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

Looking at the Nottingham Forest top picks in FPL can be extremely helpful to managers. Nottingham Forest came very close to the relegation zone last season before turning their form around and finishing in 16th place. Before looking at their players, lets take a look at their early fixtures.

Fixture ticker

As we can see from the ticker below Nottingham Forest rank 19th. This means they have the second worst fixtures in the league for the first six matches. They face Arsenal, Sheffield United, Manchester United, Chelsea, Burnley and Manchester City in the early stages of the campaign.

The Nottingham Forest defence

Nottingham Forest maintained a poor level of defensive data last season – ranking:

Joint fourth worst for goals conceded (68).
Fifth worst for shots on target conceded (182).
Fifth worst for expected goals conceded (65.14).

Nottingham Forest defensive assets

We compare the minutes and goal threat of each Nottingham Forest defensive asset from last season below.

Firstly here is a graphic of players who played the most minutes for Nottingham Forest last season.

We can see from the graphic below that centre-back Joe Worrall (£4.5m) ranks first for minutes with 2257. Following him is right-back Serge Aurier (£4.5m) with 1935 minutes. Left-wing back Neco Williams (£4.5m) also racked up 1921 minutes sitting third.

Now lets compare the defenders attacking potential from last season.

We can see that Neco Williams leads the way in terms of non-penalty expected goal involvement with 2.49. Behind him is Felipe (£4.5m) who joined half way through last season and still managed to collected 1.97 NPXGI.

Serge Aurier sits third for NPXGI with 1.70 whilst Joe Worrall picked up 1.34.

It could be a wait and see with the Nottingham Forest defence. Not only are they in search of a goalkeeper but they rotated their defensive assets a lot last season.

Early thoughts suggest that the safest option is Joe Worrall but it also could be worth monitoring the minutes of Serge Aurier, Neco Williams and Felipe who picked up solid NPXGI.

The Nottingham Forest attack

Nottingham Forest also failed to convince offensively last season – ranking:

Joint fifth worst for goals scored (38).
The worst for shots on target (117).
Fourth worst for expected goals scored (39.73).

Nottingham Forest offensive assets

We can see that Morgan Gibbs-White (£6m) played the most minutes last season with 3145. He is followed by fellow midfielder Brennan Johnson (£6m) who played 2935 minutes.

Central midfielder Remo Freuler (£5m) ranked third for minutes with 2166 whilst striker Taiwo Awoniyi (£6.5m) is sixth on the list.

Now lets take a look and compare the attacking threat of the midfielders and forwards.

In terms of non-penalty expected goal involvement Morgan Gibbs-White leads the way again with 11.54. Brennan Johnson may have played over 200 minutes less than Gibbs-White but he still managed a NPXGI of 8.00.

Another interesting set of data is that of Taiwo Awoniyi who played far less than minutes than the other two and still racked up a NPXGI of 6.92.

Based on the data above and the fact that he takes his sides penalties, Brennan Johnson could be the standout attacker in the Nottingham Forest offensive line.

The second best option and closet to Brennan Johnson is Morgan Gibbs-White who maintained impressive minutes and NPXGI last season.

For those looking for a striker then Taiwo Awoniyi could be a great pick. There is an argument to be made that if he played as many minutes as the other attackers he would have edged them in terms of NPXGI.

Pre-season

So far Nottingham Forest have played six friendlies – winning two and losing four.
In the matches they played they kept just one clean sheet and scored three goals.
Amongst the goals they scored was Danilo and Ryan Yates.