Our Fantasy Premier League expert picks out his top five £4.5m defenders for the 2026/27 season.
From the moment that the new Fantasy Premier League season began with its release last Thursday, our resident expert has been poring through the price lists to figure out which players might make his starting team – and sharing the results of his research with you, of course.
Last week, he provided us with his first-impression must buy players, the assets he’ll be monitoring, and the five players he’s avoiding like the plague, but this week he’s moved on to looking at some of the more contentious specific positions and price points.
Earlier this week, he ranked his top five budget forwards and £5.5m midfielders and now he moves on to the defence – and he’ll start by looking at his five favourite £4.5m defenders, mainstays of every FPL team that will be expected to pick up the points on a budget. Let’s see how he ranks them…
5. Chadi Riad – Crystal Palace
placeholder image
Getty Images
£4.5m defenders are always tricky to pick. Having one or two, at least, is usually essential given the way that the budget needs to be spent across the team, but the defenders you really want – defcon magnets who collect clean sheets or threaten goals from set pieces – simply aren’t available at this price point. The centre-half cupboard is pretty bare in this range.
I want players who at least have the theoretical potential to push up towards the 150-point mark, but most of the best central defenders at £4.5m are demonstrably 100-point players at best. The only guy I can make a case for as someone who might just push the score up a little higher is Riad, who has barely played since moving to Selhurst Park due to injury but who now seems to be poised for a much larger role following the departure of Maxence Lacroix.
Riad averaged only 7.3 DC points per 90 minutes during his limited appearances last season, which isn’t enough to move the needle, but Palace kept 12 clean sheets and there’s a chance that they’re strong at the back again. Can a fully fit Riad, playing full matches more often than not, rack up enough defcon to score well over 100 points? I’ve no idea, but I certainly can’t see it with guys like Ezri Konsa or Joe Rodon. Riad is the mystery box option.
4. Antonee Robinson – Fulham
placeholder image
Getty Images
With the supply of centre-backs with high scoring potential looking very limited this year, we’ll need to lean further into full-backs – and that means players who have high potential for both clean sheets and attacking returns.
Robinson picked up 10 assists in the 2024/25 season, which suggests a very high ceiling on the latter front, but spent much of the last year injured and plays for a side who don’t usually keep enough clean sheets to make their players FPL powerhouses. A new manager might change that, of course, but it’s hardly certain – and Robinson’s 10 assists a couple of years ago was probably a bit of a fluke given that it was more than double his xA.
So why have I put him in this top five ahead of respectable options like Michael Kayode and Matty Cash, who have decently high floors but probably insufficient ceilings? Because there is a very real chance that he’s Fulham’s leading penalty taker next season – if they don’t sign another attacking player to take them, he could get four or five goals based on the Cottagers’ mid-table total of penalties earned over the last couple of years. Is it likely? Unclear, but at least it means that Robinson has the potential to push up towards 150 points if all of the pieces fall into place.
3. Luke Shaw – Manchester United
placeholder image
Getty Images
The worry with Shaw is no longer about injuries – believe it or not, he started every single Premier League game last season – but about whether Manchester United can keep up the form they found after the appointment of Michael Carrick, and whether they sign another left-back to give Shaw some competition.
If United continue to keep clean sheets and play reasonably well, then Shaw has such a high floor that a comparatively limited ceiling doesn’t worry me too much. He isn’t likely to rack up enough attacking returns or defcon points to get towards 150 points, but another 110+ season (he has twice passed 120 in FPL) would be acceptable. Just.
Given that I like to push for players who have higher potential upside, Shaw’s inclusion on this list may seem surprising - but I’ve popped him in at three because of United’s low early fixture difficulty. He may not stay in my side once I get a sense of where I can take higher-yield risks, but I feel good about the odds of some solid early returns to get me off to a strong start. Shaw probably isn’t a player I’ll have for 38 games, but for half a dozen? Absolutely.
2. Ferdi Kadioğlu – Brighton & Hove Albion
placeholder image
Getty Images
The best thing about Kadioğlu is that Fabian Hürzeler clearly loves him to pieces. After earning his place in the starting line-up a few weeks into last season, he never let it go and not only started every match from Gameweek 4 onwards, but was only subbed off five times and never once before the crucial 60-minute mark.
A nailed-on starter for a team who kept 10 clean sheets last season is a great start and should give Kadioğlu a nice, high floor to work with – if Brighton maintain their form and the Turkey international keeps his place, his 118 FPL points from last season are eminently repeatable. Of course, we ideally want more than that.
It’s not implausible that he gets it. He was a little unlucky to wrap up with just one goal and two assists in the league, as his expected returns were higher and two goals and three assists would have been a fairer reflection and enough to push him up to 127 points before bonuses came into consideration. Going past the 130 mark will require an improvement, but the 120-130 range is still a perfectly respectable return. If you want a set-and-forget, season-long £4.5m defender, he’s my second favourite shout for the role.
1. Tyrick Mitchell – Crystal Palace
placeholder image
Getty Images
My favourite player for a year-long job at £4.5m, however, is Mitchell, one of the few consistent scorers at this price point in the league. Last season’s 135 points was his best yet in the FPL but he’s passed 100 points in four of the last five years and hit 119 and 123 in 2023/24 and 2024/25 respectively. There is clear-cut evidence that he will hit the minimum requirement reliably.
His attacking returns aren’t huge and neither are his defcons, but they’re not too shabby and he’s on a team which keeps a lot of clean sheets – or at least which did last season. A change of manager adds some risk here, but Mitchell has been the model of consistency for a while now. The floor is very high, the ceiling just about high enough.
Is that a glowing review for my number one player in any given position? Not really, and I view the £4.5m defender spot as being a bit of a dead zone this season. I can’t imagine having more than two in my starting side, likely Mitchell as a set-and-forget and Shaw for the early part of the season. This is a position and price point in which we have to make do with what we’ve got.