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

Looking at the Crystal Palace top picks in FPL can be extremely helpful to managers. After a poor start to the season under Patrick Viera they re-appointed Roy Hodgson which saw a significant uptake in form and helped them to an 11th place finish. But before looking at their players, lets take a look at their early fixtures.

Fixture ticker

The Crystal Palace defence

Crystal Palace maintained reasonable stats through-out last season – ranking:

Fifth best for goals conceded (49)
Joint seventh for clean sheets (nine)
Fourth best for expected goals conceded (48.83)

Crystal Palace defensive assets

Below we compare the minutes played and the offensive stats of the Crystal Palace defensive assets from last season – the graphic below compares their minutes.

As we can see, centre-back Marc Guehi (£4.5m) played more minutes than any other defensive player last season with 3328. He was significantly ahead of left-back Tyrick Mitchell (£4.5m) who sits in second after playing 2892 minutes.

Centre-back Joachim Anderson (£4.5m) sits third after playing 2781 minutes.

Clean sheets are a great method to earn points but combined with attacking returns they could be even more beneficial. Below we can see a graphic of the Crystal Palace defenders compared based on goal threat last season.

Joachim Anderson edges the other options with a non-penalty expected goal involvement of 2.82. Opposite centre-back Marc Guehi ranks second with an NPXGI of 2.23.

It is clear that Crystal Palace have settled on their back four. Another point worth highlighting is that the attacking threat of the defenders come from the centre-backs. Taking this into account, and their expected minutes Joachim Anderson and Marc Guehi are the standout defensive options.

The Crystal Palace attack

Crystal Palace struggled to score goals for long periods last season – ranking:

14th worst for goals scored (40)
17th worst for shots on target (135)
16th worst for expected goals scored (39.94)

Crystal Palace attacking assets

Below we compare all of the Crystal Palace attacking assets from last season. Firstly, we compare the minutes played of each attacker.

We can see that Michael Olise (£6m) played more minutes than any other last season with 2756. Unfortunately Olise suffered a recent injury so is at risk of missing the start of the new season.

Jordan Ayew (£5.5m) came close to Olise after playing 2723 minutes last season. Key player Eberechi Eze (£6.5m) ranked third for minutes with 2652. Penalty taker Wilfried Zaha had his minutes significantly affected by long term injuries last season – he left the club this summer.

Displayed below is the offensive data for each Crystal Palace attacker last season.

Eberechi Eze ranks first for non-penalty expected goal involvement with 9.63 – he is closely followed by Michael Olise with 9.39. Wilfried Zaha played much less minutes last season but still edged Jordan Ayew for NPXGI.

With the above in mind and the doubt over whether Michael Olise will start the season due to injury, the standout attacker from Crystal Palace is Eberechi Eze – he will play, has the potential to be on penalty duty and produced good NPXGI last season.

Olise should be monitored pre-season – if fit to start the new campaign, he could also be a great option.

Pre-season notes

Crystal Palace played six matches in pre-season winning just two, drawing once and losing three times.
In the six matches played Crystal Palace scored 10 goals and kept just one clean sheet.
Amongst the pre-season goals was Eze who picked up two and striker Jean Philippe Mateta (£5m) scored three goals.