By Opta Analyst | Created at 2026-10-08 12:16:46 | Updated at 2026-10-09 14:53:31
1 day ago
The international break has given Fantasy Premier League managers plenty to think about. Using Opta data and Solio’s projections, we assess six of the biggest questions ahead of GW6, including fixture difficulty, defensive contribution points, budget forwards and whether it’s too late to jump on Pascal Groß.
Brentford’s 3-0 dismantling of Chelsea, Brighton’s shock undoing of Arsenal by the same scoreline, and Brian Brobbey’s Etihad Stadium hat-trick all feel like a lifetime ago, but in Fantasy Premier League terms, they occurred only last week.
After the longest international break on record, you’d be forgiven for forgetting the contents of your Fantasy Premier League squad, but it’s time to get your head back in the game, because a lot has happened – on and off the field.
To help you get back in business, we’ve combined Opta data with Solio FPL’s projections to answer six common questions Fantasy managers are likely to have after looking at their squads following the long break.
The Big Questions Ahead of GW6
If you want to skip ahead to a certain question, just click on it.
- Are defensive contributions as important as last season?
- Are set pieces as important as last season?
- Which teams have the best and worst upcoming fixtures?
- What’s the best defensive rotation?
- Is it too late to buy Pascal Groß?
- Who is the best budget forward?
Are Defensive Contributions as Important as Last Season?
The introduction of defensive contribution points in Fantasy Premier League ahead of the 2025-26 season was arguably the most seismic change ever made to the format.
Defenders now earn two additional points by combining for at least 10 tackles, interceptions, clearances, and blocks in a single game. The threshold for midfielders and forwards was set at 12, but recoveries also counted towards their total.
While Elliot Anderson and Marcos Senesi, for example, may have previously had limited Fantasy relevance, players of their profile were suddenly thrust into the spotlight, expanding the practical player pool as a result.
Having started 2025-26 priced at £5.5m, Anderson ended up as the game’s fifth-highest-scoring midfielder, largely as a result of his league-leading 52 points from defensive contributions. To put this into context, a forward has to score 13 goals to earn 52 points.
It was a similar story for Senesi, who ranked third among defenders last season for total points despite being priced at £4.5m on the opening day. He earned 50 points from defensive contributions, second only to Anderson.
The impact of defensive contributions was perhaps greater than initially anticipated. In 2024-25, the season prior, players would have reached the threshold for defensive contribution points in 16.8% of their starts on average. That hit rate rose sharply to 19.3% in 2025-26, a figure which saw this method of points-scoring become a necessary focus.
But are defensive contributions as important this season as they were last? It’s debatable. The hit rate five rounds into this season is 16.9%, seemingly falling back in line with the season before last – but that number doesn’t tell the whole story.
In each of the previous three seasons, the hit rate after five rounds has been lower than at the season’s culmination. Indeed, this season’s figure is actually higher than it was at the same point last season (16.7%).
The tendency for DEFCON hit rates to increase as the season progresses is especially evident among defenders. Looking at the last three seasons, comparing figures after GW5 with end-of-season totals, defenders’ DEFCON hit rates increased by an average of 10.3% over the course of the campaign.
This could be for myriad reasons. Perhaps systems become more distinct, games become more consequential, and players become more desperate towards the end of the season.
Either way, there is enough evidence to suggest it’s an element of the game which could become more and more important as the season progresses.
If this is the case, which players should Fantasy managers be targeting? The leaders for points earned via defensive contributions this season are Kobbie Mainoo, António Silva and Murillo, with eight each. Mainoo has reached the threshold in all four of his starts.
Solio’s projections page gives us an insight into which players are likely to prosper in the near future, and you can even look at a player’s chance of reaching the threshold on a game-by-game level.
Kevin Danso and Tarik Muharemovic lead Solio’s projections with an average hit rate of 64% across the next six games, with both players noticeably clear of any teammate. By way of comparison, Senesi reached the threshold in 70% of his appearances last season.
Anderson is the highest-ranking midfielder by this measure using Solio’s projections, with a forecasted average hit rate of 51% over the next six gameweeks. Meanwhile, Exequiel Palacios’ projected hit rate of 47% makes him a noticeable outlier among midfielders at his price point (£5.0m).
If you’re wildcarding this week, make sure you at least consider defensive contribution points as part of your squad makeup.
Are Set Pieces as Important as Last Season?
Much like the 2025-26 campaign deviated from the norm in terms of the regularity of defensive contributions compared to previous seasons, the same was also true of set pieces.
Between 2019-20 and 2024-25, the percentage of total Premier League goals that were scored in open play in a single season never dropped below 70%, but in 2025-26 that number dropped sharply to 65.3%. Across 34 full seasons, that rate has only been lower in 2009-10 (63.3%).
This season, though, that number has rebounded back up to 74.5%, which would be the second-highest mark in the competition’s history if the rate continues, behind 2006-07 (77.4%).
It’s from corners where we’ve seen the largest shift. A record 188 goals were scored from corners last season, which in turn saw a high of 18.0% of all goals scored via this method. But this season, only 9.9% of goals have come from corners, which would be the second-lowest mark in the competition’s history. It’s quite the change.
One explanation for this could be new directives from Pro Ref, the rebranded name for PGMOL, that encourage referees to penalise “holding actions that have clear material impact”. That is, players being prevented from potentially getting to the ball by an opponent who is holding them. The desire was to prevent the blocking and grappling that had become so common at corners.
It’s early days, but free-kicks look like they’re being awarded to the defending team more regularly. The proportion of corners that have seen a free-kick given within five seconds of the corner being taken this season (3.8%) is, in fact, the highest in any of the seven seasons for which this data is available (since 2020-21 inclusive). If that holds, that will naturally make corners less effective overall for FPL scoring purposes.
However, recent history does suggest that set-piece goals are likely to account for a larger percentage of total goals once the season progresses. In 2024-25, 78.7% of goals were scored in open play after five rounds had been played, but that figure dropped to 73.2% by season’s end.
Nonetheless, although any set-piece goal deficit would not affect all players uniformly, it’s worth considering which players could potentially be hampered. It could hurt aerially-dominant centre-backs like Gabriel Magalhães, and also the set-piece takers themselves. It probably isn’t a coincidence, for example, that Bruno Fernandes set the record for assists in a Premier League season during a campaign typified by set-piece excellence.
Indeed, more than half of his assists came from set plays, and more value could now perhaps be found in a player like Rayan Cherki, who assisted more goals in open play (11) than Fernandes (10) last season despite starting 16 fewer games.
You can manually edit player projections in Solio’s tools, so if you want to downgrade someone like Bruno even further than their baseline, you can.
Which Teams Have the Best and Worst Upcoming Fixtures?
The lengthy international break is likely to result in greater-than-usual Wildcard usage in GW6, with many managers returning to the game to find their squads littered with variously coloured flags.
What these managers are desperate to know is which teams have the best upcoming fixtures, and which teams should be avoided. And while the colour-coordinated fixture difficulty rating mechanism on the Fantasy Premier League website has its uses, it is limited in its detail and ability to compare fixture strength.
This is where Solio’s fixture page comes in handy. Users can compare fixture quality across a chosen period, with separate tabs for expected goals, clean sheet likelihood, and overall expected goal difference, both game-by-game and cumulatively.
It’s useful to know, for instance, that despite Manchester United assets being sold more than bought at the moment, they are in fact predicted to score the third-most goals of any team across the next six games (10.6).
Meanwhile, managers choosing to bring in Morgan Gibbs-White after seeing yellow flags next to players such as Cole Palmer and Antoine Semenyo may reconsider after discovering that only Hull City are projected to score fewer goals than Nottingham Forest (6.7) across the next six matches.
On the defensive front, it’s notable to see Brentford rank fourth for projected clean sheets (1.6) despite their defensive assets being sold more than purchased at the time of writing.
Leeds United’s defensive assets, meanwhile, are being bought twice as often as they are being sold, despite having only marginally better clean sheet prospects than Coventry City across the next six games.
You can also look at Opta’s Power Rankings – which are another source of team strength – to assess overall fixture difficulty over the coming weeks. We did that recently:
Before making long-lasting Wildcard decisions based on green, grey and red fixtures, consider taking a look at Solio’s fixture page to see if the data genuinely aligns.
What’s the Best Defensive Rotation?
Solio’s data-oriented fixture ticker also makes it easier to locate potential rotations for your squad. For those unfamiliar, rotating players is a simple concept: separate from your star players who you intend to play every week regardless of their fixture, you can also find success by locating two players whose schedules combine to mean that one of them always has a strong fixture.
This can be done with players of any position, and even with players that play in different positions, but here we will be focusing on finding two defenders that rotate well.
We are unlikely to rotate defenders from Arsenal or Manchester City given their combination of price and quality, so they can be ignored, but no other team is currently strong enough to negate rotation altogether.
Pairing up teams using Solio’s clean sheet projections gives us the following top combinations when excluding Arsenal and Manchester City:
Rotating defenders from Man Utd and Spurs gives us 1.98 projected clean sheets across the next six games, the most of any pairing that doesn’t include Arsenal or Manchester City. It’s also the only rotation among our top five that offers a home fixture each week.
For their combination of price, minutes, DEFCON and goal threat, Harry Maguire (£4.8m) and Jan Paul van Hecke (£4.9m) would be the most logical route in.
A Chelsea and Spurs rotation gives us 1.97 projected clean sheets, so we’re basically splitting hairs in the rankings. The hardest fixture we can’t avoid in this rotation is likely Chelsea’s trip to Sunderland in GW10.
Given that Chelsea are yet to keep a clean sheet, we’d be putting a lot of trust in the data for this one. Van Hecke is still the most sensible option from Spurs, and although no defender is safe from rotation for Chelsea, Maxence Lacroix (£5.9m) feels the most reliable; that’s if you can stomach leaving an expensive defender on your bench every two games.
We’ve already mentioned that Brentford project to keep the fourth most clean sheets of any side across the next six matches, so it’s no surprise to see them appear as part of a strong rotation with Everton. One issue with this pairing is its weakness in GW7, when Brentford host Liverpool and Everton host Chelsea.
Jannik Schuster has shown great promise for Brentford while Nathan Collins has been out injured, but Kristoffer Ajer (£4.5m), who has played every minute so far, feels like the best way into their defence.
The best option from the Everton side is clearly James Tarkowski (£6.2m), who is currently the highest-scoring defender in the game. Will you feel comfortable benching him three times in six weeks? It might be worth it solely for his fixtures against Hull and Coventry.
A rotation of Everton and Spurs gives us 1.93 projected clean sheets, which is surprisingly high given that you must play a defender away to Arsenal or Chelsea in GW8.
Another issue here is that you would likely only play your Everton defender (Tarkowski) in two of the next six games. Nonetheless, this pairing offers great potential outside of GW8, with four games against newly-promoted teams.
Brentford make another appearance as half of our final recommended pairing, but this time with Brighton. Brentford are only used twice in this rotation – in GW8 and GW9 against Hull and Nottingham Forest when Brighton are away to Liverpool and Man City.
Ajer remains the most sensible option from Brentford. On the Brighton side, Maxim De Cuyper (£5.0m), still playing as a left winger, and Luka Vuskovic (£5.0m), who has a variety of routes to points, are tough to pick between.
It’s worth saying that the Solio team solver will factor in all of these complex rotation possibilities when suggesting a Wildcard team or advising you on transfers.
Is It Too Late to Buy Pascal Groß?
Pascal Groß is currently the highest-scoring player in FPL, a feat which has seen him rise in price from £5.5m to £5.9m after only five games. The German is now owned by nearly a third of users, and as the most transferred-in player for GW6, his ownership will continue to rise.
But are his buyers chasing points that are unlikely to be repeated? Groß has already combined for three goals and four assists (including a Fantasy assist), matching his tally for goal involvements from the second half of last season after his return to Brighton from Borussia Dortmund.
His seven goal involvements are the most of any player this season, but he ranks 14th for expected goal involvements, with 2.6. The fact that he takes penalties is one of his key strengths, but for the sake of comparison, Groß ranks 30th for non-penalty expected goal involvements (1.8), which is lower than Leif Davis, Jack Rudoni, and even teammate Malick Yalcouyé.
Groß makes for an interesting comparison with Dominik Szoboszlai, who was essentially seen as a premium version of the Brighton man ahead of the season. Many managers likely tinkered away until the final moments to try and find the extra £1.5m needed to ‘upgrade’ Groß to Szoboszlai.
Those who succeeded in finding the extra money did so at a great cost; Szoboszlai has earned 27 points fewer than Groß despite similar underlying numbers.
Their expected assists numbers are almost equal, and yet Groß has four total assists to Szoboszlai’s zero. The Hungarian can also count himself unlucky not to have added to his goal tally since the opening weekend; his one goal from 2.29 expected goals on target suggests that he has been repeatedly denied by excellent goalkeeping.
The comparison between Groß and Szoboszlai highlights just how much variance there can be in this game, and new buyers for the German must be prepared to see his fortunes change.
Nonetheless, his overperformance does not make him a poor pick, and those with memories of Jamie Vardy and Riyad Mahrez in 2015-16 will know the dangers of ignoring a cheaper pick with the idea that their luck will soon come to an end.
Groß still ranks eighth among midfielders for projected points across the next six matches, with an average of 4.51 – higher than Szoboszlai’s 4.46.
And while he does have some challengers in his price bracket, such as Kevin Schade (£6.2m), Harvey Barnes (£6.1m) and Marcus Tavernier (£6.1m), he is still the highest-ranking player in Solio’s projections at his price or below. Groß is still an excellent option, and you shouldn’t feel like you’re late to the party, but don’t pick him expecting him to continue delivering points at the current rate.
Who Is the Best Budget Forward?
Many using their Wildcard chip for GW6 have likely done so with the intention of swapping one super-premium player – Bruno Fernandes – for another – Erling Haaland, ahead of his Triple Captain-worthy fixture at home against Ipswich in GW7.
Haaland’s record-breaking current price of £15.6m therefore leaves managers needing to cut back in other areas. João Pedro (£7.7m) has been the obvious choice to accompany Haaland in the forward line, but doubts over exactly when he will return from the injury which led to him dropping out of Brazil’s squad are leading many to look elsewhere – and a little cheaper.
So, who is the best budget forward option to counteract the hefty outlay required to bring in Haaland? We aren’t short of options, but the standout player according to Solio’s projections is Gonzalo García (£6.0m).
When filtering for forwards priced at £7.0m and below, the Spaniard sits comfortably atop the rankings for predicted points per game across the next six matches, with 4.6.
García faces each of the three promoted teams – Ipswich (A), Hull (H) and Coventry (A) – across his next three matches, and also has a healthy-looking home meeting with a leaky Newcastle defence in GW10.
The Fulham forward has scored just once so far from 2.34 expected goals, but his upcoming fixtures offer him a great chance to make amends, and a brace for Spain’s U21s against Romania over the break shows he hasn’t lost his goalscoring touch.
Fulham are yet to win a penalty this season, but García is expected to step up when they do.
Another player firmly in the conversation is Thierno Barry (£5.7m), whose low price means he can be rotated without much concern for his fixture against Arsenal in GW8.
Like García, Barry has so far underperformed in front of goal, with two goals from 3.5 expected goals. But this shouldn’t be viewed as a negative – he ranks third in the Premier League for expected goals, behind Haaland and Alexander Isak, and his ability to generate scoring chances no matter the opposition is his greatest weapon.
There’s a strong chance that Barry will be Everton’s penalty taker too, and unless David Moyes plays someone out of position, the Frenchman has no competition for his starting spot.
Evanilson (£6.0m) has emerged as a surprise option, ranking third in the projections, but with no goals to his name as of yet this season, there are clearly more reliable picks.
Dominic Calvert-Lewin (£6.0m) is likely to leave many teams due to Leeds’s match away to Arsenal in GW6, but as the game-by-game projections show, he will fancy his chances in the games that follow.
As discussed earlier regarding defenders, if squad value allows, forwards can also be rotated to great effect. A García-Barry rotation, for example, could see a combined schedule of Hull (A) and/or Ipswich (A), Hull (H), Coventry (A), Newcastle (A) and/or Aston Villa (A), Coventry (H) and Brentford (A).
With deadlines approaching, it’s time to start tinkering. Every projection in this piece is live in Solio’s tool, and Solio’s solver weighs rotations like these automatically when building a Wildcard or planning transfers. And if you disagree with a number, change it and see what that does to your plan.
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