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Seemingly every week Joe and I are inundated with one comment asking whether central midfielders and defensive midfielders are good picks in Fantasy Premier League (FPL).
My take at the start of the season was that I thought defcons would be big for defenders but not so big for midfielders. I think the FPL points so far suggest I was only half right and that midfielders are benefiting more than I expected.
But I want to dig into the stats, the facts and the details to answer the key question on some people’s minds: Are Central and Defensive Midfielders Good FPL Picks?
So, I have made the mammoth task on my commute home to answer this question. And before you ask, yes, this did take longer than that.
12 of the top 25 scoring midfielders are defensive or central midfielders, including two of the top 3 who are both outscoring Mo f**kin Salah.
Maybe you can take exception to Bruno Fernandes coming in this list because of his price, role and penalty taking. And, maybe you can take exception to Enzo who has played a bit as number 10(ish). But, even then that would still be 10 of 25.
In comparison, last year only one of the top 25 scorers after 10 weeks was a DM. That was Kovacic. In the final tally among midfielders that year Bruno G finished 22nd. Enzo, 23rd and Damsgaard 24th. Rice finished 30th.
In the 23/24 season there were four DMs and CMs in the top 25 scorers after 10 weeks:
Douglas Luiz who I believe was on pens and scored 5 goals from 3.20 xG.
Rice, who was doing well on bonus, clean sheets and overperformed his xG by just over 1 for 2 goals.
Ward-Prowse who was a set piece merchant with 2 goals from 1.84xG.
Pascal Gross who was smashing bonus points and overperformed his xG by just over 1 for 2 goals.
In the final tally among midfielders that year, Rice finished 11th, Rodri 12th, Gross 13th, Bruno G. 14th, Douglas Luiz 16th, Ward-Prowse 17th.
At first glance, I think this aggregated data makes me think defcons has increased the number of viable options in FPL for midfielders.
I am also intrigued by the fact that both Rice and Bruno G are high on the FPL points scored even prior to defcons.
But in order to work out whether this is correct we should look more in depth.
Let’s look at players (or brackets of players) in more detail.
Clearly Rice is outperfoming his xG by just over 1. But he is about par to his xA because of the stupid number of set pieces he is on. All but one of his bonus points came when he got attacking returns. His mins are pretty good but he is missing 1/9 minutes which is a problem if we want defcons but not so much if he isn’t super reliant on them.
As expected at the start of the season, he isn’t really a DefCon guy because of his position as a sort of 8 rather than the DM he played at West Ham. His 3 incidents of defcon points from 10 games then match what I would expect.
Caicedo on the other hand is a defcon guy. His 126 defcons from 10 games then makes him look amazing but he actually only hits the threshold 50% of the time. That’s pretty consistent with his performance last season where he would have hit it 55% of the time.
If you then takeaway the ludicrous overperformance on goals (10-15 points depending upon whether you round up or down) then he drops down to just above Minteh’s in overall FPL points.
Minteh is a guy I would much rather have than Caicedo then, at least in a good fixture run, because his points hauls should be more repeatable during those runs.
If you then factor in that 6 of Caicedo’s bonus points also came in games he scored you quickly start to realise this guy is not the third best midfielder in FPL – this is variance.
Verdict: I think Rice is a good FPL pick. I think Caicedo is not a good FPL pick.
Much like Caicedo we see ludicrous overperformance on attacking returns by Gravenberch. The Liverpool defence isn’t very good either. And, he only gets bonus when he gets an attacking return. And the defcons aren’t good either.
Palinha and Xhaka also require an attacking return to get bonus points.
Palhinha’s overperformance versus underlying attacking indicators is pretty big which suggests that he will struggle to keep this output up. He is good on defcons though and the principle reason that his minutes are down is because he didn’t join up with Spurs until close to GW1 so he was benched for the first game.
Xhaka’s overperformance versus underlying attacking indicators is a lot less. His cleans have come in favourable fixtures and he is matching the supposed defcon merchant Caicedo in points and actions. He hasn’t missed a minute and he only costs 5.1!
Full disclosure, I have Xhaka and I have had him since the start of the season. I rotate him with my 4th defender and I am 125k (after playing all my chips). I wouldn’t trust him every week but if you treat him like a 4.5 defender (which he kind of is because he is 0.5 from the minimum you can spend) then he works.
Verdict: Gravenberch is not an FPL pick. Xhaka is an FPL pick to rotate. Palinha might be an FPL pick but probably not.
Bruno G is obviously overperforming his xG and if I took those goals off him he would lose those bonus points too. He is a guy I would have expected defcons from and he has had 11 in two of the nine games he has played but more often he gets 7, 8 or 9.
Verdict: When I saw him in the top 25 midfielders last year and the year before, I thought he was gonna be a pick with added defcons but he just isn’t. Definitely don’t pay 6.6 for this guy.
As much as I continue to resist this trend, maybe Enzo is a pick? He is somewhat bewilderingly underperforming his xG – probably because he isn’t that good of a finisher.
At the start of the season I said I thought he would finish with 5 goals and 5 assists but that looks pretty wrong right now.
I still think he stinks and you can’t convince me otherwise. I think he has principally benefitted from Palmer’s absence and I don’t like Chelsea attack very much, particularly with their discipline problem. BUT, I am prepared to accept I could be wrong about this.
Having Bruno Fernandes on this list is kind of ridiculous given his attacking output but he is playing as CM. I don’t know if you knew that? Wow. I can’t believe you hadn’t heard that. Anyway, he is clearly a pick. Next.
Zubimendi is not a pick – look at the xG. And, he basically offers nothing else.
Szoboszlai though is matching Xhaka and Caicedo for underlying DC, has 900 mins and is trickling xGI. Thats enough for me to genuinely consider him for this upcoming favourable run of fixtures from GW12. I don’t love picking a guy who struggles to get xGI, who often gets put at right-back and who hasn’t defconned against lesser opposition so far this season though. Particularly when he is more expensive than Caicedo and A LOT more expensive than Xhaka (with the bad fixtures).
Verdict: B. Fernandes is just obviously a pick that I am not engaging in a discussion on it. Zubimendi is the exact opposite of that. And Enzo and Szobo are maybes but Enzo more of a yes than Szobo.
Cullen might be the other Xhaka on this list, just without the attacking returns. The trouble is, everything about him is worse. His xG is half Xhaka’s, his xA is half and so the bonus is less too. The DefCons and Defcon points are pretty damn good though so I don’t completely hate him as a pick but I wouldn’t say I love the fixtures though either.
Casemiro has only played 90 once this season. He has made it past 80 mins twice. He has made it past 70 mins three times. Weirdly, we like Full 90’s here at Full90FPL.com. Without them, I can’t recommend him. If he got them a lot more often I think he would actually be a pick.
Just for fun, look at what happens when I extrapolate his performance to 900 mins.
Verdict: Cullen is a maybe because he is so cheap. Casemiro is sadly a no but one to watch if he starts playing 90s consistently (which I doubt).
Most of the guys we have looked at in this list are being considered as value picks. They are cheap.
The problem is, they aren’t as cheap as defenders.
The average (mean) cost of the top 25 defenders in FPL this year is 5.1mn and the average score is 49.3 points.
The average (mean) cost of the top 25 midfielders in FPL this year is 6.7mn (6.3 without Salah skewing) and the average score is 48.2 points.
Don’t tell me Gabriel skews the data either. Because Semenyo does the same for the mids.
So, why would we get cheap mids when we can get cheap defenders? Why not play four or five at the back?
I personally think that there has been a general overperformance in clean sheets this year so this gap may decrease but it seems plainly obvious that you were better off using your defence for the cheap spots this year. I suspect that will continue.
This then is the summary of how I rated these guys:
So, the rise of the central and defensive midfielder is somewhat exaggerated. That’s not like us as the FPL Community is it…
Basically it comes down to whether these guys will get repeatable attacking output. That output is why they also get good bonus – almost all of their bonus points came when they got an attacking return.
So, defcons have marginally increased the viability of someone like Xhaka or Rice, but for most mids it hasn’t made that much difference.
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