Our resident Fantasy Premier League expert picks out five players every manager should avoid like the plague ahead of the 2026/27 season.
With the new Fantasy Premier League season up and running after the game’s release on Thursday, we’ve forced our expert to spend the last few days poring over the price lists and the stats in order to come up with lists of players he sees as must-buys and as maybes – and now, he’s going to look at the players he’s avoiding like the plague.
None of the five players mentioned below are bad players, by any means, but they are either overpriced or overhyped and the stats suggest that they won’t live up to expectations. Let’s dive in and find out who to steer well clear of ahead of Gameweek 1…
Gabriel Magalhães – Arsenal (£8.0m)
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Gabriel hit an incredible 209 points in 2025/26, an unprecedented total for a centre-back, and is priced accordingly at a massive £8.0m. It’s almost certainly too much, and there is reason to believe that he can’t repeat his scoring feats from last year.
For starters, he’s expected to lose his centre-back partner William Saliba for an extended period of time, and that could easily have a knock-on impact on Arsenal’s defence as a whole, which in any case overperformed statistically – not to an extent that’s completely unsustainable, but keeping 18 clean sheets may prove to be a slight outlier.
More worrying, however, was the decline in Gabriel’s output from set pieces. He was the focal point for so many dead ball routines in the first half of the season and scored three Premier League goals by 3 January, but didn’t score a single goal after that in any competition. Arsenal started getting far less joy from set plays, and Gabriel ceased to be the main target for them. In FPL scoring terms, that was the difference between him and someone like Saliba.
If he continues to provide limited attacking threat in 2026/27, which is the trend, then he should cap out at around 150-160 points rather than 200-plus. That’s a big difference and not worth the investment, and even if he does score a few goals he’s likely priced close to his ceiling already. As a general rule, avoid players who need to be at their absolute best to get close to being worth the buy-in, unless they’re absolutely proven to be as reliable as someone like Erling Haaland. Gabriel isn’t, and there is absolutely no chance he’s in my starting team when he needs to score 180 or more to justify his price tag.
Marcos Senesi – Tottenham Hotspur (£6.0m)
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If Senesi scores 175 points, as he did for Bournemouth last season, then £6.0m is absolutely a fair price for him. The problem is that it’s simply not very likely that he will.
The biggest problem is that he was reliant on his high defensive contributions total to get to 175 – he scored a towering 52 DC points, joint highest in the league with Elliot Anderson. DCs are a product of a team’s playing style rather than the individual players involved, however, and you’re looking to get them from teams who allow a high volume of crosses and long passes to get the clearance numbers up. That’s last season’s Bournemouth and it’s Everton, but it’s probably not Robert De Zerbi’s Tottenham.
Take Micky van de Ven’s number defensive contributions totals after De Zerbi took charge – he topped out at seven in those seven matches and averaged under five. Defenders need 10 to get their two extra points. The evidence suggests that Senesi won’t be getting his DCs anywhere near as regularly.
Throw in the fact that De Zerbi teams aren’t noted for keeping high numbers of clean sheets, and I don’t see where Senesi’s points are coming from. You want defenders who are going to get clean sheets, goals and assists, or defensive contributions, and Senesi might not be tapping into any of those sources of points reliably.
Morgan Gibbs-White – Nottingham Forest (£8.0m)
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Gibbs-White had an excellent 2025/26 season, with 15 Premier League goals leading to 188 FPL points. If he does that again, then he’s absolutely worth £8.0m. The problem is that he very likely won’t.
That 15-goal season came after he scored 17 in the previous three campaigns in total, during which he consistently scored 140-150 points. That’s a great total for a £6.0m midfielder, but not for someone on a semi-premium price tag. So he’s only worth his price if he can keep up last season’s form – and that doesn’t look all that likely.
For years, Gibbs-White generally scored around about as many goals as his xG suggested he should and was neither a remarkably good nor bad finisher. In 2025/26, he suddenly scored 15 goals from less than 11xG, a significant overperformance with no prior evidence to suggest that it’s sustainable.
Even getting near 11xG again seems unlikely given that the volume and quality of his chances in previous years was far lower. The stats say that Gibbs-White is a solid 150-point player who could score more if he gets on the right end of variance, but he’s priced in the same region as guys like Antoine Semenyo and Morgan Rogers who look like much safer bets to get well over 150 and closer to 200. The data says that Gibbs-White just isn’t worth as much as the players around him. Listen to it.
Bryan Mbeumo – Manchester United (£8.0m)
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The case study which suggests that Gibbs-White won’t be able to keep it up for a second season is Mbeumo, who enjoyed a freakish statistical improvement in the 2024/25 season but couldn’t sustain it after moving to Manchester United.
For three of the last four seasons, Mbeumo has told us who he is – a very fine player in general terms, but in FPL terms he’s a 150-point player, just the same as Gibbs-White. His return last year (11 goals and three assist at just below his expected rates) was about on track for what you would anticipate by the numbers. It’s fine, but you want more for £8.0m.
The upside on Mbeumo, admittedly, is that Manchester United do open up with a couple of games against newly-promoted teams and I can absolutely see an argument for signing him for the opening few weeks with a mind to move him on quickly afterwards. That makes sense. But over the course of a season, I don’t think there’s a particularly high chance that he lives up to a semi-premium price tag.
For this kind of price, I want to feel confident that I’m getting a good chance of a player who’s going to hit 180-200 points. Mbeumo is a player I might snap up for a week or two when the fixtures make it look interesting, but not someone I rate as a year-round signing. It doesn’t help that Michael Carrick moved him around a lot between the wings and centre-forward. He doesn’t yet have a defined role.
Incidentally, almost all of the same points apply to Matheus Cunha, who’s at the same price – but Cunha was on the end of more attacking moves towards the end of last season, scored more in the run-in and habitually overshoots his xG by a healthy margin, which creates a higher ceiling should he get more time in dangerous areas than Mbeumo. If you want a Manchester United midfielder, I’d go for Cunha.
Ollie Watkins – Aston Villa (£8.0m)
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The good thing about Watkins is that you have a pretty clear idea of what you’re going to get when you sign him – in the last two seasons, he’s scored 16 goals from just over 15xG, thrown in a few assists and scored a similarly healthy number of points. You probably won’t go that far wrong with Watkins. But you also know that you can probably do better.
Watkins is a player who has a provably high floor (good news) but a relatively limited ceiling (less good). As he passes 30 years of age, can we really see him scoring more goals after years of consistent production? Can we really see him passing the 200-point threshold?
With players like João Pedro (£7.5m) or Igor Thiago (£8.0m) you can make the case for a genuinely huge year. Watkins probably won’t let you down, but you have to stretch the imagination to see a ceiling as high as other forwards at the same price point. He’s a safe pick, but in a way that won’t win you mini-leagues. The knack is finding players with high floors and high ceilings for their price. Watkins is only half of the way there at £8.0m.
It doesn’t help that Aston Villa have had to undergo a midfield rebuild, have lost Lucas Digne (a reliable source of dangerous crosses) and have limited funds with which to bolster the wide areas and to build a team which creates more goals. Watkins is very unlikely to take a sudden leap forward at this point in his career, so those extra points would have to come from those around him. I don’t really see it.