Menu
I’ve heard a lot of Fantasy Premier League (FPL) content creators wax lyrical about Joao Pedro as an excellent FPL pick. I’m just not sure.
Regular readers will know talking about JP is one of my favourite past times but lets start by looking back at some of my calls.
At the start of last season I cautioned against the HUGE ownership he was attracting.
Before he joined Chelsea, he was heavily reliant on penalties. 9 of his 22 goals at Brighton were pens. And he only scored 22 goals in 6238 mins – that’s about 600 mins short of two full seasons.
So, of course, I started the season without him and he punished me by getting five attacking returns in the first four games. Naturally, I thought I was an idiot so I bought him in on wildcard and he did nothing.
When his next golden run of fixtures came around – gameweek 22 to 27 – I avoided him again. And of course, João Pedro smashed it – five goals and five assists, most of them soft FPL assists with barely any xA. Then he put a hat-trick past Villa two gameweeks later.
I then wrote a piece urging caution to the FPL community. I accepted that I had made a mistake not owning him from gameweek 22 to 29 but told everyone that he wouldn’t carry this on – it wasn’t the new manager in Liam Rosenior or some new system that caused him to get all these points, it was simply good fixtures and a bit of variance.
I took some shit for that piece on Reddit but I was right. In the final six games that he played at the end of last season he only scored once and got zero assists (he also missed four games).
This is all to say that I have been incredibly right about the guy and incredibly wrong. But the lesson I took was that he was a flat-track bully.
Last year he scored against West Ham, Fulham, Spurs, Wolves, Newcastle, Villa, Brentford, Palace (with their weak squad depth), West Ham, Leeds, Burnley, Villa and Forest (when they were focused on Europe). None of these teams are a 4 or a 5 on our ticker and three of them got relegated.
Another real eyebrow-raiser is his nine assists from just 1.96 xA last season.
A lot of that came from winning penalties. That’s a skill, but we cannot bank that all the defenders in the league would be as insanely stupid as the ones at Wolves who blatantly pushed him in the back in the area TWICE in one game.
JP is a fixture driven pick. And, I have told myself I must have him in a good run. But his start to the season is just fine, not good. Brighton and Arsenal – who he plays in gameweek 2 and 3 were two of the best defences in the league at the end of the season.
From gameweek 4 he is a buy – Hull, Brentford, Bournemouth, Everton and Spurs is a good run. But I don’t want to start the season with him, especially with a new manager.
At the time of writing, his ownership is 53.3%. That’s huge.
It basically means that if you go without him, you are betting against every 2nd manager. And that’s a risk.
But, I don’t like ownership to solely dictate how I feel about a player. Sometimes I will use it to help me pick between guys but only when I think they’re good picks already.
The trouble is, I believe in the wisdom of the crowds – the idea that a group of people will be a better predictor than one person.
So, that leads me to my final question…
Seriously. I need to know.
Am I just a very bad judge of this guy? I don’t think I am a bad judge of FPL picks in general – I’ve literally been better than 99% of managers for the last six seasons.
Do I not like him just because he is so highly owned? I have Bruno, Szobo and Haaland in my team right now so I am not sure it’s that.
What am I missing?
Or, am I making sense?
The best free website for FPL tips to beat your friends and win your mini-leagues
Follow us on Twitter for our latest analysis @Full90FPL
© 2025 Full 90 FPL
