Question Thread: FPL Draft Ranks

The best questions asked and answered here

I’ve just published the full first set of player position ranks, covering 25 goalkeepers, 55 defenders, 75 midfielders and 55 (well, 56) fantasy premier league forwards. As questions come in - and they will, love y’all’s enthusiasm - I’ll use this article as a place to collect the best questions and my answers. Fire away.

Please always feel free to post comments/questions on any article, and I will *also* get you an answer wherever you post.

You can find the complete fantasy premier league player ranks here, with the Top 200 still to come.

Q: How does Calafiori adjust your Arsenal rankings?

A: It's a good question! There have been a number of transfers since I pulled rosters and stats to look at the original (v.1) position ranks. Some of them, like Everton's Danish midfielder Jesper Lindstrom, will probably make it into my v.2 ranks but aren't good enough to justify a rerank. Only two league starts with Napoli last season is a significant step back from being a regular starter for Frankfurt where he made 48 Bundesliga starts in his age 21 and 22 seasons. If you're grabbing him late, you're looking at the 10-goal, 10-assist campaign he posted Brondby back in 2020-21 and hoping he can take over a well-rounded attacking involvement with the Toffees.

I know you asked about Riccardo Calafiori but it's a bit easier to see where he slots into Arsenal and what we can expect from the 22 year old defender coming off a remarkable campaign with Bologna. 30 Serie A appearances, 26 starts, with 97 interceptions + tackles and modest attacking returns as well (2g, 5a). The best question is if he immediately slots into the Saliba or Gabriel Magalhães spot. I don't think it will happen initially and we haven't had any indication that'll happen at all. This team had a couple deficiencies as they fell just short of an EPL title last season and another starting-quality centre back that didn't strip the depth out of the fullback spots had to be at or near the top of Arteta's shopping list. Had Calafiori ended up at Liverpool as some reports had it, I might have felt better about his chances partnering van Dijk but there he would have been competing with a rotating cast of quality performers instead of trying to crack an established pairing.

For right now, he’s buried too far down to justify the rerank but if he takes Gabriel Magalhaes’ spot and role, I like his opportunity to be a DEF3 in matches he starts. I also love that his addition should mean that Ben White is solidified in his fullback role where he can maximize the attacking upside which is why he is ranked inside the Top 10 defenders.

Q: Any specific commentary on Palmer vs Saka vs Bruno? Palmer is catching a lot of negative projection if Chelsea regress towards a normal amount of penalties drawn. Bruno potentially has the most room to gain considering your point on total goals right?

A: I don’t understand the idea of Palmer having a ‘sophomore slump’ this year. The Chelsea team, even with a new manager, is demonstrably better with him in it and driving the attack. Did he score nine goals from penalties? He sure did! 9/9 no less. But he also scored 13 goals from 11.1 non-penalty xG and picked up 11 assists on 11.1 xA. That was second best npxG in the squad (Jackson: 18.6, boy did he look bad collecting only 14 goals) and his xA isn’t just the best on Chelsea, it was more than 2nd place Conor Gallagher (5.0) and 3rd place Raheem Sterling (4.5) combined. Here’s where it gets real fun: in his age 21 season he was fifth in the EPL in xA (Bruno, Son, Salah, KDB) and his 0.38 xA/90’ was better than two of the guys ahead of him (Bruno, Son).

Yes, the Blues led the Premier league with 12 penalty kicks attempted but five teams had 9+ including all three of the top teams in the table. Even if Chelsea regress, it seems pretty unlikely they’ll be down at 2022/23 levels (3 PK) given the overall rise in PKs in the EPL last season. Now, lets look at Palmer’s role in producing all of Chelsea’s goals. The team had only 47.2 team xG, exactly in the middle of the pack at 10th. Of that, Palmer was by some margin the most integral. In addition to the 22.2 xG+xA (non-pen version) he also led the club in shot creating actions (162) and SCA/90’ with a massive 5.69. Frankly, I’m not sure how sustainable that is but he’s got loads of room for regression here while remaining an elite fantasy asset.

Martin Ødegaard (220, 6.41) led the EPL last season while Bruno (210, 6.06) and Bukayo Saka (188, 5.80) were the top three in SCA which continues to drive their value and their high level of fantasy productivity. That there is space for growth from ‘exceptional’ to elite for Palmer is also one reason I remain high on him for this season. Personally, I have Ødegaard over Bruno because I vastly prefer watching him play and like to root for the guys on my teams, but the numbers bore out Bruno just nipping him. Worth noting here again, the ranks are all close enough there that I think there is a reasonable argument for taking any of those top five midfielders first. That cuts the other way too, and a reasonable person could discount some of Palmer’s less repeatable production and slide him down to 5th.

Q: Last season you were so high on Szabo, and this season you are not. Why? I think Szabo will play more in number 10 role this season, with more freedom forward. He is top 5 mid for me

A: BIG question. The major change in my evaluation of Dominik Szoboszlai is that we have a year of actual Premier League data now and we can’t ignore it. With 25 starts plus another eight substitute appearances we needed to see better than three goals with two assists (plus two more ‘fantasy’ assists for a total of 4). Dude finished the season as the 37th overall midfielder in terms of total scoring and I have him ranked 15th headed into the season. That’s a pretty big bet on him coming good, and also constitutes being pretty high on him in my opinion.

It’s not just that the stats were low - he did A LOT of what we thought he would do and had a modest but not elite scoring average of 8.14 PPM - it’s that his scoring progression and efficiency wasn’t there. Three goals from sixty (60) total shots is bad. Posting a career worst 25% shots on target is bad. Under-performing your expected assists by four is perhaps unlucky but also, you guessed it, bad. He had just four (4) successful take-ons that lead to a shot from 24 successful dribbles in total. Four.

Overall his shot creating actions were fine with 115 in all (4.92/90’ is better) but on Liverpool that’s still only good enough for fourth and he was behind fellow summer recruit Alexis Mac Allister in SCA from live passes (84 to 92) and behind Trent Alexander-Arnold and Andrew Robertson in SCA from dead ball sets. So when you assert he’s going to be ‘more of a 10’ that might be true, but the rest of the team is still largely in place, Arne Slot utilizes his wingbacks and wide attackers to great effect and Liverpool is short on another player who can effectively play the role that Dom filled last season.

Let’s say the double his goals (6) and both doubles his xA AND hits his xA with real assists (10). That’s a line that puts him in line with Rodri’s eight goals, 10 assists last season. Rodri finished last year 12th among midfielders. I love the kids skill set and I fully agree he is good enough that he could (and IMO should) grow into a 10-goal, 10-assist machine who drives the LFC attack. A Martin Odegaard type. To get there he would literally have to DOUBLE his key passes at the same time he keeps the rest of his production at the 2023/24 levels on a per 90’ basis AND add another 10 EPL starts. I’m just not projection all of that to happen in his sophomore season England under a new manager who is also new to both the club and England.

Q: Am a newbie subscriber and want to know which of your ranking systems would work for the PL’s official fantasy games such as PL Fantasy Draft.

A: Yeah, my apologies for that. I forget sometimes people are totally new to my writing etc. This is not a dumb question!

Since so much of OFPL is based on goals / assists / clean sheets the GK ranks are pretty close; the top of the Def (say top 20) are accurate as well since the Bonus Points in OFPL are based on a similar set of stats to draft scoring for CB. Midfield gets less accurate; basically move every player up 1-5 slots if they are an attacking player who has 10 goal, or 10 assist, or both potential; slide all holding and CDM down 1-5 slots.

FWD are almost identical ranks *if* the player actually gets used as a forward so someone like Diogo Jota who has a lot of defensive value in Draft will not be quite as valuable in OFPL. The reason that likely doesn’t matter much is because my Draft ranks for forwards heavily favors the historic scoring, conversion, shot-creating and shooting efficiency metrics. Hope that’s helpful!