FPL Player Costs
By @FPL101_Chris,When you pick your initial squad you think you are given 100 to spend on players. Or so you thought. That's not actually the case. I'll explain.
You have to have 15 players. You have to spend a minimum of 4.0 on 2 goalkeepers and 5 defenders plus a minimum of 4.5 on 5 midfielders and 3 forwards, which looks like this:
GKP 4.0 4.0 DEF 4.0 4.0 4.0 4.0 4.0 MID 4.5 4.5 4.5 4.5 4.5 FWD 4.5 4.5 4.5
So, the minimum spend, which you can't control, is 64.
7 x defensive players @ 4.0 = 28.0
8 x attacking players @ 4.5 = 36.0
That means that of the 100 you are given 64 is the base you need just to be able to enter a squad, which leaves 36 (100 - 64) for upgrades or enhancements.
This 36 is the important figure as this is what you as a fantasy manager can actually control. You decide how you want to strengthen your base squad. Do you want to spend more upgrading the attack, the defence or a balance?
It's important to keep this concept of a base price in mind when comparing attacking and defensive players.
I often hear members of the twitter community making comparisons between an attacker and a defender at the same price, for example, saying they'd rather have a 6.0 defender than a 6.0 forward. The reality is that they don't cost you the same amount. A 6.0 defender is a 2.0 upgrade over the base 4.0 cost, whereas a 6.0 forward is a 1.5 upgrade over the base 4.5. So, the defender actually costs 0.5 more.
It's important to see the upgrade cost, not the total cost. Here are a few examples from the 2021/2022 season:
Player Cost Base Upgrade Mohamed Salah 12.5 4.5 8.0 Jamie Vardy 10.0 4.5 5.5 Jack Grealish 8.0 4.5 3.5 Mikhail Antonio 7.5 4.5 3.0 Raphinha 6.5 4.5 2.0 Yves Bissouma 4.5 4.5 0.0 Trent Alexander-Arnold 7.5 4.0 3.5 Luke Shaw 5.5 4.0 1.5 Ben White 4.5 4.0 0.5 Robert Sanchez 4.5 4.0 0.5 Tino Livramento 4.0 4.0 0.0
You can see from this that players priced at the base price (4.0 defensive players or 4.5 attacking players) are effectively free. This means that in terms of value (points returned vs funds spent) they're outstanding options as long as they are playing and scoring points.
If you have 36 to spend on upgrading 15 players, that's a mean average of 2.4 per player. So, spending everything perfectly evenly across your squad would look like this:
GKP 6.4 6.4 DEF 6.4 6.4 6.4 6.4 6.4 MID 6.9 6.9 6.9 6.9 6.9 FWD 6.9 6.9 6.9
Obviously, you'd never distribute funds like this in reality but it's useful to see where the purely mathematical mid point lies if we don't discriminate between positions. I think I can safely say that we tend to prioritise spending on attacking players.