Rankings for Gameweek 15
1. Haaland 2. Cancelo 3. Mee 4. Schar. 5. Trippier
Hello and welcome to the Fantasy Gameweek rankings for Gameweek 15 of the Fantasy Premier League season. A reminder, there is only this Gameweek and Gameweek 16 to go before the season takes a break for the World Cup. Crucially, after Gameweek 16 there will be the opportunity to make unlimited free transfers until the season resumes on December 26. This means you should look to be aggressive in these remaining two weeks. Target attractive fixtures and in-form players. The deadline to make transfers and set your line-ups is 1.30pm UK time on Saturday.
With that, let’s get into rankings. This week I have included some quick thoughts before the rankings themselves. I have also included the rankings in PDF form again after feedback from readers that you liked having it in this downloadable format.
Our rankings look to identify value, upside and opportunity. Value is crucial in FPL. We all start with £100 million to spend on players. You win your mini-league by getting more points per £1 million than your rivals. This means we should not judge Erling Haaland against Dominic Solanke purely on how many points they scored. Haaland costs more than twice what Solanke does and those millions could be spent more wisely on other players if Haaland isn’t delivering.
We rank the players on points-per-million, their performance each week relative to everyone else in their position, the strength of the team they play in and the quality of the opposition. To do this we look at FPL points so far this season, price and data from FiveThirtyEight on the quality of attacks and defences. FiveThirtyEight’s data cleverly take into account Premier League results so far but also the underlying performances and the quality of opposition that everyone has played (they currently give Man City a 74 per cent chance of winning the league, Arsenal are second on 15 per cent while Forest have a 70 per cent chance of relegation, Bournemouth 55 per cent and Wolves 40 per cent). We put all this together using our FGPE algorithm to get a score and the rankings…
Reiss Nelson (pictured above) would be top of these rankings if he was included after scoring 19 points in Gameweek 15, his only appearance of the season so far. This made him the top-scoring midfielder for the week and the joint-top scorer overall with Callum Wilson. However, he doesn’t meet our criteria of having at least three appearances. Let’s look at the players that do, starting with the forwards…
Forwards
1. Haaland
2. Firmino
3. Wilson
4. Solanke
5. Martial
Erling Haaland leads our rankings again and has a mouthwatering match-up at home to Fulham, who FiveThirtyEight rank as the second-worst defence in the league behind Forest. The only problem is that he might not be fit. Photos from Man City’s training sessions this week look promising, but Pep Guardiola was non-committal in his Friday press conference so keep your eye out for team news and check on social media for any updates. The upside with Haaland is potentially huge here. So if you have him already then keeping him in your team and captaining him is a sensible move - just make sure you have set your vice-captain too. Haaland’s FGPE score is nearly double that of second-place forward Roberto Firmino, which shows you what an extraordinary season the Norwegian is having. Callum Wilson is third in the forward rankings and the most transferred-in player so far this week in FPL. Newcastle play struggling Southampton this week. A quick word on Anthony Martial, who is fifth on this list. He has a chance of appearing this weekend against Aston Villa after recovering from injury. Martial has only appeared in three games this season but across those 108 minutes he has racked up 18 points, which includes two goals and two assists, which is why he appears. Playing him this week is too much of a gamble, but this shows you that a) you should keep an eye on Martial once he is playing again and b) that the forward role for Manchester United is valuable and whoever is playing there against Villa - probably Marcus Rashford - is a strong option.
Midfielders
1. Almiron
2. Foden
3. Trossard
4. Bernardo
5. Rodrigo
Miguel Almiron - aka the Paraguayan Jack Grealish - is the second-most bought player in FPL behind his teammate Wilson this week. Tom wrote more about him here, but in short, the underlying stats back up his points haul and he is a long way ahead of other midfielders in our rankings. Phil Foden played 90 minutes in a dead-rubber Champions League match in midweek and has not started the last two Premier League games. That is why he is the most transferred-out player in FPL this week. We know Guardiola can be unpredictable with his line-ups, but we also know Foden is capable of extraordinary points totals in a single Gameweek. Sticking with him is a risk worth taking. Arsenal’s midfielders slip down this list given their tough fixture at Chelsea, but Newcastle, Brighton and Man United players have more attractive match-ups. We touched on Rashford above, while Leandro Trossard just delivered 14 points from matches against Man City and Chelsea. Rodrigo started the season on-fire for Leeds and now has two goals in his last two games. Leeds play Bournemouth this week and then Spurs away…
Defenders
1. Cancelo
2. Mee
3. Schar
4. Trippier
5. Saliba
There is a lot of blue on the rankings below, which tells you that a collection of defenders are still offering great value despite top players either being injured - Reece James - or struggling - Trent Alexander-Arnold and Andy Robertson. The sixth and seventh players in the defender rankings are Diogo Dalot and Timothy Castagne, who are also attractive options. Ben Mee has two goals and four clean sheets for Brentford and his xG and xA - his expected goals and expected assists, so expected involvement in goals overall - is 0.11 per 90 minutes. This is just behind Joao Cancelo at 0.12. This suggests that his attacking returns are no fluke, but it is well-behind the leaders in this category - Ivan Perisic is at 0.41, James at 0.36, Alexander-Arnold at 0.33, Pervis Estupinan is 0.32, Andy Robertson is 0.29 and Kieran Trippier is 0.29. Newcastle have conceded the fewest goals in the league so far - 10. However, according to FiveThirtyEight’s ratings the best defences belong to Man City, Arsenal and Chelsea
Goalkeepers
1. Ederson
2. Henderson
3. Sa
4. Pope
5. Alisson
The top goalkeepers are all bunched together so going without Ederson and picking three other Man City players in your team is a sensible move. Dean Henderson is having a remarkable FPL season. Forest have conceded the most goals in the Premier League yet he has the second-most points behind Nick Pope. This is because he has saved two penalties, has 11 bonus points and made 52 saves, nearly three times as many as Ederson. Is this level of points-scoring sustainable without clean sheets? I don’t think so. David Raya is the seventh-ranked goalkeeper and gets to play struggling Forest this weekend but Brighton’s defence ranks higher - and behind only Man City - according to our data as Robert Sanchez and co travel to Wolves.
Here are the rankings in full. We start with the players, then on to the attacks and defences…
Attacks to target and avoid (best first)
Man City
Liverpool
Man United
Newcastle
Brentford
Tottenham
Brighton
Leeds
Arsenal
Chelsea
Leicester
West Ham
Everton
Bournemouth
Forest
Aston Villa
Crystal Palace
Southampton
Wolves
Fulham
Defences to target and avoid (best first)
Man City
Brighton
Newcastle
West Ham
Man United
Leicester
Brentford
Leeds
Crystal Palace
Arsenal
Chelsea
Everton
Liverpool
Wolves
Bournemouth
Aston Villa
Southampton
Forest
Tottenham
Fulham
That’s it for this edition of Fantasy Gameweek. Best of luck in Gameweek 15!
Graham