As promised in my previous Community Article, Filling-In For Your Heavy Hitting Defenders—Rotation with a Statistical Twist, here is part two of the series with a look at rotating defender options for those choosing heavy-hitting defenders from the likes of Man City, Liverpool and Everton. As in part one, my main aim is to add some additional (and hopefully fresh) perspective to the already interesting rotation options already being discussed.
Readers of part one will recall that I confessed my historical managerial tendency to avoid populating my backline with two cheap rotation pairs and one heavy-hitting defender. In most years I tend to go with two to three defensive heavy-hitters from the top five or six teams. I then confessed that I’ve not won the overall title in any of my eight seasons playing Fantasy Premier League, so readers of this article will have to proceed in taking my advice with supreme caution.
METHOD
You will find a full description of the method I used in my team-by-team analyses in Part 1, so lets not waste time and get straight to the results…
RESULTS
When looking for a budget-oriented player to occasionally stand in for one of your heavy hitting defensive stalwarts from the likes of Man City, Liverpool and Everton, look no further than the results below. I say ‘stand in’ because in this community article I’m not putting forth a true defensive ‘rotation’ strategy. In other words, this tactic is not about weekly defensive rotation; instead, it’s about finding budget-oriented players who can fill in for one of your heavy-hitting defenders from top four or five sides if/when desired or needed.
GOOD TO GREAT OCCASIONAL FILL-IN FOR AN MAN CITY DEFENDER
1st BEST
The following teams offer coverage of all 8 of Man City’s more difficult fixtures (in rank order): STO, SOT, CPL, HUL, WBA
2nd BEST
The following teams offer coverage of 6 out of 8 of Man City’s more difficult fixtures (in rank order): TOT, WHM, NEW, BUR/SUN (tied), SWA
3rd BEST
The following teams offer coverage of 4 out of 8 of Man City’s more difficult fixtures (in rank order): LEI, QPR, AVL
GOOD TO GREAT OCCASIONAL FILL-IN FOR A LIVERPOOL DEFENDER
1st BEST
The following teams offer coverage of all 8 of Liverpool’s more difficult fixtures (in rank order): TOT, WHM, SOT, BUR
2nd BEST
The following teams offer coverage of 7 out of 8 of Liverpool’s more difficult fixtures (in rank order): WBA, AVL
3rd BEST
The following teams offer coverage of 6 out of 8 of Liverpool’s more difficult fixtures: SWA, HUL, NEW, STO, SUN, QPR
GOOD TO GREAT OCCASIONAL FILL-IN FOR AN EVERTON DEFENDER
1st BEST
The following teams offer coverage of all 10 of Everton’s more difficult fixtures (in rank order): SWA, CPL, QPR
2nd BEST
The following teams offer coverage of 8 out of 10 of Everton’s more difficult fixtures (in rank order): BUR, WBA, NEW/HUL (tied), WHM, SOT
3rd BEST
The following teams offer coverage of 6 out of 10 of Everton’s more difficult fixtures (in rank order): LEI, AVL, SUN, TOT, STO
AN EXAMPLE
Lets say you decide to begin the fast-approaching season by selecting three heavy-hitting defenders from the ranks of Man City, Liverpool and Everton. Just for the sake of illustrating the strategy, lets say Vincent Kompany at 6.5m, Dejan Lovren at 5.5m and Phil Jagielka at 5.5m. That means you’re likely to need two budget-oriented players to fill out your defensive five. Lets say you decide never to rest your Man City defender regardless of the fixture, so use the results above to identify two budget men who can fill in for your Liverpool and Everton heavy hitters when they face top-four sides.
For the best fixture coverage of Liverpool’s difficult fixtures, you would choose either a TOT, WHM, SOT or a BUR defender. For the best fixture coverage of Everton’s difficult fixtures, you would choose a SWA, CPL or QPR man. But, who to choose from these seven teams? Well, one way to do it would be to consider the fact that Crystal Palace and West Ham rotate perfectly over the course of the entire season, so from there at least one way to make this choice is made easier: just identify the CPL and WHM men who best fit your budget. In getting the likes of say, Adrian Mariappa and James Collins (granted, as many have pointed out here there are uncertainty issues regarding the place of both of these players in the starting 11 of their respective teams), not only do you get two players with the possibility of filling in for your LIV and EVE defenders during their most difficult fixtures, but you also get two budget defenders who rotate perfectly with each other over the course of the season. Furthermore, this flexibility of rotation within your own defensive pairings gives you the strategic freedom to confidently play either 3 or 4 defenders during any given Gameweek.
CONCLUSION
This is just one example of how the above data can help you smartly—as opposed to randomly—select budget-oriented defenders to fill out your back-line. But again, I would also encourage you to cross-reference my rankings with some interesting short-term defensive rotation strategies, as well other views and strategies already put out there by other Fantasy Football Scout community contributors. Finally, I must give thanks to those community members who gave Part 1 of this article series fantastic support – your positive comments were much appreciated.
CORRECTION
In Part 1 of this series, I reported TOT as a team that provided the “2nd BEST” coverage for both Arsenal and Chelsea defenders meaning that they would provide coverage for “seven out of eight” of both Arsenal and Chelsea’s more difficult fixtures. I’ve since detected an error in my original analysis that would change TOT’s ranking to “1st BEST” with respect to both teams, meaning that a TOT defender would provide excellent coverage for all eight of both Arsenal and Chelsea’s more difficult fixtures. My sincere apologies for that previous error, but for those of you considering 5.0 Ben Davies as a member of your squad (as I currently am), this means that he would be one of the few players who can make the claim of having extremely reasonable fixtures during those Gameweeks that the likes of ARS, CHE, MUN, LIV and MCI all face more difficult fixtures.
