FPL 2025/26 Season Review: The Data Behind the Season
A data-driven retrospective of the 2025/26 FPL season through GW34. Top scorers by position, best value picks, and the xG over and underperformers shaping next season's bargain hunt.
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Last updated: 2 May 2026 (post-GW34). Coverage: GWs 1 to 34. We will refresh this piece after GW38 with the final-four numbers and any season-end shifts. Source: FPL bootstrap data, per-fixture stats, and Understat xG snapshots pulled via the FPL Pilot CLI.
The 2025/26 season has been a template-breaker. The premium midfielders the entire game built around in August have been outscored by sub-£8m alternatives. The best-value defender plays for City. The Golden Boot leader is the only premium asset that delivered close to expectation. And the model behind FPL Pilot has been pricing it correctly all along.
This is the data, position by position, with the xG receipts to back it up.
Top scoring assets by position (GW1 to GW34)
Pulled from the players table at GW34: total points, current price, goals, assists, and points-per-million. PPM uses live (current) price, not season-start price.
Goalkeepers
| Player | Team | Price | Points | PPM |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Raya | ARS | £6.1m | 147 | 24.1 |
| Kelleher | BRE | £4.8m | 131 | 27.3 |
| Pickford | EVE | £5.6m | 128 | 22.9 |
| Roefs | SUN | £4.8m | 125 | 26.0 |
| Verbruggen | BHA | £4.5m | 120 | 26.7 |
Raya leads on raw points but Kelleher, Roefs, and Verbruggen are the value story. Three keepers under £5m all clear 120 points in the season’s top five. Kelleher’s emergence at Brentford is exactly the kind of data point that changes how you build a squad in August 2026.
Defenders
| Player | Team | Price | Points | G+A | PPM |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gabriel | ARS | £7.2m | 185 | 8 | 25.7 |
| Guéhi | MCI | £5.1m | 158 | 7 | 31.0 |
| Virgil | LIV | £6.2m | 156 | 5 | 25.2 |
| O’Reilly | MCI | £5.2m | 152 | 9 | 29.2 |
| Tarkowski | EVE | £5.7m | 149 | 3 | 26.1 |
Gabriel is the top defender outright. The bigger story is Manchester City’s defence. Guéhi and O’Reilly both clear 150 points at sub-£5.5m prices, with City pushing for the title and clean sheets returning. PPM-wise Guéhi at 31.0 is the most efficient outfielder of the entire season.
Midfielders
| Player | Team | Price | Points | G+A | PPM |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| B.Fernandes | MUN | £10.4m | 204 | 28 | 19.6 |
| Semenyo | MCI | £8.1m | 181 | 21 | 22.4 |
| Rice | ARS | £7.2m | 171 | 13 | 23.8 |
| Gibbs-White | NFO | £7.6m | 168 | 16 | 22.1 |
| Casemiro | MUN | £5.8m | 160 | 13 | 27.6 |
Bruno Fernandes is the top midfielder. Mohamed Salah, the consensus number one captain entering the season, sits on 116 points and is not in the top eight midfielders. Cole Palmer is on 102 points, four blanks away from being mid-table among £6m midfielders. The premium midfield template was wrong.
The under-the-radar pick of the season is Casemiro. Nine goals, four assists, 160 points at £5.8m. PPM of 27.6 from a £5.5m start price. Part of his value comes from set-piece duty, which our 2025/26 set-piece and penalty taker reference breaks down club by club.
Forwards
| Player | Team | Price | Points | G+A | PPM |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Haaland | MCI | £14.6m | 212 | 31 | 14.5 |
| Bowen | WHU | £7.8m | 169 | 20 | 21.7 |
| Thiago | BRE | £7.4m | 169 | 22 | 22.8 |
| João Pedro | CHE | £7.5m | 166 | 23 | 22.1 |
| Watkins | AVL | £8.8m | 129 | 14 | 14.7 |
Haaland is the only premium that delivered. 212 points, 24 goals, 9 hauls of 10 or more. The mid-price forwards are the headline though. Bowen, Thiago, and João Pedro all crack 165 points at sub-£8m prices. Thiago’s 21 goals at £7.4m is the differentiating pick if you owned him from GW10.
Best value per million by position (1500+ minutes)
Filtered for regular starters only. The minimum-minutes screen kills cup-tied bench scorers and cameo merchants.
| Pos | Player | Team | Price | Points | PPM |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GKP | Verbruggen | BHA | £4.5m | 118 | 26.2 |
| GKP | Kelleher | BRE | £4.8m | 124 | 25.8 |
| GKP | Roefs | SUN | £4.8m | 122 | 25.4 |
| DEF | Guéhi | MCI | £5.1m | 158 | 31.0 |
| DEF | Van Hecke | BHA | £4.6m | 137 | 29.8 |
| DEF | Truffert | BOU | £4.7m | 139 | 29.6 |
| DEF | O’Reilly | MCI | £5.2m | 152 | 29.2 |
| MID | Garner | EVE | £5.2m | 148 | 28.5 |
| MID | Casemiro | MUN | £5.8m | 160 | 27.6 |
| MID | Anderson | NFO | £5.6m | 153 | 27.3 |
| FWD | Thiago | BRE | £7.4m | 169 | 22.8 |
| FWD | João Pedro | CHE | £7.5m | 166 | 22.1 |
| FWD | Calvert-Lewin | LEE | £5.8m | 126 | 21.7 |
Every top-five PPM player by position is sub-£8.5m. Not a single £10m+ asset cracks the value list. Haaland’s PPM is 14.5, which is half of Guéhi’s. He still made sense if you captained him correctly. Most managers did not.
Lesson: The premium midfield bracket was the worst-value bracket of 2025/26. Salah, Palmer, and Saka combined returned worse PPM than three sub-£6m midfielders.
Biggest overperformers vs xG (1500+ minutes)
Goals plus assists minus expected goals plus expected assists. A high positive number means the player banked more attacking returns than the underlying numbers said they should. Some of these will regress next season. The smart move now is identifying which.
| Player | Team | G | A | xG | xA | (G+A) - (xG+xA) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gravenberch | LIV | 4 | 5 | 1.31 | 2.15 | +5.54 |
| Semenyo | MCI | 15 | 6 | 11.89 | 3.62 | +5.49 |
| Bruno G. | NEW | 9 | 6 | 5.90 | 3.77 | +5.33 |
| Matheus N. | MCI | 1 | 8 | 0.68 | 3.00 | +5.32 |
| Bowen | WHU | 8 | 12 | 7.90 | 7.09 | +5.01 |
| João Pedro | CHE | 14 | 9 | 14.40 | 3.96 | +4.64 |
Gravenberch leads the dataset. 9 G+A from 3.46 expected is mostly variance, the kind of gap that tends to regress the next season. He is a sell-high candidate next August unless his role meaningfully changes.
Semenyo and João Pedro are the more nuanced reads. Both overperformed, but both took on dramatically larger creative loads after January transfer windows. Their xG models do not yet reflect their post-January roles. Treat the gap as smaller than it looks.
Biggest underperformers vs xG (next season’s bargain hunt)
The opposite list. Players generating chances and shots that the finishing did not reward. These are the names to file away for August.
| Player | Team | G | A | xG | xA | (G+A) - (xG+xA) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Yeremy | CRY | 2 | 1 | 4.13 | 7.65 | -8.78 |
| Enzo | CHE | 8 | 4 | 11.35 | 7.78 | -7.13 |
| Mateta | CRY | 10 | 0 | 14.66 | 1.18 | -5.83 |
| Calvert-Lewin | LEE | 12 | 2 | 16.58 | 1.48 | -4.06 |
| Thiago | BRE | 21 | 1 | 22.57 | 3.40 | -3.97 |
| Watkins | AVL | 11 | 3 | 14.85 | 2.77 | -3.62 |
| Mitoma | BHA | 3 | 1 | 4.11 | 3.24 | -3.35 |
Enzo Fernández is the headline. 8 goals and 4 assists with 19.13 xG plus xA. He is on penalties, takes set pieces, and creates more than any other Chelsea midfielder. At his current price he is one of the cleanest pre-season buys for 2026/27, assuming his role survives the summer.
Mitoma is the differential pick. 4 G+A from 7.35 xG plus xA, and Brighton’s expected-goals share has been climbing. If his finishing reverts to career norms next season, his ceiling is 150+ points at a sub-£7m price.
Calvert-Lewin’s underperformance at Leeds is interesting differently. He has the shots. He just is not on penalties. If Leeds add a clinical taker behind him, his bid for next season weakens. If they do not, he keeps generating chances for himself.
Lesson: Two of the three biggest xG underperformers are Crystal Palace players. If Oliver Glasner’s structure survives the summer, Palace are the cleanest squad-building source in the entire league for 2026/27.
What this teaches for 2026/27
Five takeaways from the 34 gameweeks of evidence above.
1. The premium midfield is broken until proven otherwise. Salah on 116 points and Palmer on 102 points is not a small-sample fluke at GW34. It is a 34-game indictment. Build squads from the front (Haaland) and the back (City defence) and fill midfield with mid-price.
2. Mid-price forwards beat premium midfielders this year. Bowen, Thiago, and João Pedro all out-scored every premium midfielder except Bruno Fernandes. The £7-8m forward bracket is now the strongest position group in the game by PPM. Plan to own at least one in August.
3. Manchester City’s defence is the structural value play. Three of the five top defenders by PPM are City. Guéhi and O’Reilly at £5.1m and £5.2m respectively. If their pricing rises to £5.5-6m at the start of next season, they remain auto-picks.
4. Underlying numbers still win on a season scale. Every top scorer in the points list also leads on the xG plus xA list for their position bracket. The names that “got lucky” are mostly fringe overperformers, not season-defining players. Trust the model, not the reputation.
5. The four-week window in front of you matters more than the historical scoreboard. Even with all of this data, GWs 35 to 38 will reshape the rankings. Plan for the run-in with the final-four rank recovery guide and pair it with the captaincy retrospective to inform your end-of-season transfers.
If you are still chasing a specific mini-league finish, the data above tells you who to back over the final four. If you are already planning the 2026/27 wildcard, this is your shortlist.
For chip strategy reviews, see when to use your wildcard and when to use bench boost.
See how your team stacks up. Load your team to FPL Pilot.
Stats sourced from the FPL bootstrap, per-fixture stats, and Understat xG via the FPL Pilot CLI on 2 May 2026 (post-GW34). PPM uses current price. Minimum-minutes filter of 1500 applied to PPM and xG-difference tables. We will refresh this post after GW38.
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