be playing a key role in orchestrating the Liverpool attack under Slot. That would mean going without Mohamed Salah (£12.5m) and in the end, we just couldn’t do that. While last season might not have felt like the Egyptian’s most amazing season in a Liverpool shirt, he still got 18 goals and 12 assists for a total of 211 FPL points. That made it seven (7!) consecutive seasons in which he recorded over 200 FPL points. It remains to be seen how exactly Salah will be used by Slot, but you can be sure that, like Klopp, the Dutchman will be trying everything in his power to get the very most out of Salah. Because he knows that, if he manages to do so, his side will be competing for most if not all prizes until the very end.
For further thoughts and discussions on the new FPL season visit FISO’s FPL forum.