Our resident Fantasy Premier League expert picks out five players he’s got at the top of his shortlist to sign for the 2026/27 season.
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The Fantasy Premier League has launched after only the briefest of build-ups, and players can finally start putting their teams together ahead of the new season – and our resident expert has already been building his first drafts.
As part of his process, he’s been analysing dozens of players based on form, value and fixtures, and today he’s picked out five players who he believes should be serious considerations for almost every team at the start of the season.
Two players he won’t mention are Erling Haaland and Bruno Fernandes, the two most expensive players at the start of the 2026/27 season, mostly because he’s already explained why he wants both of them in his team regardless of how the rest of the squad shapes up. They’ll almost certainly be in his final squad for Gameweek 1 – so let’s see who else will probably be joining them…
Antoine Semenyo – Manchester City (£8.5m)
Fresh off the back of a massive 202 point season, I expected Semenyo to be priced alongside Cole Palmer and Bukayo Saka at closer to £10m – instead, he maintains a semi-premium price, and that’s enough for me to be all in on him once again.
Perhaps his surprisingly reasonable price is meant to reflect the worry that he might lose minutes to Rayan Cherki (£7.5m) and Phil Foden (£7.0m), but the age of Pep Roulette is over, and even with Guardiola at the helm Semenyo was a nailed-on starter. A new manager brings some uncertainty with it, but it’s hard to imagine the system or line-up will change dramatically under Enzo Maresca.
Simply put, Semenyo is a known quantity with a very high ceiling. He may not score as many in 2026/27 – he overshot his xG by a long way last season and that’s likely unsustainable to some extent – but Manchester City have relatively good fixtures for the first few gameweeks, and he could easily get off to a flier.
He’s hit double figures for two seasons on the bounce, and it’s hard to imagine his floor being any lower than the 165 points he racked up in 2024/25, injuries notwithstanding. Semenyo is likely to be a high scorer once again, and the price is just too generous to pass up. I can’t imagine he won’t be in my starting line-up for the first gameweek.
Rayan – Bournemouth (£6.5m)
Speaking of midfielders who scored quite a few goals for Bournemouth last season, I’m also very interested in Rayan at his relatively affordable price point – because although he’s young and arguably unproven, his ceiling is colossal.
After he was signed in January, Rayan made 15 appearances for Bournemouth and played in every game for which he was available, scoring five goals and racking up 67 FPL points. That’s not many, but let’s do some maths and extrapolate that across an entire 38-match season: 4.47 points per match, which adds up to about 170 points across a full campaign.
That’s the kind of score you’d happily pay £8.0m or more for. At £6.5m, the potential value is just too good to ignore. And remember that he’s still a teenager, and there’s a very good chance that he only gets better across his first full season in the Premier League.
He looks likely to stay at Bournemouth, who have firmly rebuffed transfer interest from a number of elite clubs, and should be an absolute mainstay of Marco Rose’s side. There’s some new manager doubt in there, of course, and it’s possible that Bournemouth play far worse as a team in the post-Iraola era, but this is a gamble with such a low entry fee that I want to take a chance.
Another player worth noting at a similar price point with a similar equation behind him is Crystal Palace’s Ismaïla Sarr, who would have gone for around 160 points if AFCON hadn’t robbed him of several gameweeks.
João Pedro – Chelsea (£7.5m)
Another player I expected to be priced more aggressively, and who figures to be Chelsea’s clear-cut first-choice up front as it stands – although with the Blues, there’s always the chance that a surprise transfer comes in and changes the equation of course.
I’ll admit that last year I described João Pedro as a trap, largely because he looked set for an ill-defined rotational role and was a player who had consistently undershot his xG while leaning on penalties he was no longer going to take – in 2025/26, however, he scored 15 goals at almost exactly the average pace for his xG and provided nine assists, at least by FPL standards. He levelled up after moving to Stamford Bridge, and proved me wrong.
Unless Chelsea do bring in another forward, I don’t see any particular reason that should change. Strikers who both score and create goals reliably are gold dust, and at £7.5m the value is excellent – he scored 177 points last season – and that’s with a Chelsea side who collapsed down the home straight.
If Chelsea improve at all, and I suspect they will under Xabi Alonso, the 170 point mark could be his floor. As it stands, I’m leaning towards taking João Pedro over his compatriot Igor Thiago (£8.0m), although I wouldn’t blame anyone for going in the Brentford striker’s direction instead. They’re the two best options for the number two striker role behind Haaland as far as I’m concerned.
Pedro Porro – Tottenham Hotspur (£5.5m)
I was determined to pick at least one defender for this five-man list but I’ll be perfectly honest – it’s by far the hardest position to work out at first glance. There’s a mass of players in the £4.5-5.0m range who you may as well toss a coin to choose between, for starters, and I dislike how expensive some of the more obviously reliable options are, such as Gabriel Magalhães at a massive £8.0m.
But £5.5m seems like a very respectable price point for a defender with Porro’s ceiling. He had a bad season in terms of attacking returns, but then Spurs had a bad season full stop – and we’re talking about a player with five goals and 14 FPL assists in the preceding two campaigns. He hit 117 points even in a down year, and his ceiling is probably in the 130-140 point range.
High floor, relatively high ceiling, reasonable price point, and no particularly scary fixtures early doors? I can buy into that – and it’s worth noting that Roberto De Zerbi was using Porro very aggressively after he took charge at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, suggesting that the Spaniard could spend a lot of time in the final third.
Of course, there’s always a chance that Spurs could be terrible again. It’s not like there isn’t precedent. But while I piece together the cheaper defenders I want, I like having Porro over other premium or semi-premium defensive options. There’s just a very good chance he’ll notch up some points over the first few weeks, and I like having someone I feel comfortable leaning on while I piece together what the rest of the defence should really look like.
Enzo Le Fée – Sunderland (£6.0m)
As with defenders, there’s a lot of options for budget midfielders that are pretty close together in terms of potential and value – but Le Fée is the player at £6.0m or less that’s caught my eye the most in the early stages of this process.
He was overshadowed by the popular Granit Xhaka last season but put up 147 points with five goals and six assists while going averaging only a shade less than 10 defensive contributions per game. That’s a promising start point and suggests a player who will contribute something most weeks, which is what I want from my lower-cost midfielders.
Liverpool’s Ryan Gravenberch did almost identical numbers at the same price point but massively overshot his expected goals and assists, while Le Fée was on par for the chances he both received and created, which suggests that his returns should be sustainable while Gravenberch’s probably aren’t.
I’m not sure where I stand on Sunderland as a whole, and it’s all too easy to imagine a degree of regression after a hugely impressive first season back in the Premier League, but Le Fée will be a core piece of Régis Le Bris and aside from a pair of tough fixtures in Gameweeks 4 and 5, their start is relatively kind. My only worry is that my final draft will require me to find a midfielder at £5.0m or £5.5m, and that Le Fée might end up being that shade too expensive – but if there’s room for him, he looks like a very strong pick-up. Kaoru Mitoma and Yankuba Minteh are both tempting at the same price point, but could be potential rotation risks.