The 2023/24 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 2023/24 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 2023/24
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 2023/24 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 2023/24 season:
- Pickford (4,5m);
- White (5.5m), Saliba (5m), Pedro Porro (5m)
- Palmer (C) (5m), Foden (7.5m), Saka (8.5m), Son (9m), Gordon (5.5m)
- Haaland (14m), Watkins (8m)
If you have picked this team at the beginning of the season, you would get 2420 points at the end of the season without transfers, without subs, and with Palmer captain every gameweek.
2420 points would get you only to the top 300k (we have no considered any autosubs or vice-captain changes in our algorithm).
Lessons learned
The most important knowledge from the top-scoring team:
- It shows how underpriced were players this season
- The 3-5-2 formation was the best formation – heavy midfield, value up-front, Arsenal defenders that were doing great
- Expensive defenders were not worth it (they were not even doing great) – there was less clean sheets than usual this season, likely because higher added time
- It was a season of budget players like Palmer, Foden, Watkins, Gordon
- Arsenal defenders, Palmer were heavily underpriced – try to spot underpriced players before the next season
- Many people were selling Pickford after the first few gameweeks (for example for Areola), yet Pickford is in the best team, and not Areola – try to be more patient with your picks
- Saka still had an amazing season, despite people were selling him in the middle of the season
- 2022/23 and 2022/24 were seasons to own cheap defenders
- This team scored “only” 2420 points, while the 2023/24 FPL winner scored 2799 points. Basically, with wise use of transfers and captaincy changes, he overperformed the optimal team by more than 380 points, outstanding
Before the start of the season, we could have predicted (to some extent) that Haaland, Saka, Arsenal defenders, and Watkins were going to be great picks for our FPL teams.
But it was unlikely that we would have successfully predicted that Palmer, Gordon 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 calculated from points per game
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 from points per match (only for players with a minimum of 12 appearances):
- Pickford (4,5m);
- White (5.5m), Saliba (5m), Gvardiol (5m)
- Palmer (C) (5m), Foden (7.5m), Saka (8.5m), Salah (12.5m), Olise (6m)
- Haaland (14m), Watkins (8m)
Output: 71.5 points per match (including captaincy points) = 2717 expected points per 38 games
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 2024/25 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:
- Pickford (4,5m);
- White (6.5m), Saliba (6m), Andersen (4.5m)
- Palmer (C) (10.5m), Foden (9.5m), Saka (10m), Rodri (6.5m), Gordon (7.5m)
- Solanke (7.5m), Watkins (9m)
Lessons learned
The total number of points of this FPL team with the new team is only 2309 points (111 points less than the team above with previous season prices).
- Haaland’s funds are spread to the whole team
- Big value at midfield in mid-priced midfielders
- No Salah or Haaland
- Pickford, White, Saliba, Palmer, Foden, Saka, Gordon and Watkins 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:
- Raya (5,5m);
- White (6.5m), Gvardiol (6m), Mykolenko (4.5m)
- Palmer (C) (10.5m), Foden (9.5m), Diogo Jota (7.5m), Bowen (7.5m), Gordon (7.5m)
- Isak (8.5m), Watkins (9m)
Output: 65.8 points per match (including captaincy points) = 2500 expected points per 38 games
The best FPL team from previous seasons
We did similar optimization at the end of 2022/23, 2021/22, 2020/21, and 2018/19 seasons as well, so feel free to compare the best FPL teams and conclusions from those optimizations:
