Yeah, yeah, we know. Every FPL content producer and their dog does a #TeamReveal nowadays.
Well, we’re doing one too.
There are two reasons.
Firstly, we’ve been posting loads of preview articles in the past few weeks, so we want to show what the actual result of all that research and planning was.
Secondly, they’re good for both posterity and accountability. Both we and you can look back on these in the future and marvel at how great they were/laugh at what complete idiots we are.
(Bonus third reason: These are also just fun to do. We’ve spent hours and hours thinking about our teams, just like you have. So it feels like a big deal – to you at least – when your team is locked in… even if nobody else cares).
Without further ado, here are our – James’ and Joe’s – starting teams for the 23/24 FPL season.
James’ Team Reveal
I (James) finalised my team this Monday… then, as always, I tinkered with it as the week went along. But this is the final, locked-in team I’ll definitely be starting the season with.
Overall Structure, Formation and Strategy
As I said in our watchlist piece, I’m following a few simple rules:
- Pick players with good points potential – Yeah, obviously I want to pick players who have potential to score well, either in the long-term or for their respective fixture runs.
- Pick nailed players – It might seem obvious, but some of us have been tempted with players who aren’t nailed (e.g. Foden). I don’t want any of that risk. And, that’s somewhat related to the next rule…
- Spend as little as possible on my bench – I want as much money as possible on the pitch – that’s where you score points. And that’s why I don’t have Chilwell on my bench, like some others.
- Pick a flexible team – With this team, I can buy all but two outfield players in the game in one move. I want to be ready to make that move if I need to (even though I rarely make transfers for Gameweek 2).
- Consider ownership – I don’t want a haul by a highly-owned player to tank my rank. So, I will consider ownership. I will also look to see if I can find a differential, and I think I have one…
I will be playing 3-4-3. After last season, I don’t have faith in defences until I see evidence to the contrary. So, I want as few defenders as possible. I think the value is in the midfield, but I also want the option to jump on forwards.
Without further ado…
The Best FPL Team You Have Ever Seen
In goal, I have Pickford and Turner.
Pickford is a value pick for me. He has nice fixtures for the first eight games. I’m hoping for a few clean sheets and some save points but I don’t expect to ‘gain’ anything on the crowd with this pick.
I did have Areola in my backup spot, but this became Turner when he left Arsenal for Forest . I think he will become the number one for Forest, and he is only 4.0. I like the option of benching Pickford against Arsenal in Gameweek 5 too, and playing Turner against Burnley.
In defence, I will start Alexander-Arnold, Gabriel and Estupinian. Pinnock and Beyer will be on my bench.
Let’s start with Alexander-Arnold shall we? I believe this guy is capable of a third 200 point season, particularly if he carries on where he left off last year. Without him, it’s capable to build a great squad and I am not wedded to him for the rest of this season. BUT, I don’t want to get to Gameweek 2 or 3 and be looking at major squad surgery to get him in. If he isn’t what I think he is, I downgrade him for Gameweek 3 and I have a load of money in the bank. That’s fine.
Gabriel is simple. He is nailed, he plays for a great defence, and he has attacking threat from set pieces.
Estupinian is almost as simple. He went straight in my team on the first day and I haven’t looked back. 5.0 is a great price for a guy with seven assists and one goal from 31 starts in a top-half defence. His fixtures for the first three are about as good as you can get. And, finally, his ownership is super high. If he goes off in the first game, I don’t want to be on the wrong side of it.
Pinnock has been a hard choice. I just want a 4.5 so I don’t have to play a crappy 4.0 in case of injuries. I prefer Henry but at the time of writing he is flagged. I considered Botman for this slot, but his early fixtures are so terrible I don’t even want the guy on my bench. I might even move him just to Bell for the start of the season if I feel really confident of my first XI, and want 0.5 in the bank.
Beyer is just an enabler. He will be third on my bench every week and I don’t care if he loses value. He will never matter. Sorry Beyer.
In midfield, I will play Rashford, Saka, Mitoma, and Maddison. Nakamba is on the bench.
As I said, I think the value is here. Rashford and Saka are both underpriced. They could both get close to 200 points for the season.
I’ve moved away from Martinelli after the Community Shield. Only because I think he is more likely to be benched every week than some other players around this price point. I think Martinelli would be a better asset if Trossard didn’t exist.
Mitoma is Brighton’s best attacker. By a mile. Gross plays right-back and March has been ineffectual all his career – I don’t yet believe that last year was a turning point. As I said before, they have great fixtures and this guy is a great talent. Plus, again, his ownership is super high.
Maddison was the latest addition to my whole team. But I think he’s cheap, a proven FPL asset, and will be fine whether Kane stays or not (he’ll definitely get more free kicks without Kane). Also, having him instead of someone like Odegaard leaves me with 1.0 in the bank to start the season. That can be used in lots of different places, like upgrading my cheapest forward (see below) to Chelsea’s Jackson, or a cheaper defender up to Chilwell.
Nakamba is another enabler. Just there to make up the numbers.
So who are my three forwards? No prizes for guessing the first.
Haaland. Don’t overthink it. Captain him on the first day. Over 85% owned.
Watkins is my next one. I am kind of annoyed Jesus got injured, because I was hoping Watkins was going to be a differential, with only around 15% ownership. Watkins was amazing after Emery took over as manager. Villa can score against anyone because of the way they set up, and the fixtures aren’t bad.
And, my most differential of all… Wissa. At 6.0 he feels like a bargain. With Toney banned, he should be leading the line for Brentford.
Last year, you paid 6.5 for him and he got 7 goals and 4 assists in only 1587 minutes. The year before, he got 7 goals and 2 assist points off 1268 minutes. Half a season is 1710 minutes.
His points totals for the last year and the year before were 111 points and 92 points, respectively. Admittedly, he was classified as a midfielder in the last two seasons. But if you take away his extra points for goals scored and clean sheets he still averages 89.5 points in less than half a season.
We don’t look at players’ half season scores, but for context, if you add his two seasons worth of data together and adjust for his position change you get 179 points in 2855 minutes and a full season is 3420 minutes.
This guy could be the cheat code to the season. Well, at least until Toney returns….
By how much I have written, you can probably tell that Wissa is my favourite pick. But I am generally quite happy with the whole squad. I think I’ve hit my plan of picking players with good points potential and nailed-on players. I can get to almost anyone in the game with one transfer, so it’s flexible, and I’ve got as much money on the pitch as possible.
Can’t wait for it all to crumble before my eyes…
Joe’s Team Reveal
I’ve tried something different this year.
Normally, like most of you I’m sure, I read everything on Reddit, Twitter, and various websites in the build-up to a new FPL season.
This year, I’ve done none of that.
Instead, I did my own research into both fixtures and player values. That gave me my shortlist, which I whittled down to a few must-have (in my opinion) players.
Then I decided what my structure would be. Basically, I’m going all-in on a stars and scrubs approach. I call it my Have My Cake And Eat It strategy – catchy, I know. I’ll explain more on that at the bottom.
Finally, I’m very confident that I want to play 3-5-2. Three defenders is obvious, and there’s just a ridiculous amount of value in midfield this year… and only about three forwards you’d actually want.
Right, here’s my team to start the season.
(For the record, I had no idea who James was picking until we’d both already finalised our teams. Any cross-overs are coincidental).
The Actual Best FPL Team You Have Ever Seen
Pickford was a fairly easy pick as my starting keeper. He’s 4.5, plays for Dyche (coming off a full season of drilling proper defensive football into his squad), has nice fixtures to start the season, and actually did well in FPL last year, even if his team was awful.
Turner will be everyone’s second keeper, now that the transfer has been confirmed. Before that I had Areola, for the same reason as everyone else (he’s only 4.0, and may be replacing Fabianski).
Having two starting keepers for only 8.5 is lovely for the ol’ budget.
Picking my defence was tough.
Firstly, I knew I wanted a Brentford defender. They’re solid, and have nice fixtures. I was going for Henry, but he’s still flagged, so now I have Pinnock. I’ve also got Konsa, to make a nice little rotation with my Brentford defender – he’s only 4.5, and Villa, like Brentford, are solid defensively and have good fixtures. I also have Baldock and Bell – they’re both only 4.0, should start IRL, and I can theoretically rotate them in if either Sheffield Utd or Luton turn out to be good defensively.
Trent or No Trent has easily been my toughest call. He’s got an incredibly high ceiling… but we also found out about his floor last year. He stunk for the whole first half of the 22/23 season, while taking up a big chunk of your budget, and I’m worried he’ll do the same again. His numbers look good overall for last season, but most of these came from a massive hot streak towards the end.
With all that said… he’s in my team. I don’t really like it, and can definitely see myself abandoning ship if he starts off slowly. And that’s fine – he’s super expensive at 8.0, so I can drop him down to a 4.5-5.0 defender and use that for a big upgrade somewhere else. Also, as noted, I’m running a stars and scrubs team, and he’s the only real star in defence.
My midfield is anchored by Salah. I know he’s expensive, and I don’t care. If Kane leaves, he’s the only true premium left except for Haaland. He plays every minute, is nailed-on for around 30 goal involvements, and Liverpool should score loads this year.
Obviously we need an Arsenal midfielder, and I’ve got Martinelli. From an FPL perspective I see him and Saka as fairly even, but he’s 0.5 cheaper. His numbers from last year are far more repeatable than Odegaard’s.
Mbuemo feels pretty must-own to me. He’s only 6.5, is on pentalties, basically plays forward for a good team, and got 18 goal involvements last year.
I’ve gone back and forth on Mitoma. He’s a boring pick, since everyone’s got him, but I just can’t ignore the early fixtures.
I really went back and forth on my final midfield spot. I had exactly 8.5 left, which gave me Bruno or Saka (Sterling was also a strong consideration, and remains right at the top of my watchlist). Bruno had the spot all week… but I’ve switched to Saka. His ceiling is way higher, he outscored Bruno by around 30pts last year while playing fewer minutes, and Arsenal’s opening fixtures are just amazing.
You have to have Haaland up top, so that’s one spot and 14.0 gone.
I promise I didn’t know James’ team before this… but I also arrived at Wissa as an excellent pick. He’s super cheap, should start, has got great stats for his minutes, and played well last season with Toney out.
Archer is my enabler here, and actually the only player I’ll definitely never play.
In short, I decided that I just wanted all the best players, and would figure out the rest later.
That meant a spine of Trent, Salah, and Haaland – the three best players in their positions, easily. The volume of good mid-priced midfielders helped enormously here. But also I needed a cheap forward to enable it. Nketiah was my fleeting hope for this, after Jesus got injured, but I’m more than okay with pivoting to Wissa. If he and Trent don’t work out, I just downgrade Trent and upgrade Wissa to Watkins, or even Jesus when he’s back.
Behold, the beauty…
(Kindly ignore the fact that I’m probably starting Baldock in Gameweek 1… I meant the rest of the beauty!)