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

Looking at the Wolves top picks in FPL can be extremely helpful to managers. Wolves maintained very poor form until their new manager took over which revitalised the team and meant they secured a 13th place finish. Before looking at their players, lets take a look at their early fixtures.

Fixture ticker

Wolves rank 13th on the fixture ticker for the first six games of the season. They face matches against Manchester United, Brighton, Everton, Crystal Palace, Liverpool and Luton. This could suggest avoiding investment in Wolves a wise move.

The Wolves defence

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

Sixth worst for goals conceded (58)
Eight worst for shots on target conceded (96)
Seventh worst for expected goals conceded (59.22)

Wolves defensive assets

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

Firstly here is a list of players who played the most minutes for Wolves last season:

Leading the way is centre-back Max Kilman (£4.5m) who played 3305 minutes last season. Goalkeeper Jose Sa (£5m) sits second for minutes with 3240.

Right-back Nelson Semedo (£4.5m) ranked third for minutes last season with 2645 whilst centre-back Craig Dawson (£4.5m) managed 2132.

Now lets compare the defenders attacking capabilities of last season.

Left-back Rayan Ait Nouri (£4.5m) played significantly less time than the other defenders and still managed to produce more non-penalty expected goal involvement with 2.06. In second place was Max Kilman who managed 1.91 whilst fellow centre-back Craig Dawson wasn’t far behind with 1.76.

Left-back Hugo Bueno (£4.5m) and right-back Jonny Otto (£4.5m) both produced more than 1.00 NPXGI from much less minutes than some of the other players.

The standout options are of course the centre-backs (Max Kilman and Craig Dawson) who both maintained good minutes last season and produced a fair amount of NPXGI.

One player definitely worth monitoring is Rayan Ait Nouri who edged every other player for NPXGI but still played far less minutes that most of the other players – monitoring his minutes will be key early on.

The Wolves attack

Wolves were disappointing in attack last campaign – compared to every other team they ranked:

The worst for goals scored (31)
Second worst for shots on target (122)
Second worst for goals scored (37.57)

Below we compare the Wolves attackers and see who came out on top last season in terms of minutes and goal threat.

Leading the way was midfielder Ruben Neves with 3015 minutes but he has officially left the club. The second highest ranking attacker was midfielder Matheus Nunes (£5m) with 2506 who is a central midfielder.

Daniel Podence (£5.5m) ranked third for minutes (1809), he is heavily linked with a move away from Wolves this summer.

Winger Adama Traore, central midfielder Joao Moutinho and striker Diego Costa all left Wolves as free agents – all players managed more than 1000 minutes played last season.

You can see from the graphic below that we have also compared the attacking potential. With players who have left taken into account we have adjusted the comparison table.

As we can see Daniel Podence leads the way for non-penalty expected goal involvement with 6.08. New signing and midfielder Pablo Sarabia (£5m) played less than half the minutes Podence did and still produced 3.89 NPXGI – this is impressive as Sarabia joined halfway through last season.

Taking into account the players that have left, minutes played and NPXGI the standout attacking option could be Pablo Sarabia – although joining mid-way through last season he still managed good NPXGI.

Daniel Podence could be another good option if he stays – he played more minutes than most last season and racked up the highest amount of NPXGI.

The Wolves frontline is very difficult to dissect as it is in transition under the new manager. Most if not all attacking options should be heavily monitored both pre-season and at the start of the season to gage who is likely to play and who is looking more convincing.

Pre-season notes

At the time of writing Wolves have played four matches – winning two and drawing two, remaining unbeaten.
In the four matches they played they kept two clean sheets and scored four goals.
Amongst the goals was Matheus Cunha, and Pedro Neto.