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

Looking at the Burnley top picks in FPL can be extremely helpful to managers. The Championship winners were fantastic last season under Vincent Kompany. But before looking at their players, lets take a look at their early fixtures.

Fixture ticker

We can see in the first six matches of the new campaign Burnley rank 12th on the ticker. They have matches against Manchester City, Luton, Aston Villa, Tottenham, Nottingham Forest and Manchester United early on.

The Burnley defence

Burnley maintained the best defence in the Championship this season – ranking:

First for clean sheets (21)
The best for goals conceded (35)

Burnley defensive assets

Below we compare the minutes and attacking threat of the Burnley defensive assets:

Arijanet Muric (3614)
Connor Roberts (3530)
Jordan Beyer (2531)
Vitinho (2097)
Charlie Taylor (1725)
Hjalmar Ekdal (767)

Firstly it is worth noting that Ian Maatsen (3283) and Taylor-Harwood Ellis (2766) played key roles in the Burnley first team last season. However, both of their loan spells have ended and they have returned to their parent clubs (Chelsea and Manchester City).

Goalkeeper Arijanet Muric (£4.5m) played the most minutes last season whilst right-back Connor Roberts (£4.5m) racked up the second most minutes.

Centre-back Jordan Beyer (£4m) also played a key role at the back last season, he managed over 2000 minutes.

Now to compare their offensive stats in terms of non-penalty expected goals and assists.

Ian Maatsen (7.4)
Conor Roberts (5.5)
Jordan Beyer (2.4)

Ian Maatsen leads the way for NPXG and NPXA with 7.4. Conor Roberts is behind with 5.5 and Jordan Beyer accumulated less than half of Roberts

The standout Burnley defender looks to be Connor Roberts who played plenty of minutes and collected a solid amount of expected goals and assists. Another great option could be Jordan Beyer who could makes up one of the very few £4m defenders in the game.

The Burnley attack

Burnley sustained some of the best offensive stats in the league last season – they ranked:

First for goals scored (87)
Second for shots on target per game (4.8)

Firstly lets take a look at the minutes played by the Burnley attackers last season:

Josh Brownhill (3574)
Nathan Tella (2942)
Anass Zaroury (2345)
Jay Rodriguez (1817)
Mauel Benson (1490)

We can see that Josh Brownhill (£5m) edges the pack with 3574 minutes played. He is followed by Nathan Tella who has returned to his parent club after a loan spell. Anass Zaroury (£5m) comes in third with 2345 minutes.

Now lets compare their expected goals and expected assist stats from last season:

Nathan Tella (13.6)
Josh Brownhill (12.4)
Anass Zaroury (10.0)
Jay Rodriguez (9.0)
Manuel Benson (8.1)

The return of striker Wout Weghorst (£5.5m) is something to monitor after a poor previous season. It is also worth noting that if Burnley sign Nathan Tella, he could be the standout Burnley attacker in FPL.

Taking the above into account it could be safe to back Josh Brownhill who is one of the best for both minutes played and expected goal involvement. Anass Zaroury should also be considered after sustaining solid minutes and expected goal involvement.

One player, along with Wout Weghorst, who should also be considered is Manuel Benson – he played far less minutes than some of the other attackers but still picked up an impressive amount of XGI. Monitoring the new signing in attack (Zeki Amdouni (£5.5m) could also be wise.

Pre-season notes

In the three matches Burnley have played so far they have won one, drawn one and lost one.
In their three friendlies they kept one clean sheet and scored three goals.
Amongst the goals was Jordan Beyer – his goal was assisted by Josh Brownhill.
New signing Amdouni started the latest friendly for Burnley.
New goalkeeper James Trafford (£4.5m) has also started two of their three matches ahead of Muric.