Our Fantasy Premier League expert picks out the top five budget midfielders for the 2026/27 season.
Ever since the new Fantasy Premier League season launched last Thursday, our resident FPL expert has been scouring the price lists to work out exactly which players he wants in his team for Gameweek 1 – and he’s been passing on his findings to you.
Having offered up his first impressions on must-buy players, some wait-and-sees and the players he’s avoiding like the plague at the start of the season, he’s now moved on to working out his top five players at some particularly contentious positions and price points.
Yesterday, he cobbled together his top five budget forwards in the £5.5-6.0m price range, and today he’s moving back into the midfield to look at the best players at the £5.5m price point – the budget fillers who can so often make the difference. Here are his five best efforts to pick out this season’s Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall… A player he identified as an FPL must-have a year ago, as it happens.
5. Mikkel Damsgaard – Brentford
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I should probably start this exercise by explaining what I’m looking for in a budget midfielder: I want a player who racks up defensive contributions, is a nailed-on starter, and has at least some potential to pick up goals and assists so that there’s a high chance I get four or more points when I rotate them in. I’m looking for consistency first and foremost, but also to be able to make an argument for a ceiling of around 150 points – much like Dewsbury-Hall last year and Alex Iwobi before that.
Damsgaard scored a somewhat shrug-worthy 113 points last season when he was rotated in and out of the line-up slightly more often than expected, but 131 the year before when he started 10 more matches – and that was before defcon points was introduced. He would likely have hit 150 had those been around at the time. In other words, the high ceiling is there and the floor isn’t frighteningly low.
If I wasn’t concerned about him starting just 24 games last season, he’d be higher up on this list – but it’s a real worry given that I want my budget midfielder to be someone I can count on playing when I rotate them in. Still, the ceiling is high enough should he nail down his starting place this year that I slid him in over a player like Adam Wharton, who probably has a similar ceiling but also has both injury concerns and less proof of concept.
4. Granit Xhaka – Sunderland
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Xhaka is a great example of the kind of high floor, medium ceiling player that I’m not all that excited about, but will still happily slot in if the way that Sunderland’s fixtures fall means that I can see where I’ll rotate him in for more expensive players over the first month or two.
He averaged a very strong 10.6 defcon points per game last season, is a definite starter, and his total of one goal and six assists from last season is probably not the best he can do based on recent production both in the Bundesliga and in England. I don’t think he’s going to be the best budget midfielder and would be pleasantly surprised if he hit 150 points, but it’s hard to imagine him struggling too badly.
As there isn’t much more to say about Xhaka, I wanted to note that there’s a reason I’m not looking at £4.5-5.0m midfielders in this article: I don’t like any of them. There are a few players who could get there if they step up their production in front of goal or improve their defcon totals (Diego Gómez, Carlos Baleba and Ibrahima Sangaré) or if they manage to become regular starters (Jacob Ramsey) but I just can’t make the case for any of them to get close to 150 points without significant improvements that we haven’t yet seen. I’d rather have a £5.5m midfielder I can rely on – the fifth midfielder always matters at some point or another.
3. Alexis Mac Allister – Liverpool
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During the 2024/25 season, Mac Allister scored five Premier League goals, provided another six, and scored a very respectable 122 points before defcon came in – and he averaged a healthy 8.6 DCs that year too, so he would probably have made it to something like 140 points in today’s scoring system.
Last year, even when both he and Liverpool struggled, he still managed to pass 100 points, and we know that he’s capable of much stronger attacking returns if Andoni Iraola moves him back into a more aggressive role. In other words, Mac Allister has a solid floor – albeit lower than that of Xhaka – and one of the higher ceilings in this price range.
Mac Allister hadn’t yet played in pre-season at the time of writing thanks to his long World Cup run, but if there are any signs that he’ll be more involved in the final third then I could easily start moving the Argentine up my rankings. Xhaka is a safer bet, and right now the ceiling isn’t much higher than some of the alternatives, but it could easily be nudged up past anyone else at the price point if a player who has a 10-goal season under his belt gets to spend more time in the final third.
2. Martín Zubimendi – Arsenal
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There are a whole bunch of reasons to be keen on Arsenal’s only budget-friendly starter this season, not least the fact that his 133-point return from the 2025/26 campaign would absolutely be acceptable over the coming year as well. I want to aim higher if I can, but Zubimendi has proven that he can do the job that I need a £5.5m midfielder to do.
He probably got a little lucky to score five goals given that his xG was 2.85, but he likely should have had more than one assist from 2.26xA and the attacking returns balanced out to a degree – and while he isn’t a defcon monster (8.1 per match), he will bag some points there too. In other words, I trust that last season’s score was repeatable, especially given that he plays for a good team. Playing for a side who score a lot of goals and keep a lot of clean sheets keeps midfielders ticking over nicely, as a rule.
Zubimendi might well have been my number one were it not for one nagging worry – minutes. He played all 38 games last season but had a long, long year and I can all too easily imagine Myles Lewis-Skelly getting some more midfield minutes. Meanwhile, Arsenal seem to be looking for a new midfielder to take some of the pressure off of Rice and Zubimendi too. I just can’t quite shake the feeling that he’ll have a very slightly more rotational role this season, and that could be an issue.
1. Ethan Ampadu – Leeds United
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I’m baffled by the lack of attention that Ampadu is getting ahead of the new season – it’s early days, but just 1.3% of managers have him in their drafts despite the fact that the Welshman was the highest scorer last season among midfielders at this price point with 134 points.
He’s a nailed-on starter as club captain and played 90 minutes in almost every match he was available for last season, and his defensive contributions were through the roof – a massive average of 11.9 per game, which means he came within a whisker of getting an average of four points per match from the off with appearance points and DCs. Leeds kept quite a few clean sheets after a slow start last season, as well.
The great things about defensive midfielders like Ampadu is that if their team as a whole gets worse (and Leeds could always end up as victims of second season syndrome) they only get more opportunities to pick up those defcon points. All the numbers suggest that Ampadu is a player who provides a tremendous chance of at least a few extra points every time you call upon him. That’s exactly what I want from my £5.5m midfielder, and Ampadu is working his way into a lot of my drafts so far.