The 2022/23 season of Fantasy Premier League is now over and it is time to look back, review it, and learn from mistakes in order to improve our FPL skills in the next season.
That’s why in this article, we will look at the best FPL team from the 2022/23 season – the top-scoring combination of players respecting the budget and other constraints.
Basically, the team (a zombie team) you would have picked at the start of the season and scored the maximum number of points possible.
The best (top-scoring) FPL team in 2022/23
First, some math introduction to this problem.
From a mathematical point of view, Fantasy Premier League is an optimization task.
We have our cost function (points scored by a combination of 11 players), and constraints (budget constraint, formation constraints, teams’ constraints).
Our goal is, of course, to maximize the value of our cost function – to maximize the points scored by our FPL team respecting the constraints.
So, let’s look at which combination of 11 players within the budget scored the most points last season.
- We used a genetic algorithm to find a solution.
- We were looking for 11 players in any eligible formation within the budget of 82.5 million – so the bench is 4-4.5-4.5-4.5.
- We used prices from the beginning of the 2022/23 season.
- We did not consider any substitutions and transfers.
- Only one player was captain for the whole season
So, no transfers, no substitutions, and no captaincy changes for this team.
Here is the top-scoring combination of players, the best FPL team of the 2022/23 season:
- Raya (4,5m);
- Trippier (5m), White (4,5m), Mee (4,5m)
- Salah (13m), Odegaard (6,5m), Rashford (6,5m), Saka (8m)
- Haaland (C) (11,5m), Kane (11,5m), Toney (7m)
If you have picked this team at the beginning of the season, you would get 2510 points at the end of the season without transfers, without subs, and with Haaland captain every gameweek.
2510 points would get you only to the top 150k.
Lessons learned
The most important knowledge from the top-scoring team:
- The 3-4-3 formation was the best formation – heavy attack, threemium, value up-front, budget defenders that were doing great
- The optimal team has three heavy hitters (10 million +) players – which is a bit surprising – but it shows, that threemium can be a way to go IF cheap defenders and underpriced midfielders are scoring a lot of points. But it also shows that prices in the 2022/23 season were very generous. Pricing in 2023/24 seems way more realistic so in our opinion, going 3 premium players in the 2023/24 season is not an option. Even squeezing in Salah and Haaland will be very difficult if you also want Rashford, Saka, or other mid-priced midfielders.
- Expensive defenders were not worth it
- It was a season of Kane and Haaland – just 9 points separates them at the end of the season
- Arsenal players and Rashford were heavily underpriced – try to spot underpriced players before the next season
- Many people were switching from Saka to Martinelli after GW2, yet Saka is in the best team, and not Martinelli – try to be more patient
- Salah still had an amazing season, despite people selling him for Almiron in the middle of the season
- 2022/23 was a season to own cheap defenders
- Only Haaland from Manchester City players in the top team – too heavy rotation among City players – you needed to own them at the right time
- This team scored “only” 2510 points, while the 2022/23 FPL winner scored 2776 points. Basically, with wise use of transfers and captaincy changes, he overperformed the optimal team by more than 250 points, outstanding
Before the start of the season, we could have predicted (to some extent) that Salah, Haaland, Kane, Saka, and Rashford were going to be great picks for our FPL teams.
But it was unlikely that we would have successfully predicted that Trippier, Brentford defenders were going to have such an outstanding season.
The lesson learned here is: pick 5 or 6 “safe-heaven” players before the start of the season. And then, built a team around them during the season, when cheap options emerge.
The best FPL team with new prices
Now, let’s try something different.
The team above was the best team for the last season.
But what about this season? Let’s change players’ prices to new prices from the 2023/24 season.
How will the best team change? Which players will keep their place despite different price tags?
Here is the best team with new prices:
- Raya (5m);
- Trippier (6,5m), White (5,5m), Mee (5m)
- Odegaard (8,5m), Rashford (9m), Martinelli (8m), Gross (6,5m), Eze (6,5m)
- Haaland (C) (14m), Toney (8m)
Lessons learned
The total number of points of this FPL team with the new team is only 2322 points (188 points less than the team above with previous season prices).
- Instead of threemium, we have just one-mium – one premium forward
- Big value at midfield in mid-priced midfielders
- No, Salah
- Raya, Trippier, White, Mee, Odegaard, Rashford, Haaland and Toney kept their place despite price rises
The best FPL team calculated from points per game (+new prices)
And at the end, let’s look at the optimal team calculated from points per game instead of total points scored.
This will allow us to eliminate injuries from our equation.
Here is the best team with new prices:
- Steele (4,5m);
- Trippier (6,5m), Cancelo (6m), Saliba (5m)
- Odegaard (8,5m), Rashford (9m), Martinelli (8m), Almiron (6,5m), March (6,5m)
- Haaland (C) (14m), Toney (8m)
The best FPL team from previous seasons
We did similar optimization at the end of 2021/22, 2020/21, and 2018/19 seasons as well, so feel free to compare the best FPL teams and conclusions from those optimizations:
- The Best FPL Team of the 2021/22 season
- The Best FPL Team of the 2020/21 season
- Optimized XI for the 18/19 season
Further resources for the 2023/24 season
