Let's talk about the T word.
I know some of you hate the template in FPL and you get your enjoyment from going different, while some of you are happy to ride the template to make smaller incremental gains. Both are valid approaches. I personally like to play fairly template with the odd lower owned player sprinkled in.
So given the different playstyles we're not just going to look at the template team in FPL, but also the best differentials after. All angles covered. The template team is the most owned players in the game, which I've kept within budget.
Let's get into the template team then and discuss differentials after that.
🧤 Goalkeeper
The template keeper is Kelleher, in about a third of all teams after securing that move to Brentford and only £4.5m. The question is, what will we see from this changing Brentford side? Aside from a new GK they've lost Frank, Norgaard, Mbeumo. You can't really go wrong for £4.5m and he's a perfectly fine pick all things considered. Who has the best fixtures, let's clear out all teams with keepers over £4.5m. I'm ruling out promoted team keepers myself so that leaves West Ham, Brentford, Wolves, Bournemouth and Brighton. So we've got West Ham and Brentford 2nd and 3rd for the opening 5 gameweeks. If we go further back to next 8 Wolves are 2nd, Brentford stay third. However if we go even more granular and filter by defense difficulty Bournemouth shoot up to 2nd which makes me think Petrovic is the one to consider. You might disagree with some of FPL's ratings and you can set your own ratings on that page for free.
🛡️ Defence
The template defence is Aina, Frimpong and Wan-Bissaka.
I'm actually avoiding Frimpong initially, he has incredible attacking numbers but Bradley is a massive talent himself and academy product, is there a chance we see them sharing minutes on occasion? It's very possible and likewise on the opposite flank with Kerkez and Robertson. You'd expect Frimpong and Kerkez to be the first choice full backs in Liverpool's best 11. 🇧🇷
Aina's in my team currently, though as some of you quite rightly pointed out last article they've now got to juggle European football which is a massive step up for a team that haven't been there in decades, and they've lost Elanga and presumably Gibbs-White. He does offer a £0.5m saving over Milenkovic and Murillo though, but likely gets fewer defensive contribution points. This table shows how players would've scored differently had the new rules been in place last season. Milenkovic and Murillo are the two highest value points per million players on last season's data, with 26 and 38 DC points each. Huge beneficiaries from the changes.
Wan-Bissaka also appears high up for points per million, and would have scored an extra 12 DC points. The table is from Scout who went to the trouble of recalculating every single player's points from every single game, I added it up and in total 2,681 additional points would've been awarded. Safe to say we'll see the points record smashed this season between that and the extra chips. If you'd like to play with the table go to [](https://s.id/FPLFocal] to become a Scout member, there's over 40 pages of data, it's a bit wild but so useful to look at particularly if you love data like me. 📊