Your argument fails when you propose big defenders then say wait till you have 110mil for big forwards. It's the forwards whose price goes up quickly.

Put your team up so we can judge your comments then.

You make good points but still rotating with £5.0m defs?

I'm big at the back. Got Cahill and Baines but will probably go Cahill and Terry.

Well reasoned. However, there are a lot of injuries and/or uncertainty among the top teams. I'm planning on going with Terry, Clyne, and some rotating cheapies.

Ah, great to see you! How's the health if that's not too personal a question? (It clearly is but I'll take a liberty) Seem to remember you suffered a bit last year (to put it mildly)

I agree with some of what you say although it has been proven year after year that the premium defenders really fill their boots after Christmas, early on the cheap options come close to keeping pace. It's really a question of where each incremental £ can be best spent, I've spent a lot of time trying to work this out and never come to a firm conclusion other than there is no 'correct' approach - more than one way to skin a cat and all that.

Best of luck 🙂

You're wrong

Yes I can't help but feel slightly in denial with my template team. I have Ivan and DDG but the rest are at basement prices. There is plenty of value in the mid priced attacking options and a case can certainly be made for spending more at the back. If you go through with this settup I think you'll have a strong differential team (at least from the regulars on here anyway).

It's not a question of whether defenders score as well as midfielders and strikers, but whether you can predict as easily WHICH defenders are going to score well.

Last season, in the first 10 gameweeks, the four teams with the most clean sheets with Spurs, Southampton, West Ham and Everton. Those teams got 23 between them, whereas Chelsea, Liverpool, Arsenal and City combined only got 13.

In the first 10 gameweeks going forward, the five teams with the most goals were.... City, Arsenal, Liverpool, Utd and Chelsea. They got 100 goals between them, the entire rest of the league only got 128.

Point being, you go for premium strikers and mids over premium defenders because the pricing is more reliable in those positions. At the start of the season at least, it's very difficult to predict which defenders will be scoring at a 5.5+ rate, whereas the big teams dominate the smaller teams in more attacking positions regardless of the time of the season; on average, you get what you pay for. That's why I throw the majority of my money up front.

Great post.
The only issue I have is that the high scoring defenders are no more predictable than the mids or forwards. I wildcarded early last year, too, vowing to put more funds in defence. Unfortunately, I picked Evra, Walker and some other under-performer. Later in the season, Koscielny and Azpi were good picks, but that was after xmas. Jumping on expensive defenders because they are expensive is a crapshoot.
Statistically, there is much less price-points correlation among defenders than there are for mids or forwards. There is a rationale, therefore, for investing the funds in attacking players.

Great post.
Last season i went with Migs-Coleman,Walker,Evra,Mert/Fonte. Whitout Ramsey or Yaya and managed to reach 1xxx in OR(was in top 10k for most of 2013).
Might go for a similar strategy this season, mostly because i'm afraid of having lots of +8m mids with high ownership early in the season when all those knee jerkers are active and have a WC.
What if Fabregas has good start and Hazard blanks, i'll be facing -TV or a transfer i dont want to make and same goes for all the big hitters and they don't have to be necesarly teammates or only mids.

Very interesting post.

The point I agree with most is about transfers. you're right; the last thing you want to be doing in the first few weeks is changing defenders, when some unexpected talent has started banging in the goals up front. Those are the bandwagons you want to be on.

With that in mind, I think the priority is to pick defenders who are dead certs to play every week. We have all heard this before, but even your fifth choice defender should be expected to play every week, so even though you will rarely/never play them, you also won't have to think about them at transfer moments.

I mean you don't have to pick the so called "heavy hitters" because, as stated above, the teams collecting the team sheets in the early weeks are simply too unpredictable. If you have five defenders who are playing every week, be happy; some of them will get clean sheets.

So far this pre-season, in my many many team re-writes, I have had Chambers, Bartley, Naughton, Kelly and R James, B Davies and Bertrand. I have considered myself a genius but knowing that within a few weeks I'll be moving away from these. So they are all gone.

For reference, my back 5 is currently:
Chester, Janmaat, Van Aanholt, Lovren, Terry.

Unless they get injured, I will be concentrating my early transfers on working the likes of Aguero and Sanchez into my team.

In general I'd agree. I had planned to line up with 2 or 3 big defenders.

The problem is that defences are fickle year to year...with one single exception.
That exception isn't even a team, it's Jose Mourinho!

Man Utd look a decent option, but it's just a guess...made weaker by the injuries to their (presumed) starting back 5.

Everton, Liverpool & Arsenal haven't the best fixtures, and LIV/ARS may well change system to adapt to recent big departures/signings.

Tottenham have a new manager, another lot of guesswork.

Combining all that with the (apparent) value provided by mids this year, and it seems the best course is to go cheaper at the back, wait for the best defences to emerge and get on later.

You are not comparing like for like here:

It is true that over the course of a season, big name defenders provide a higher points return for their price tag than big-name attackers. But you cannot make any conclusions whatsoever as to the effectiveness or otherwise of cheap defensive rotation based on this.

If you choose three 6 million + defenders, you will most likely make use of them week-in, week-out, or at least very regularly, so it is certainly relevant to look at their points totals come the end of the season. However, a manager using a rotation system is not looking at points totals. That manager will be looking at the points per game scored in each game that the rotating defenders are on the pitch only.

What is really required is a points per game analysis of rotated defenders for the games that they are selected. This can be compared with the points per game total of the big-priced defenders for the far more regular games where they are selected.

Your second and third points implicitly assume that your first point is correct, and your fourth point cherry picks an example that supports your argument, rather than looking at trends across seasons.

Finally, you completely discount an analysis of the points difference between expensive attackers and your system of mid-priced rotated attackers. It could be the case that mid-price attackers, when rotated right, can give you a bigger return than big-priced superstars, but you consider this principle not to be applicable to defenders.