The Premier League Panel: Is Fabian Schär the best bargain in PL history?
Our FPL expert looks at five over-rated players you should sell in the Fantasy Premier League.
We’re now eight gameweeks into the Fantasy Premier League season and we’re starting to get a clearer picture of which players are genuinely good assets – and which players might not be scoring as many points as we’d hoped.
Players have already sold Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah in droves after his early-season struggles but there are several players whose form is not living up to their popularity, and whose stats suggest that savvy FPL players are better off selling than keeping hold. Below, we’ve looked at five players, all with at least 15% ownership, that you might want to move on before it’s too late.
João Pedro – Chelsea
Before the season started, I opined that João Pedro was a trap waiting for unwary players to walk into. His stats over the course of several seasons at Brighton suggested that he was not a reliable goalscorer and that he would struggle to rack up anywhere near enough points when he was taken off penalties in favour of Cole Palmer.
Then he scored two and set up three more in his first four Premier League games and I duly felt like an idiot. Throw in injuries to Liam Delap, his only competition for starting minutes, and Palmer, and João Pedro started to look like an easy sign and hold. That’s changed.
Not only has João Pedro failed to score or assist a single goal since but he hasn’t even had a shot on target in his last four league matches – in fact, he’s only had two shots in total – and Enzo Fernández appears to be on penalties. It was fun while it lasted, but over half of the managers in the game now appear to be carrying dead weight. Sell while his price is still high.
Pedro Porro – Tottenham Hotspur
The Portuguese full-back is among the most popular defensive assets in the FPL right now but at a hefty £5.6m, it’s starting to get pretty debatable as to whether he’s worth the buy-in fee after just one attacking return in eight games.
The full-backs don’t appear to be operating in an especially aggressive role under Thomas Frank and Porro is creating a modest 2.83 shooting chances per 90 minutes on average. That isn’t awful, but it’s relatively uninspiring and lower than in previous seasons. His total combined expected goals and assists is all of 0.9.
Spurs are also closing in on a tough run of fixtures and while their defence is fine – the 9.0xG they’ve allowed this season is the fifth best in the league – they’re not shutting the opposition out often enough to justify a premium price on a member of their back four. Even Micky van de Ven, at £4.7m, is a low-priority sell candidate going forward.
Mohammed Kudus – Tottenham Hotspur
I promise that this isn’t meant to be some kind of Spurs hit piece. They may have lost to Aston Villa last weekend and they definitely looked pretty ropy against AS Monaco in midweek, but I have a fair amount of faith in the quality as a team and in Frank as a manager. I just don’t really believe in Kudus as a player who will deliver consistently in the game.
The mid-priced Ghanaian is currently the second most widely-owned midfielder in the entire game after Antoine Semenyo and is averaging a respectable 5.1 points per game, just outside the Top 10 in the league, but he’s never been a bit scorer and even in his best season, back in 2023/24, he only managed a total of 137 points.
He isn’t bagging bonus points, he isn’t a great goalscorer and his five assists don’t fairly reflect the 1.3 expected assists he’s racked up. He’s batting a little way above an average that history (and mathematics) strongly suggests he won’t be able to maintain for long. He isn’t an urgent sell, perhaps, but he’s heading into the teeth of a tricky fixture list and this could be a good time to make a profit and bail out for a player with a higher ceiling.
Jack Grealish – Everton
Speaking of mid-priced midfielders who seem to be overrated by a large percentage of the player-base – I have to be the one to break the news that Jack Grealish’s underlying numbers suggest that his comeback hasn’t been quite as impressive as you might think.
A recent 3 Added Minutes column broke down some of the statistical red flags he’s waving at the Hill Dickinson Stadium, but in FPL terms he isn’t really doing anything to justify being the fifth most owned midfielder in the entire game. People bought him off the back of four assists in two matches after Gameweek 3, but he’s got just one attacking return since and the data strongly suggests that the last month or so has been more representative than the first few.
In four games in all competitions before scoring against Crystal Palace recently, he racked up a total xG of 0.1 and even including that match he had a total of just 0.24xA across that run. He’s basically one can’t-miss tap-in away from a very bad run of form. He’s fun again, but not an FPL asset.
Tijjani Reijnders – Manchester City
As with Pedro, I ran the statistical rule over Reijnders before the season and concluded that even at an affordable price point he was slightly borderline as an FPL buy – and as with Pedro, he promptly got off to a flyer and made me wonder if I had the first idea what I was talking about.
I’m feeling a little better about myself seven gameweeks later, during which time Reijnders has racked up one total assist, no goals and has only passed the threshold for defensive contribution points once. His 4.0 points per game is indifferent and heading downwards.
At £5.7m, there’s still time to sell and claim a profit as you turn him into Moisés Caicedo or find another way to upgrade him. Admittedly, as a budget enabler rather than an expensive marquee signing, it’s no disaster if he hangs around being mediocre for a few more weeks – but if the rest of the team is in good shape, Reijnders is starting to look like a pretty straightforward sale and a good way to bag a quick profit if you got in early.
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