Our resident Fantasy Premier League expert explains why a brand new signing could be one of the best buys of the new FPL season.
One of the toughest tasks facing Fantasy Premier League players ahead of the Gameweek 1 deadline is figuring out which of the budget-friendly players who enable managers to pick players like Erling Haaland and Bruno Fernandes will earn their owners the most points – there are very few players with the potential to score big points at the lowest price brackets.
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As 3 Added Minutes’ resident FPL expert, I’ve spent much of the time since the full price list was revealed poring over the stats to figure out which players are worth their price tag and which are worth swerving – and one of the results of my work was an article on the best £5.5m midfielders in the game this season.
I concluded that the best buy for the first gameweek at that price point was Leeds’ Ethan Ampadu, a reliable source of defensive contribution points with a nailed-on starting role – but now a summer signing could change the calculus completely. Brentford new boy Mamadou Sangaré has the potential to be a gamechanger in the FPL this season.
Why Brentford’s Mamadou Sangaré could end up as the best £5.5m midfielder in the FPL
Mamadou Sangaré is now the most expensive signing in Brentford historyplaceholder image
Mamadou Sangaré is now the most expensive signing in Brentford history | Getty Images
On the face of it, there are very few players who have the potential to be this season’s version of Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall in 2025/26: A cheap midfielder who scores goals, provides assists, and keeps the points flowing over the course of the season. I was struggling to find a midfielder who had 150-point potential at £5.5m or less.
Of the five players I listed in my article about the top five best £5.5m midfielders, four were defensive midfielders. The addition of defcon points to the games has changed the type of players we want to sign completely, and players like Elliot Anderson who rack up a huge volume of defcon points have become gold dust. The problem is that Ampadu was one of very few who were cheap enough to be classed as a budget enabler.
That could be about to change. Brentford have announced the signing of Lens midfielder Mamadou Sangaré for a transfer fee of £39m, and FPL has priced him at that magical £5.5m price point. Based on his work in France, it’s a very aggressive price point indeed.
Last season, for Lens, Sangaré scored three goals and provided four assists, which is very solid for a defensively-minded midfielder, but that’s not what makes him stand out – historically, his defensive contribution totals have been through the roof.
Including ball recoveries (which midfielders score DC points for in the FPL even though defenders don’t), Sangaré averaged 12.7 defensive contributions per match in Ligue 1 last season - over the number required to get two bonus points per game. That means that he would get two extra DC points per game an incredibly high percentage of the time were he able to maintain that form.
Only one player in the Premier League averaged more defcons per game last season: Elliot Anderson, who finished on 180 points as a result of his defensive work and finished as the fifth-highest scoring midfielder in the FPL. Sangaré has the potential to be this year’s edition of Anderson - the underlying numbers are all there.
Nor were his DC tallies from last season a one-off. The 24-year-old was with Rapid Vienna in the Austrian Bundesliga the year before, and averaged at least 12.9 defcons per match (at least because I couldn’t find numbers for blocked shots from the Austrian league). The season before, on loan at TSV Hartberg, it was 11.3.
If Sangaré plays much the same in England as he has in France and Austria, he will become a nailed-on, automatic inclusion in any well-constructed team at just £5.5m with a sky-high ceiling which could make him one of the most effective budget midfielders in the game’s history. So is there any reason not to sign him before Gameweek 1?
Should you sign Sangaré for the start of the FPL season?
Sangaré fends off a Strasbourg player while playing for Lensplaceholder image
Sangaré fends off a Strasbourg player while playing for Lens | Getty Images
There are only two real questions about Sangaré given his pedigree: Whether he can maintain his form in the Premier League, and whether he will be an immediate starter for Brentford.
The former question is fundamentally unanswerable. Plenty of players have come to England from other leagues with impressive resumés and struggled. It’s why it’s generally wise to hold fire on new arrivals in the Fantasy Premier League – but there have been plenty of exceptions to that particular rule.
In terms of playing time, it’s fair to assume that Brentford didn’t break their transfer record to sit Sangaré on the bench, but he hasn’t had a full pre-season – Lens have sat him out of friendly matches to avoid injury ahead of his move, and as a Mali international he wasn’t involved in the World Cup. He may need time to build up his fitness.
There’s rather limited data available about the way that Keith Andrews likes to involve new signings. Brentford only signed two new players for the first team last summer – one was a new first-choice goalkeeper but the other, Dango Ouattara, started immediately. That implies that Sangaré might go straight into the starting line-up, but guarantees nothing, especially if he needs time to build up match fitness.
It will be worth keeping an eye on Brentford’s line-ups for their remaining pre-season matches against Rennes and Eintracht Frankfurt. If Sangaré is playing 90 minutes, he’s likely worth taking a chance on from the start. If he’s getting brief cameos in the second half, it may be wise to hold fire.
In general, it’s best to try and treat cheaper players as set-and-forgets rather than planning to make transfers to shuffle them around, as free transfers are valuable resources which are best spent on moving the highest-scoring players about as form and fixtures demand. But if Sangaré is going to be introduced slowly, then it’s worth thinking about starting with a player like Ampadu instead and bringing Sangaré in down the line.
Ultimately, Ampadu is still a very solid choice for the role and a man who’s coming off the back of a 134-point season – but Sangaré’s ceiling is much, much higher. If he looks likely to be in the XI from the off, passing up on the chance to sign him is probably a bad idea. Sangaré has all the ingredients to be an FPL star.