We’ve previously trawled the archives to bring you a potted history of Double Gameweeks and the story of Fantasy Premier League’s (FPL) first season.

Now, in this international break lull, another slice of FPL nostalgia.

This time, we’re looking at the players who briefly shone bright: the ‘one-season wonders’.

They’re not all names who only stayed for one campaign in England’s top flight. In fact, most of them were here for longer.

However, what we’re focusing on are players who were excellent FPL picks for one year – and persona non grata the rest of the time.

Here we go, then, with a squad of 15: two goalkeepers, five defenders, five midfielders and three forwards.

The kits come from FPL Focal’s page. Our thanks go to him.

GOALKEEPERS

VITO MANNONE (2013/14)

Mannone spent 11 seasons as a Premier League player but in only one of those campaigns did he start more matches than not.

That was in 2014/15 – and even then, he began the campaign as number two. A summer signing for Sunderland from Arsenal, Mannone stepped up between the posts in Gameweek 10 when Kieran Westwood picked up an injury.

Then available for a cut-price £4.2m, Mannone racked up 11 clean sheets in 28 starts for the Black Cats. There were save points in 20 of those outings, too, including a win over Chelsea in which he made 14 stops!

Finishing on 134 points, his average of 4.6 points per game was better than any other first-choice ‘keeper. It was enough, indeed, to make Fantasy Football Scout readers’ Team of the Season for 2013/14.

That was pretty much it for Mannone. Losing his place in Gameweek 10 of 2014/15 (not long after the infamous 8-0 reverse at Southampton), he would sporadically return to the Sunderland XI for stints in 2015/16 and 2016/17 before departing for Championship side Reading.

After spells in the US, Denmark and France, he retired from playing in the last year.

MICHEL VORM (2011/12)

While we’re forced to make do with paltry returns from Martin Dubravka this season, FPL managers were spoiled by a £4.0m goalkeeper back in 2011/12.

Vorm joined newly promoted Swansea City ahead of their first-ever Premier League campaign and immediately established himself as the first choice, with former number one Dorus de Vries leaving on a free.

What a season he had, too: 14 clean sheets, 143 saves and a massive 158 points. That’s the same as what top-scoring ‘keeper Jordan Pickford scored in 2024/25, while only the title-winning Joe Hart – who cost a whopping £7.0m – could top that in 2011/12. Bear in mind that goalkeepers weren’t often winners in the EA Player Performance Index, which dictated bonus points, back then.

Unsurprisingly, our site users voted him as the Team of the Season goalkeeper for that campaign.

Vorm rose from £4.0m to a high of £5.3m in his stellar year, and was one of the most-owned players in the game by May.

Inevitably, the huge starting price hike in 2012/13, to £5.5m, killed most of the interest in him. Any remaining Vorm loyalists joined the exodus when the Dutchman was hit by a two-month groin injury in October 2012.

Vorm’s Swansea career was stop-start for the last two years before he spent six seasons as back-up at Tottenham Hotspur. He didn’t make it past 100 points again after his debut year, let alone get anywhere near 158.

DEFENDERS

MARTIN LAURSEN (2007/08)

Signed from AC Milan in May 2004, Laursen’s time at Aston Villa was beset by fitness issues. Indeed, only three starts in, his troublesome knee gave way and ruled him out for five months.

After only 27 appearances across his first three injury-ravaged years in the West Midlands, he suddenly became a trustworthy starter – for one season, anyway.

In 2007/08, Laursen started every single one of Aston Villa’s 38 league games. And what a season it was, with the big Dane adding six goals, two assists and 27 bonus points to nine clean sheets. It could have been even better, had Villa not embarked on an 18-match run without a shut-out midway through the campaign.

But as it was, 163 points was still enough to get him into FPL’s end-of-season Dream Team. He finished as the game’s third-highest-scoring defender, all from the cheaper end of the market.

Sadly, normal service resumed the following year. The dicky knee struck again, not just ending his season but also his career.

STUART DALLAS (2020/21)

FPL debut campaigns don’t get much better than Dallas’s in 2020/21.

He was Fantasy’s top-scoring defender with 171 points, beating the likes of Trent Alexander-Arnold and Andrew Robertson. It was all done from a starting price of £4.5m, too.

Starting every single league match in this triumphant campaign, he scored eight goals, set up three others and banked a dozen clean sheets.

An ‘out of position’ (OOP) tag was a big part of his appeal: he made more starts in midfield than he did at full-back.

Alas, the ‘OOP’ run-outs were to influence FPL’s thinking the following season. Reclassified as a £5.5m midfielder for 2021/22, his appeal took a nosedive. While still a regular starter, he scored just once and lost out on all those clean sheet points as a midfielder. Ultimately, he finished 91 points short of his 2020/21 total and was barely owned by active managers by the season’s end.

A knee injury sustained in April 2022 finished his career prematurely.

JOHN LUNDSTRAM (2019/20)

The man, the myth, the legend.

Much like Dallas, we could only enjoy Lundstram’s goalscoring displays as an ‘out of position’ budget defender for one season.

Despite scoring nowhere near the points that Dallas did (144 compared to the Leeds man’s 171), he lingers longer in the memory than the Ulsterman.

That’s thanks to the £4.0m starting price tag. There’s something about this price tier that produces cult Fantasy heroes (Guy Demel, Aaron Wan-Bissaka, Alan Hutton), and Lundstram is perhaps best remembered of all.

Listed as a defender despite never having played there in his life, the central midfielder scored five goals, assisted four others, registered 15 bonus points and hit double figures for clean sheets in a memorable 2019/20 campaign.

A 21-point haul in a Gameweek 11 win over Burnley was the season’s highlight. Unsurprisingly, he made our readers’ Team of the Season.

The inevitable price hike and reclassification – to a £5.5m midfielder – followed in 2020/21. Failing to score a single goal, and without the extra clean sheet points, he finished 96 points short of his total from 2019/20.

We haven’t seen him in FPL since, as he moved on to Rangers, Trabzonspor and Hull City.

JOSE BOSINGWA (2008/09)

Even Fantasy managers of a certain vintage may not remember Bosingwa’s Fantasy exploits all that well.

He certainly isn’t as lionised as fellow Chelsea defenders Marcos Alonso and Branislav Ivanovic, the latter of whom became a positional rival of Bosingwa’s.

In 2008/09, however, he made FPL’s end-of-season Dream Team, as the fourth-highest-scoring defender in a lesser-spotted 4-5-1.

The Portuguese full-back, in his debut Premier League campaign, was Chelsea’s top-scoring defender, with 156 points.

The mid-to-late noughties was the era when defences reigned supreme. The Blues racked up a whopping 22 clean sheets in 2008/09, and still didn’t top the pile; Manchester United registered 24. We haven’t seen those numbers since.

Bosingwa was a nailed route into the Blues’ watertight backline, starting all 34 matches he was available for. Two goals and a handful of assists supplemented those shut-outs.

That was as good as it got for him in FPL. A serious knee injury ruled him out of nearly all of 2009/10, while 2010/11 was disjointed; only once did he start more than two successive league matches. In his final year with Chelsea, in 2011/12, Bosingwa again didn’t make it to 100 points.

An unremarkable season with Queens’ Park Rangers rounded off his time in England: he blanked in 19 of his 23 appearances.

GRAHAM ALEXANDER (2009/10)

The veteran Burnley man was a one-season FPL wonder in every sense: 2009/10 was his only year in the Premier League.

The Clarets’ dismal tally of three clean sheets meant that Alexander was a long way from troubling the leading defenders for points.

But, if you owned him, you’ll remember his seven goals – a superb total for a defender – very well. Six of those strikes came from the penalty spot.

Spot-kick duties, and an ‘out of position’ tag, were a big part of his appeal as a £4.5m defender. He spent pretty much all of the campaign in central midfield.

The pinnacle of the season came in October, when the then 38-year-old bagged a 21-point haul against Hull City.

MIDFIELDERS

MICHU (2012/13)

Ask Fantasy managers to think of one-season wonders, and it’s a fair bet that Michu will be one of the first names mentioned.

Signed from Rayo Vallecano ahead of the 2012/13 campaign, the once-capped Spain international was an instant success.

A Gameweek 1 brace set the tone for the season. This was the first of five double-digit hauls, and the first of 18 goals. He was to contribute three assists, too.

Starting out at a bargain £6.5m, the Spaniard was to rise to £8.5m as demand soared.

Michu wasn’t quite as effective after Christmas, with 13 of his 18 goals coming before that point, but he still finished on a massive 190 points. That sealed his spot in FPL’s Team of the Season.

A price hike to £9.0m for 2013/14 raised expectations, and predictable disappointment was to follow.

Injuries decimated his second season and limited him to just 15 starts, while only two goals arrived.

His career never recovered. A little over two years after his stand-out season at Swansea ended, he was playing fourth-tier football in Spain.

DIMITRI PAYET (2015/16)

Another instant success upon his move to the Premier League, Payet blanked in just two of his first 10 starts. That early-season purple patch included a 16-point haul against Newcastle United in Gameweek 5.

An ankle injury disrupted his season but he finished with a flourish, delivering 11 returns in his final 12 appearances.

The Frenchman ended 2015/16 with 171 points, joint-fourth among FPL midfielders. That was even more impressive given his mid-season absence: an average of 5.7 points per game was bettered only by Riyad Mahrez among players in his position.

Payet’s status as a one-season Fantasy wonder was not due to injury, like Michu/Laursen, reclassification, like Lundstram/Dallas, or relegation, like Alexander. Instead, he was the architect of his own end.

Having started 2016/17 well, with 10 attacking returns in 18 games, he couldn’t resist the attention of former club Marseille, and declared that he no longer wanted to play for West Ham in January 2017. After some to-and-fro between the two clubs, he departed for France, never to play in the Premier League again.

Coincidentally, he’s just retired in the last week!

ANDRE AYEW (2015/16)

Can you remember an Ayew brother making FPL’s Team of the Season in 2015/16? No, us neither, but we’re assured it happened.

It was Andre, not Jordan, who made the biggest impact, hitting the ground running at Swansea City.

His total of 171 points was, in fact, identical to Payet’s above.

Priced up at £7.0m, Ayew delivered 12 goals, five assists and 25 bonus points, with only three midfielders outscoring him.

That was as good as it got for the Ghanaian, with a summer 2016 move to West Ham not working out as hoped. He didn’t even reach 171 points in his next two seasons combined, with first injury and then a fall from favour limiting his game-time.

A second spell at Swansea and a short stint at Nottingham Forest brought precisely zero goals.

GEREMI (2002/03)

And if you don’t remember Ayew’s Dream Team appearance over a decade ago, chances are you won’t recall Geremi’s inclusion in the very first end-of-season XI.

We have to go all the way back to 2002/03 for this, when the Cameroonian made his debut in English football, moving to Middlesbrough on a year-long loan from Real Madrid.

Despite missing the last five Gameweeks, Geremi finished as FPL’s fifth-highest-scoring midfielder.

Seven goals and eight assists were a decent return but remember that these also were the days in which midfielders got two points for a clean sheet, not one. Geremi benefited from an extra 10 points in that department.

Rising from a starting price of £7.0m to a high of £8.6m, he was, for those who were there in FPL’s debut campaign, one of the game’s first-ever bandwagons. Four double-digit hauls in eight early Gameweeks helped boost his popularity.

Geremi was to spend another six seasons in the Premier League, first with Chelsea and then with Newcastle United, but never established himself as a permanent Fantasy fixture again.

Never starting more than 19 games in a single Chelsea campaign, he did very briefly flicker back onto the radar as an ‘out of position’ defender at Newcastle in 2007/08.

RYAN FRASER (2018/19)

A contentious inclusion, maybe, and one we weren’t sure about. Fraser had delivered nine assists in 2016/17 but ultimately, having only started 19 games (four of his returns came off the bench), he wasn’t a serious FPL asset in that campaign.

Indeed, in all bar one of his eight seasons as a Premier League player, he failed to get above 100 points.

The exception was 2018/19.

Fraser went bananas in that campaign, delivering seven goals, 14 assists and 23 bonus points. That saw him finish on 181 points, just one short of Gylfi Sigurdsson, who made the FPL Dream Team.

Featuring in all 38 matches, Fraser was the league’s leading player for big chances created.

All that from a starting price of £5.5m.

He didn’t come close to matching that season again, with his spells at Bournemouth and Newcastle ending on sour notes. He’s now with Western Sydney Wanderers in Australia.

FORWARDS

CHARLIE AUSTIN (2014/15)

Austin’s rise from non-league football to the Premier League peaked in fairytale fashion in 2014/15, when he bagged 18 goals in his very first season in the English top flight.

He delivered eight assists, too, and his end-of-year total of 176 points would have been even greater, had he not missed two penalties and been sent off. It was still enough for him to finish in FPL’s end-of-year Dream Team, however.

A campaign that started slowly – two goals in eight – exploded in the autumn, with 10 goals in nine matches.

And his 21-point haul in Double Gameweek 31 was the stuff of FPL legend. That was the Double Gameweek in which Matt Phillips and Christian Benteke also hit 20+ points.

Austin reappeared in England’s top tier with Southampton and West Brom but failed to get anywhere near his 2014/15 high, never starting more than 11 games in any of his subsequent Premier League seasons.

ROQUE SANTA CRUZ (2007/08)

Incredibly still playing at the age of 44, it’s been 15 years since we last saw Santa Cruz in the Premier League.

His first campaign in England, in 2007/08, was his one good season in Fantasy.

Santa Cruz found the net on 19 occasions en route to an FPL points tally of 182, the third-highest total among forwards.

Then with Blackburn Rovers, the Paraguayan striker had a particular fondness for facing Wigan Athletic. Scoring a hat-trick in the away match, Santa Cruz then scored twice and assisted another in the reverse fixture.

It wasn’t all gravy: there was a Double Gameweek 14 disaster when he was rested for the first match following international duty.

A piddling four goals followed in 2008/09, while his big-money move to Manchester City was ill-fated. Starting just six games for the Cityzens in 2009/10, he mostly played second fiddle to Emmanuel Adebayor and Carlos Tevez. Surplus to requirements, he had one underwhelming loan spell back at Blackburn before departing England for good.

PATRICK BAMFORD (2020/21)

Another one-time FPL great who is still playing (for Sheffield United), Bamford was long seen as just one more ‘too good for the Championship, not good enough for the Premier League’ striker.

That was until 2020/21.

Promoted with Marcelo Bielsa’s free-scoring Leeds side, Bamford confounded the critics by hitting 17 goals and assisting seven others.

Starting every match until Gameweek 38 (even then, he came off the bench to score), Bamford was in good form from the off.

Five attacking returns in his first three appearances preceded a Gameweek 6 hat-trick against Aston Villa, which really swelled his ownership figure.

From a starting price of £5.5m, Bamford reached as high as £6.9m. Harry Kane was the only forward to better the Leeds striker’s total of 194 points.

Then came the injuries. Making only nine appearances in 2021/22 due to three separate medium-term lay-offs, he then found his game-time limited in Leeds’ relegation campaign of 2022/23. Bamford has been in the second tier since.

Did we overlook any obvious names in the squad above? Let us know your own one-season wonders in the comments below.