Optimized fantasy football squad GW 1-18
Almost half of the Premier League 2019/20 season is over and Fantasy managers are preparing their teams for a busy Christmas period. But what did we learn in the first half of the season? What has been the best Fantasy Premier League squad with the most points so far? By the best FPL team I mean the optimal FPL squad that has scored the most points from the beginning of the season within the budget of 100 million. I used the optimization algorithm once again and found the solution. I did not consider autosubs, transfers or captain changes and I calculated it with the starting prices of players. I considered budget for starting XI of 82,5 million – so 17,5 million for the bench.
FPL points of the optimized squad
If you had chosen this optimized squad before the GW1 (and had made no changes to that) you would have had 1253 FPL points and would have been the first in the world. The current number one FPL manager has scored 1216 points. So you would have led by 37 points. Sounds pretty cool, isn’t it?
Let’s look at the team.
Goalkeeper
Henderson
4,5 m | 76 points
Defence
Lundstram
4 m | 95 points
Ricardo Pereira
6 m | 86 points
Baldock
4,5 m | 83 points
Midfield
De Bruyne
9,5 m | 120 points
Maddison
7 m | 90 points
Mané
11,5 m | 115 points
Salah
12,5 m | 104 points
Attack
Vardy (C)
9 m | 142 (x2) points
Abraham
7 m | 101 points
Ings
6 m | 99 points
The value of this squad was 81,5m before the beginning of the season and now it is 88,6 m what is a massive difference. The lesson learned from this is that the value follows points.
Optimal FPL attack GW 1 -18
Well, before the start of the season, it looked like there was no more value in the attack and that we should be moving our budget into the defense and the midfield. It does not look like that anymore. Players like Vardy, Abraham and Ings, they all are the part of the optimal XI and lead the attack in 3-4-3 formation.
Optimal FPL midfield GW 1 -18
The midfield is full of big guns again. Maddison, Mané and Kevin De Bruyne has been outstanding FPL assets so far. It is a bit of a surprise to see Salah beside them. He has scored one point less than Rashford who is not part of this team. The reason why Rashord could not make it into the optimal Fantasy Premier League squad is that there is just no free forward slot for him. Abraham and Ings has scored just 4 and 6 points less than him for lower price.
Optimal FPL defense GW 1 -18
Three Sheffield United players – one in goal and the other two in the defense. Sheffield United defenders, mainly Lundstram and Baldock, have been great source of clean sheets and attacking returns during the first half of the season. And the same can be said for Ricardo Pereira, who has been consistently rewarding his owners with points. There was no room for expensive defenders like Trent Alexander Arnold or Andy Robertson.
Conclusion
I hope you find this article helpful when deciding about a team structure of your fantasy football squad – mainly those of you, who still have the first wildcard available. But be careful, this is an ex-post analysis and it only shows us the past. Some players may be in the optimized squad just because they overporformed their stats, while others may be missing because they underperformed their stats. You must always see a bigger picture and do use this tool in isolation. At the end of the season, the optimal fantasy football squad may be a bit different.
