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Greetings all, and welcome to exactly what everyone wants to finish off an FPL season – an enormous helping of negativity.
In fairness, we are going to balance this out soon enough with an only-slightly-smaller helping of positivity. Our actual favourite players from the season will be posted soon enough.
For now though, it’s time to exorcise some demons.
Up front, let me clarify these are not THE WORST players in FPL, nor in real-life football. Some of them are around the highest points-getters this season, in fact.
They’re simply the players who have horribly, deliberately, and unapologetically wronged us this season, for which the punishment is simple – a whole lot of moaning, which they will never, ever read.
I’m looking likely to finish somewhere around 180k, which is… fine, if hardly spectacularly exciting. I feel, however, like this has been an endlessly frustrating season, in which I’ve made a similarly endless series of bad decisions.
What were the worst decisions of all? Glad you asked. Here are just some of the players who drove me mad this season, followed by my most-hated player of all.
It happened again. I am so angry at myself.
I’ve already imposed a ‘No Foden’ rule on myself once, after he drove me absolutely crazy in late 2022, through some combination of lacklustre returns and Pep Roulette. Unfortunately, time does heal all wounds, and I got suckered in once more.
It’s always exactly the same pattern. Foden looks like an absolute, unstoppable world-beater. He’s destroying his underlying stats. He’s putting up double-digit FPL returns every single week. Everyone buys him in – he’s must-own!
Then the returns don’t just slow down. They stop completely. It’s not just one or two blanks. He completely disappears.
But you can’t sell him – that’s the problem. Because you know he’s a super-talented player, and he was literally just the best asset in FPL, and he’s actually not so very expensive, and he plays for the best attack in the league. And just look at those fixtures – surely he’ll get back on track just next gameweek!
Well, I and many others got well and truly Fodened this season.
His returns between Gameweeks 13 and 16: 15pts, 17pts, 12pts, 11pts. Six goals in four starts, 8 bonus points, and he even hit on DefCons twice. What a star!
His next games were against West Ham (when they were rubbish), Forest (when they were rubbish), Sunderland, and Chelsea (when they were rubbish).
Four starts. Four lots of 90 minutes. Four blanks.
He started again the following week, home to Brighton. 72mins. 0 returns.
He started again, against Man U, before they were good. Hooked at half time, for 1pt.
He had dream fixtures against Wolves and Spurs up next. It didn’t matter. He had been deservedly banished into Pep Purgatory, and would start just three of City’s remaining league fixtures.
All told – since that incredible run, when we all fell for him once more – we’ve had 21 gameweeks. In that entire span, he has 0 goals, and 3 assists. Pep hates him, and I hate him too.
Never again. And I mean it, this time.
I actually like Rogers as a player, and – on paper – he’s had another good season.
Last year he had 19 goal involvements (8 goals, 11 assists), and 161 total points. That seemed unsustainable, since he massively outperformed his xGI of 11.73.
Well, this year he’s had 18 goal involvements (10 goals, 8 assists), and 169 total points. He has once again smashed his xGI of 11.2.
He also still only costs 7.3, having started the season at 7.0.
With all that being said… he is incredibly frustrating to actually own.
Much like the striker who plays in front of him, he is the absolute definition of a form player. He’ll have explosive outbursts, such as his Gameweek 16/17 this season, when he scored back-to-back braces for 15pts each time.
He will also have long, long periods of giving you no returns whatsoever.
He blanked the first five gameweeks of the season, when many of us (including yours truly) had viewed him as an excellent value pick. He followed up those braces with one assist in his next five gameweeks. Between gameweeks 26 and 30 he started all five games, played five lots of 90 minutes, and blanked every single time, including against Leeds, Wolves, and a messy Chelsea.
Clearly, he’s very talented. He’s also – again – very, very frustrating to actually own in FPL.
Listen – I love Gabriel. I love him in real life, and I love him in FPL. He was the best defender in the game by miles this season, and – going into Gameweek 38 – has a chance to break the points record by a defender, despite missing a few games with injury. I don’t think he’s been out of my team all season, even during the injury.
But goddamnit, Gabby… you really let me down the one week I needed you.
James and I literally had an hour-long conversation, on the phone, about whether we should triple captain Gabriel for his Gameweek 26 double, or wait to use it on Haaland.
Not to open up all wounds… but I was 100% going to wait and use it on Haaland, and – again, I’m really not still made about this; well, only a little bit – James ended up tilting me in the other direction.
It wasn’t a ‘disaster’, in the end. He got 7pts across the two games, and Haaland would only go on to beat his overall triple captaincy score by 11. I definitely felt like a complete idiot in the moment though, and learnt a valuable lesson – never, ever listen to James.
(The actual lesson is never, ever triple captain someone who relies so heavily on clean sheets).
Much like my dark double gameweek with my otherwise beloved Gabriel, this is very much a ‘personal experience’ pick.
I know he’s got 22 goals. I know he’s had a great season. I, personally, however, have benefited from very few of those goals, and very little of that great season.
Sometimes, you simply can’t time it right.
I must have owned Thiago for at least two separate spells this season. I’m not sure I got a single one of his 22 goals out of it.
Looking over his returns now, I’m not quite sure how that happened.
Very few FPL forwards not named Haaland or Kane, over the years, have returned basically every week, but he does seem to have been relatively consistent.
He did have an enormous drought following Gameweek 13… just after he scored 5 goals in his previous three games. He was to score precisely 0 goals in the following 6 games, despite starting 5 of them.
I definitely owned him during this span, and promptly sold him – along with lots of other people – since he simply wasn’t returning. Naturally he then scored a hat trick in Gameweek 20… then got a brace in 21. So, there’s almost a quarter of his 22 goals which most people wouldn’t actually have benefited from (including me), having long since bailed on him.
We all got him back in. He followed that outburst with a run of one goal in his next six games. We all sold him again.
He’s subsequently finished the season never returning two weeks in a row, and with back-to-back blanks either side of his goal against West Ham in 35.
Basically, if you look at the end-of-season stats, he’s obviously done very well. Along the way in FPL, however, you had absolutely no clue when those returns were actually coming, and were frequently, almost constantly annoyed at him.
I was definitely tempted to have Foden in this slot, following my nightmare run with him halfway through the season. I only actually owned him once though, which somewhat limited the damage to both my mental health, and FPL team.
With my very least favourite player of the season, I owned at least twice – including to start the year – if not three times.
Step forward, the one and only Cole Palmer.
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I’d like to write this article one day, if I have time. But either way, I do think there’s a discussion to be had about how good Cole Palmer actually is.
He’s had three seasons now as a starting-calibre player, since moving to Chelsea from City.
His first season was undeniably incredible – 22 goals, and 13 assists. Those 35 goal involvements obliterated his xGI of 25.52.
Last season, he got 15 goals and 10 assists. Which is definitely still good, but not the Salah-challenging level we might have hoped for from his first season. He also played over 500 more minutes this season. Interestingly, his xGI was still only a little better, despite those minutes – 26.32 vs 25.52 – the difference this season being that he more or less hit that xGI, instead of greatly exceeding it.
This season, he’s basically done the same thing as last season, only in less game time. Injuries have limited him to 800 fewer minutes than 23/24, and 1,300 fewer than 24/25. His 11 returns (9 goals, 2 assists) are – like last season – slightly under his xGI of 12.8.
What’s the actual conclusion of this part of my anti-Palmer case?
Simply that we thought he might be a tip-top, prime-Salah level FPL midfielder. Instead, he’s… definitely – on paper – one of the better midfielders, but not the absolute world-beater his first season might have led us to believe.
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That’s not actually the main thrust of my case, however. My main problem is that I absolutely hate players like Palmer in FPL.
In fantasy NFL, certainly players are known as ‘boom or bust’. They’ll either get you a ton of points, or absolutely nothing. Some players (especially wide receivers) can end the season with plenty of total points… but almost all of those points came in only a handful of weeks. If you started them any other week, you got nothing.
Palmer is the absolute definition of a boom or bust FPL option. He has 106pts this season. 32 of those points – exactly one third – came in only two gameweeks. This isn’t unique to this year, either – most of his points last season were generated in very few, explosive outbursts, such as his first half hat trick against Brighton.
In FPL, this is next to useless. There are 38 gameweeks in a season. If somebody is only going to get you good returns in – let’s be generous, and say – 10 of those gameweeks, there’s still almost a 75% chance you’re not going to get those returns.
I know Palmer has missed some games this season. He still has 23 starts, and has 7+pts (i.e. out of the DefCons/clean sheets/Elliot Anderson zone, and into an actual useful attacking midfield option zone) 6 times. Once again, therefore, in almost 75% of his starts, he’s failed to deliver anything close to his price point.
My favourite FPL players are the ones who deliver consistently. They’re the ones you can just bring in and leave in your team for ages, and – even if they have a blank or two – confidently keep them, and know they’ll return for you again soon enough. Saka’s the perfect example of this nowadays, Son was great at it for years, and Anderson has ticked the box this season.
The Cole Palmers (and, to a lesser extent, Thiagos) of this world only lead to frustration. You shell out the big money, bring them in, and expect the big returns their price and points history suggests. 3 out of 4 times, you’re actually getting a blank.
Did you happen to have him in for his 32pt outburst, against Wolves and Leeds? They certainly looked like easy fixtures, and therefore the perfect time to buy him?
Well, if so, you probably actually brought him in the week before, when he played West Ham at home… and blanked. You probably kept him for the following game, home to Burnley, in which he also blanked.
‘It’s Cole Palmer!’ you might have thought. ‘He’ll be back. He’ll come good for me!’. Well, after those 32pts, he proceeded to start 10 of the following 11 games. In that span he scored one goal, and got 0 assists.
I’ve heard the counter-arguments – he’s injured, it’s the system, it’s the players around him. If this was a short-term thing, then maybe. But it’s not. He’s been like this for two years now, and he just is who he is.
And yet, when next season rolls around, and his price probably drops to around 9.5-10.0, just watch as everyone looks back on 23/24, or his total points returns this season and last, and falls for it all over again.
Not this guy. Not again.
I’ve got a couple of the same players Joe has for similar reasons. And I think maybe that’s the key point I’m taking from this list of least favourite players. It’s not that they’re my least favourite human beings or anything. They’re just reminders of when I’ve made bad decisions in this FPL season. And that’s incredibly frustrating. Particularly because most of them have delivered well for other people, just not for me.
Some of this is me being unlucky. After all, I primarily analyse stats and trust long-term trends to show me the real value of a player. If I own them when they don’t deliver on those long-term trends then that is unlucky. But, part of it is skill too. I should have jumped on the guys with good fixtures and avoided the two that were just not who I thought they were.
Igor Thiago is the second-highest scoring forward in the game this season, sitting on 179 points. He’s netted 22 goals and a single assist over 36 appearances. Between gameweeks 6 and 13 in a span of eight gameweeks, he scored 9 goals.
But for me, he’s a nightmare. I had him in my side 10 times and he repaid me with a grand total of three goals and one solitary bonus point. Those numbers are just fine but not good.
The crux of my frustration then is that he shined when I didn’t own him. I missed all of Thiago’s big hauls. When I finally brought him in, he was no longer the differential star. I should have jumped on early in my first wildcard but I picked someone else on this list instead and I only had him in the latter half of the season, where he’s frankly been average at best.
Now let’s turn to Evanilson at Bournemouth. He was someone I was quite optimistic about heading into the season. Last season, he scored 10 goals and provided 5 assists – 15 attacking returns from 28 starts. This year, he’s nearly matched it again with 13 attacking returns, though fewer goals and a bit more assists with comparable minutes.
I expected him to kick on this year, to be the obvious number one forward for a Bournemouth side I rated highly. In many ways, I was right because he was the clear forward option and Bournemouth did play good attacking football. But I had the wrong guy. I had him alongside Semenyo, who did the job, but Evanilson was a letdown. Across 13 appearances, he gave me 2 goals and 1 assist. I started the season with him when I should have gone for someone else. Another one who had good fixtures, but just didn’t deliver.
Now, onto Cole Palmer. I didn’t own him for nearly as long as Joe, only five times this season, and he rewarded me with a grand total of 9 points. Yes, less than 2 points a game. Exactly what you want after spending £10 million on someone. So in classic FPL, I can’t be as annoyed. But in draft, I absolutely can.
In our mid-season re-draft, I picked up Bruno Fernandes and Cole Palmer as my first two picks. Bruno has been brilliant, but Palmer has not. I’ve kept faith with him far too many times, and apart from two weeks where he delivered 32 points he’s been poor. He hasn’t often played the full 90, missing out on attacking returns he should have had.
The final straw, the reason he’s firmly on this list, is gameweek 35. Our draft league is a head-to-head format and I faced the top player. I lost by two FPL points because Palmer missed a penalty. A 0.79 xG chance, missed. With one gameweek left to go, I am two points behind the league leader, needing him to lose and me to win. I fully expect to lose the league – despite having the most FPL points overall – and it’ll be because of Cole Palmer.
Regular readers won’t be surprised at all to see João Pedro as my least favourite player of the season.
There are a couple of reasons. First, much like Igor Thiago, I missed all the big hauls. I went against him at the start of the season to prove I was smarter than everyone else. His ownership was high, and I thought I’d take the bet because the stats suggested he wasn’t that good. Naturally, he smashed it at the start with five attacking returns in the first four games.
Then I panicked and got him in on wildcard in gameweek 6 and he became the player I thought he was – doing nothing. I got rid, decided I was done.
When his next golden run of fixtures came around – gameweek 22 to 27 – I avoided him again, opting for Evanilson. And of course, João Pedro smashed it – five goals and five assists, most of them soft FPL assists with barely any xA.
Of course, on my next wildcard I got him again and he did nothing again. And then I sold him again.
So, I have transferred (or wildcarded) him in and out of my team several times and he has delivered me 10 points from 6 appearances.
In reality, this isn’t about João Pedro. It’s about me being my own least favourite manager. I did terrible analysis on him. The lesson for next year is João Pedro is a flat-track bully – get him against weak opposition, then ignore him the rest of the season. There’s your tip. Tell your friends. Or don’t, if you want to beat them.
Phew. That was cathartic. I (Joe) feel at least 1% less antagonised now.
The ‘Never Again, Cole’ tattoo I got to go alongside this article did sting both my arm and my wallet, but – if it means I never, ever own Palmer again – it’ll be worth it.
We would very, very much like to hear about your own least favourite players of the season. If you’d also like to get that heavy burden off your chest, the best place to do so is over on Reddit (where we’ll be posting a summary of this imminently).
Thanks for reading, everybody, and I hope we’ve all learnt some valuable lessons this season!
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