Aston Villa top picks for FPL

The Premier League season is edging closer and closer along with the Official Fantasy game. Because of this we direct our focus towards the Aston Villa top picks in FPL. Analysing their defensive and offensive stats from last season to pick out their best fantasy players.

Looking at the Aston Villa top picks in FPL can be extremely helpful to managers. They impressed under new manager Unai Emery and secured seventh place finish. But before looking at their players, lets take a look at their early fixtures.

Fixture ticker

Aston Villa rank 14th on the fixture ticker for the first six matches. They face Newcastle, Everton, Burnley, Liverpool, Crystal Palace and Chelsea. This could suggest that avoiding Aston Villa investment may be a wise move early on.

The Aston Villa defence

Aston Villa maintained some solid underlying defensive data last campaign. That can be seen in that they ranked:

Joint fourth for clean sheets (12)
Joint third best for goals conceded (46)
10th for expected goals conceded (53.36)

Aston Villa defensive assets

Below we compare the Aston Villa defenders in terms of reliability and attacking threat.

Firstly, we can see from the graphic below that centre-back Konsa Ngoyo (£4.5m) played the most minutes at the back (3324). Behind Konsa is fellow centre-back Tyrone Mings (£4.5m) with 3150 minutes under his belt and goalkeeper Emi Martinez (£5m) who played 3131 minutes.

Interestingly left-back Alex Moreno (£5m) joined halfway through the season in January and still racked up 1328 minutes.

Obviously clean sheets are very beneficial but attacking returns can be even more so when combined with the former. Because of this we have compared the Aston Villa defenders non-penalty expected goal involvement from last season.

We can see that although Alex Moreno played far less minutes compared to his teammates, partly due to his late arrival, he sits at the top of the list for NPXGI (3.19). Following behind is Mings with 2.10 NPXGI.

Aston Villa have been busy in the transfer window with the signing of Pau Torres, a left footed centre-back who could have a significant impact on the current central defence in terms of minutes.

With the above in mind and his fantastic NPXGI, Alex Moreno is the standout defensive asset from Aston Villa with Tyrone Mings a close second.

The Aston Villa attack

The Aston Villa offensive line was also very effective last season – they ranked:

Joint ninth for goals scored (51)
Joint 10th for shots on target (148)
11th for expected goals (49.51)

Aston Villa attacking assets

When comparing all of the Aston Villa attackers for minutes played striker Ollie Watkins (£8m) edges everyone with 3109 minutes played. Following Watkins is Douglas Luiz (£5.5m) and John McGinn (£5.5m) who are both central midfielders.

Below we have stacked all of the Aston Villa attackers together based on goal threat. We compare the non-penalty expected goal involvement of all included.

As we can spot, Ollie Watkins leads the way again with an NPXGI of 17.48. Following him is Emiliano Buendia (£6m) with 10.23 and fellow midfielder Leon Bailey (£5.5m) with 9.59.

Based on the data above, the standout attacking option from Aston Villa is Ollie Watkins – he is also their penalty taker. It could be a tough decision between the likes of Emiliano Buendia and Leon Bailey who should both be monitored during pre-season for both minutes and form.

Another great player to monitor is new signing and midfielder Moussa Diaby (£6.5m) who scored in both of his first two matches in pre-season.

Pre-season notes

Aston Villa have played four matches at the time of writing – winning one and drawing three.
In the games they have played so far they have kept one clean sheet and scored nine goals.
Amongst the goals include Ollie Watkins (two), Buendia (two) and Moussa Daiby (two).

Aston Villa top picks