The relaunch of Fantasy Premier League for 2020/21 will see the usual price swings for various players based on last season’s performances but will also feature positional reclassifications for a handful of them.
In this article, we’ll outline the case for a change of position for a number of Fantasy assets.
Ten players were reclassified at the beginning of last season, including Diogo Jota, Ayoze Perez and Matt Ritchie.
It’s fair to say that the alterations could be more seismic this summer, with a few premium assets potentially moving from midfielder to forward or vice-versa.
Before we begin, we should stress that this is purely guesswork on our part and is based on how FPL have gone about classifying players previously.
It could be, for example, that they have other ideas on how they will group ‘wide-midfielders’ next season – although, given the short turnaround, a complete overhaul of the game perhaps looks unlikely.
As a very rough guide, FPL have previously classified players using the following criteria:
| Defenders | Centre-backs, full-backs, wing-backs (eg in a 3-4-3/3-5-2) |
| Midfielders | Central/defensive midfielders, number tens, wingers/wide-midfielders, players on either flank of a front three |
| Forwards | Lone strikers, strikers who play in a two-man attack, the central striker in a three-man frontline |
The classifications are typically based on what each player in question has done in the previous season.
Marcus Rashford and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, for example, had spent most of their time centrally in 2018/19, hence their listings as forwards at the start of the campaign just gone.
There is the occasional high-profile error (more of which below), of course, but these tend to be either academy products or fringe players from promoted clubs who were perhaps not given as much attention at the launch stage.
