Our team-by-team guide to the new Fantasy Premier League (FPL) season concludes with this preview of Wolverhampton Wanderers.
After three successful seasons winning promotion to, and then establishing themselves in, the Premier League under manager Nuno Espírito Santo Wolves’ momentum stalled last term as significant injuries to key players such as Raul Jiménez (£7.5m) and Jonny (£4.5m) took their toll at both ends of the pitch.
The Molineux side’s final position of 13th was a significant drop from the two seventh-place finishes they had managed since rejoining the top flight and in the end, Santo’s departure by mutual consent seemed strangely unsurprising.
Former Benfica boss Bruno Lage is the new man in the hot seat. Wolves assets, particularly in defence, have generally dropped in FPL price this year, but could Lage’s attacking philosophy take the club back into contention for a European place?
We assess the Fantasy appeal of Wolves ahead of 2021/22 in this piece, which takes Opta player and team data from our Premium Members Area.
THE DEFENCE
| Total | Rank v other Premier League sides | |
| Goals conceded | 52 | 12th |
| Clean sheets | 10 | 14th |
| Shots conceded | 442 | 10th |
| Shots in the box conceded | 298 | 10th |
| Shots on target conceded | 152 | 9th |
| Big chances conceded | 67 | 10th |
| Expected goals conceded (xGC) | 49.81 | 9th |
To many FPL managers, it felt last season as if Wolves defenders were underperforming the price tags they had acquired following strong performances in the previous couple of campaigns. It is certainly true that all their team defensive numbers were down with positions falling from around fifth in 2019/20 to around tenth in 2020/21.
However, the drop-off was felt more acutely in Fantasy games as Wolves fell from equal fourth in the crucial clean sheets statistic to 14th overall. That the actual difference was ten shut-outs instead of 13 illustrates that 12 clean sheets is something of a par score in FPL.
As the table above shows, no fewer than six out of 20 Premier League teams kept exactly a dozen clean sheets last season while three further teams kept 11.
For Wolves, both actual and expected goals conceded worsened by about 12. The most significant contributor to that seems to have been big chances conceded which declined from a league-leading 47 the season before to a tenth-placed 72 this time around.
Shots in the box conceded increased by around 16%, too.
Above: Wolves defence 2020/21 (left) vs. Wolves defence 2019/20 (right)
The home and away performances of the Wolves defence last season were mirror images in overall Fantasy terms, with the absence of crowds seemingly a significant factor in the negation of home advantage. Both at Molineux and on the road Wolves kept five clean sheets, conceded one or two goals ten times and three or more goals on four occasions.
It should be emphasised that, even facing disruption and a loss of form, the Wolves rearguard only reverted from being one of the most secure in the league to simply average. They were by no means terrible which suggests that a standard price of £4.5m for their defenders could be a sound investment if there is even a small bounce back – although Lage’s attacking mindset is a concern on the clean sheet front.
THE ATTACK
| Total | Rank v other Premier League sides | |
| Goals | 36 | 16th |
| Shots | 463 | 10th |
| Shots in the box | 281 | 11th |
| Shots on target | 153 | 11th |
| Big chances | 46 | =18th |
| Expected goals (xG) | 36.87 | 17th |
Up front, a couple of statistics slightly improved from 2019/20. Wolves managed two more shots (admittedly a lot less than 1% of their total) and also seven more shots on target which was enough to move them up a place in the rankings.
However, almost everything else fell dramatically and again, particularly at the business end. Goals scored went from 51 (=8th) to 36 (16th), though that total was almost exactly in line with the number of expected goals (36.87), and big chances again seemed the obvious culprit, almost halving from 83 (6th) to 46 (18th).
