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

Looking at the Fulham top picks in FPL can be extremely helpful to managers. ‘The Cottagers’ had an extremely impressive campaign last season where they finished 10th in the league which was well above expectations. But before looking at their players, lets take a look at their early fixtures.

Fixture ticker

Fulham rank 15th on the ticker this week. They face matches against Everton, Brentford, Arsenal, Manchester City, Luton and Crystal Palace in their first six matches. This could suggest it wise to avoid their assets early on.

The Fulham defence

Fulham maintained a mixed bag of defensive stats last season – they ranked:

11th for goals conceded (53- also the same as Brighton)
The third worst for shots on target (196)
The third worst for expected goals conceded (65.56)

Fulham defensive assets

Below we look at the reliability and goal threat of the Fulham defensive assets.

We can see that goalkeeper Bernd Leno (£4.5m) played the most minutes last campaign with 3240. Left-back Antonee Robinson (£4.5m) played the second most minutes with 3086 whilst centre-back Tim Ream (£4.5m) follows with 2894.

Right-back Kenny Tete (£4.5m) managed 2560 but had his minutes affected by injuries last season.

Lets now take a look at how the defenders stack up in terms of non-penalty expected goal involvement.

Kenny Tete came out on top in terms of NPXGI (2.58) which was interesting considering he played less minutes than the others. Not far behind him was Antonee Robinson who collected an NPXGI of 1.92. Tim Ream finished the season as the worst in terms of attacking threat.

Based on the stats above, the standard defensive option could be Kenny Tete, who although played less minutes edged the rest for NPXGI. Antonee Robinson also maintained a great amount of game time last campaign and finished one of the highest for NPXGI.

Some should also consider Bernd Leno who could be rotated with another budget goalkeeper around fixtures.

The Fulham attack

Fulham maintained a good level offense last season – ranking:

Eighth best for goals scored (53)
12th for shots on target (145)
14th for expected goals (47.03)

Fulham attacking assets

Below we will now compare the minutes and goal threat of the Fulham attacking players.

Leading the attackers is Andreas Pereira (£5.5m) who played 2651 minutes last campaign. He was followed by fellow midfielder Bobby De Cordova-Reid with 2474. Willian (£5.5m) is another midfielder who maintained a high rate of minutes (2105).

Striker Aleksandar Mitrovic (£7.5m) sits fourth for minutes but missed a significant amount of game time due to a lengthy ban.

Below we compare the Fulham attackers in terms of goal threat.

We can see that Andreas Pereira edges every other attacker for NPXGI with 10.63 but Aleksander Mitrovic played a considerable amount of minutes less and still accumulated 9.95 NPXGI. Willian ranked third with 6.45 whilst Bobby De Cordova-Reid managed 5.47 NPXGI.

Taking all of the above into account the standout attacker is penalty taker Alexandar Mitrovic – if not for his ban the striker would have topped the NPXGI stats by a distance. Andreas Pereira is also a very good option because he played regularly and maintained very good attacking numbers last season.

Willian could also be considered amongst the best attacking options.

Pre-season notes

Fulham have played three pre-season matches so far – they won just once and lost two.
In the three games they did play Fulham failed to keep a single clean sheet but scored three goals.
Amongst the goals was midfielder Harry Wilson (£5.5m), Decordova-Reid and striker Carlos Vinicius (£5m).