It's 82 days since a ball was last kicked in the Premier League, and tonight we're back for 2025/26 and it's time to lock in my final team. ⚽
A major milestone hit just this morning, there are now 250,000 active users using the Focal app and fpl.page. Thank you!
Let's begin and in goal Sanchez is the keeper I'm taking into GW1. Palace, West Ham, Fulham, Brentford, Man Utd and Brighton are their opening games. He had a few dodgy moments last season but Chelsea fans will agree he grew in confidence as the season went on, finishing with 5 clean sheets in his final 11 games last season, and he was fantastic at the Club World Cup which of course they even went on to win. 🏆
I've landed on a 3-5-2 and in defence it's going to be Pedro Porro, Murillo and Williams. 🧱
- Porro was someone I'd initially ruled out when FPL first launched, but they do start the season with the best clean sheet odds of all teams. The clean sheet odds widget has Tottenham top on 44%. Further to that Maddison picked up an ACL injury which will see Porro taking them from one side. It's what happened last season and happened in pre-season so it's a safe assumption, he took 53 corners last season. 6.24 expected goal involvement last season placed him 5th top among defenders, the year before he was 1st among all defenders. Munoz, Gvardiol, and Ait-Nouri were the ones above him, plus Trent who is of course gone.
- In case you missed it, FPL have added a a new rule - defensive contributions. 10 from a defender gives them 2 additional points, midfielders need 12 of them. Murillo excels at DCs, Tarkowski was the only defender who scored more from them. Tarkowski did it in 66.7% of games, Murillo 52.8%. Had the DCs been in place last season, no defender would have had more double digit hauls than Murillo with 5. Milenkovic had 1 who is the popular alternative.
- 0.5m cheaper is Williams and it's a slightly risky double up, the encouragement is they kept plenty of clean sheets last season and kept 5 in pre-season, more than any team. However they're going to have Europa League to contend with which is a serious step up in terms of their schedule and squad depth required. I'm considering Murillo to Munoz in GW4 to take me off the double up and attack Palace's fixture swing.
Midfield