Bournemouth 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 Bournemouth top picks in FPL. Analysing their defensive and offensive stats from last season to pick out their best fantasy players.

Looking at the Bournemouth top picks in FPL can be extremely helpful to managers. ‘The Cherries’ defied the odds and many footballing opinions of relegation finishing 15th last season. But before looking at their players, lets take a look at their early fixtures.

Fixture ticker

Bournemouth rank 16th on the ticker. In their first six matches they face West Ham, Liverpool, Tottenham, Brentford, Chelsea and Brighton. The fixtures could suggest that avoiding them in terms of investment may be beneficial.

The Bournemouth defence

The Cherries were one of the worst defences in the league last season – amongst all teams they ranked:

Joint 17th for clean sheets (eight).
18th for goals conceded (71).
15th for expected goals conceded (64.88).

With that in mind it could be worth avoiding their defence. But, for those who still want to invest, let’s take a look at their assets.

Bournemouth defensive assets

It is important that we highlight the reliability of the defenders. Below we can see all of their 22/23 minutes compared. Right-back Adam Smith was Bournemouth’ most played defender with 2945 minutes played.

Centre-back Marcos Senesi (£4.5m) played the second most minutes (2489) whilst the others suffered some rotation through the campaign.

We then compared the non-penalty expected goal involvement of the Bournemouth defenders. Interestingly, left-back Jordan Zemura had a much better NPXGI (2.50) than the rest but only played 1458 minutes. However, he has left to join Udinese on a free deal.

Adam Smith comes close to the top again with an NPXGI of 2.06 whilst Marcos Senesi sits behind (2.00).

Adam Smith could be the standout defensive selection from Bournemouth due to both his minutes and expected goal involvement. Senesi could also be a great option after impressing in pre-season.

The Bournemouth attack

Bournemouth were also one of the worst offensive lines in the league last season. When compared to every other side in the division they ranked:

17th for goals scored (37).
18th for shots on target (126).
18th for expected goals (39.50).

The data suggests that it could be wise to avoid investment into the Bournemouth attack. However, for those still looking to invest we compare the players in their frontline.

Bournemouth attacking assets

Firstly we compare how much game time the Bournemouth attackers had last season.

Midfielder Jeffrey Lerma (£5m) leads the way with 3250 but since then he has joined Crystal Palace. With that in mind, striker Dominic Solanke (£6.5m) comes out on top after playing 2845 minutes last season. Midfielder Philip Billing (5.5m) was the next best for minutes after playing 2746.

It is worth highlighting that midfielder Dango Ouattara (£5m) joined in January, half way through the season. That may have been the case but he still racked up 15 starts last season.

Below is a graphic comparing their attacking data. We have picked out non-penalty expected goal involvement to separate the attackers.

Solanke once again dominates near the top with a NPXGI of 11.33. This number is considerably higher than Billing who sits on an NPXGI of 7.41. One interesting point to highlight is Ouattara’ data – although he played less than half the matches Billing did, he came close to his total with 5.22.

From what we can see above and the fact he is on penalty duty, Solanke is the standout attacking asset from Bournemouth.

The next best option could be Ouattara who joined half way through the season but played 15 matches and came close to Billing’ NPXGI even though he played less than half of the matches he did.

Pre-season notes

Bournemouth have played four pre-season friendlies so far, won two and lost two.
In the four matches they played they kept one clean sheet and scored eight goals.
Amongst the Bournemouth goals were Philip Billing (two), Marcos Senesi and David Brooks (two).