Last season it was fairly easy to fit in three premium assets in your team. One could easily fit in Bruno, Salah, KDB/Kane together into one team. But, since the prices for this FPL season were announced, all FPL mangers including myself have been spending hours tweaking our teams to try and fit in more of these assets.
The easiest way to do that would be having two 12m+ players. This means that one can enjoy the points from these high-priced premiums without disturbing the balance of the squad. Even then, the question of which two premium assets should one get in still remains.
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So the five players in FPL with a price tag of 12m and above are Kevin De Bruyne, Mo Salah, Harry Kane, Sadio Mane and Bruno Fernandes. As all players are not registered under one position in FPL and because it is tough to compare five players, I am gonna talk about them as individual FPL assets, look at their stats and give my opinion as to which pairing will fetch you the most points.
I am gonna use expected stats (xG, xA, npxG, etc.) in this post. If you are not familiar with expected stats, I would suggest giving this post a read before going ahead.
The graphs below show every player’s percentile rank in actual stats, actual stats per 90 minutes, expected stats and expected stats per 90 minutes within the Premier League.
Mohamed Salah
Mohamed Salah owned by about 50% of the players at the time of writing this post. When it comes to highly owned players like Mo Salah, I would suggest not taking any risks. Just get him in and he’ll serve you well. Last season he rewarded his owners with 20 points on the opening day of the season. He has been among the highest scoring FPL assets for for a few years now and I don’t really see that changing any time soon.
Talking about statistics, Mohamed Salah accumulated an expected goals tally of 20.9 and scored 22 goals last season. Most people think of Mo Salah as this pacey, direct and lethal goal-scorer but he is actually also a pretty potent creator. He accumulated an expected assists tally of 6.3 and finished the season with 5 assists.
Other than these stats, I expect Liverpool to keep a lot more clean-sheets this season with the return of Van Dijk and signing of Konate. Let’s say that is 20+ points from clean-sheets for Salah. Also, Liverpool had the highest non-penalty xGoals in the Premier League last season but finished the season with only the fourth-highest goals tally. So I strongly feel there could be room for some more points here.
Bruno Fernandes
Bruno Fernandes is the second most popular player in the lot among FPL managers sitting at a pretty neat 41.9% ownership. He scored the highest FPL points last season. He is just as highly owned as Salah but I would not put him as high up on priority as Salah. In fact, his high ownership is something that makes pursuing other options more attractive to me. Why is that?
His 18 goals and 12 assists look very good on paper but 9 of those goals have come from penalties, which also give you pretty good points but being awarded as many penalties as Manchester United did last season is not guaranteed. He ranked 3rd in the league for Goals but when it comes to non-penalty xGoals, he ranked 23rd in the league. Surprised? So was I.
Speaking of things other than stats, I think the arrival of Jadon Sancho will directly affect his creative contribution to the team. Also, injuries to first team players like Luke Shaw and Marcus Rashford may lead to Manchester United performing rather underwhelmingly than expected at he start of the season (Just a possibility). His underlying stats not being on par with other players with a similar price tag and his high ownership means I could be tempted to opt out from owning him.
Kevin de Bruyne
Kevin de Bruyne sits at a surprisingly low ownership of 15.2% at the time of writing this post. This might be partly because of his injury and an opening fixture against Spurs but KDB is arguably the best player in the league and plays for arguably the best team in the league at the moment. He scored 141 points in the 2020/21 season which is a great score considering he played only 1995 minutes out of 3420 minutes and underperformed in his xGoals tally.
KDB accumulated an xGoals tally of 9.7 and xAssists tally of 10.2 while scoring just 6 goals and assisting 12 goals. Underperforming in his xGoals is rather new territory for KDB. He has overperformed in his xGoals in each of his previous seasons for City. That is exactly why I’m not very worried about him underperforming his xGoals.
The only concern with KDB would be his injury. When not injured KDB is a different beast altogether. When not injured KDB always starts because of how he important he is to that City team. Keeping Bruno out and getting in KDB might be a risk that may pay off well. You get a player that has better underlying stats at the same price and a fraction of the ownership.
Harry Kane
Harry Kane is again among the best players in the world football right now. Unlike others on this list, Harry Kane is registered as a forward in the game which means that he gets a lesser point for every goal he scores and doesn’t get an extra point every time his team keeps a clean-sheet (Just to show how much of a difference that makes, Kane had 7 more goal contributions than Bruno last season and still scored lesser points). And, in FPL every single point is crucial. He is owned by 28.9% of the players in the game and is also the priciest asset in the game alongside Salah. He scored the second highest FPL points last season bettered only by Bruno Fernandes.
Kane won the Golden Boot as well as the Playmaker of the season award last season. Kane accumulated an xGoals tally of 20.5 and an xAssists tally of 7.4. He scored 23 goals and assisted a further 14 goals. Those numbers bring up two questions to my mind right now. First, what the hell is he still doing at Spurs? (no offence Spurs fans) and second, can he keep up those numbers next season?
Now, Kane last season was a little injury prone. Also, Spurs have a new coach who will try to bring his ideas of a back three formation and counter-attacking football to the team. Spurs might take time to adapt to these ideas and that is why I would avoid having him from the start. Although, if he makes the move to Manchester City I will transfer him in without thinking twice because I feel that Kane in THAT City team has the potential to break every Premier League goal-scoring record there exists. Be it Mo Salah’s 32 goals in a season or Alan Shearer’s most Premier League goals.
Sadio Mane
Sadio Mane is a great player but when it comes to FPL, ALWAYS GO FOR SALAH. When we compare Salah and Mane as FPL assets it is more than just the fact that Salah is on penalties. Salah has been the apex goal-scorer for Liverpool. Mane had an underwhelming 2020/21 season for his standards and his price tag of 12m is a little confusing. Liverpool will be a better side this season but even then, Mane at that price is still avoidable. He sits at a 3.1% ownership which is the lowest in the lot.
Mane accumulated an xGoals tally of 15.4 but only converted just 11 goals. He assisted another 7 goals overperforming his xAssists tally of 5.7. He does score a lot more goals usually but even then I would not have him in unless Salah is injured and Liverpool are playing well or if Liverpool are playing just too good and you need to get in both Salah and Mane in.
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