Talisman Theory – 2023/24 Report | Who Got The Assist(WGTA)

Hello there.

It’s been a minute, hasn’t it?

First off: many apologies that I couldn’t bring you Talisman Theory (hosted very kindly by my friend Surya @AllAboutFPL) last summer. My daughter had just been born and I simply didn’t have the time to sit down and write. I don’t have that data and don’t have the time to run it, so there’s a bit of writing around that fact as well as an element of starting afresh in this report.

And second: as you might have to say these days, I didn’t use AI to write this. On the rare occasions I write on FPL, I prefer to do so myself. However, my elves did use it for generating the data I report on below (which I fully checked using skills from my professional background to ensure it was a hallucination-free zone).

You can find me on X at @WGTA_FPL. I run a podcast called Who Got The Assist? along with @FPLPricey, available at all good (and bad) pod platforms, and on YouTube. Check us out!

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Anyway, let’s get going.

Talisman Theory – an introduction

Talisman Theory is the hypothesis that, in any team, you should prioritise the key man in FPL over the other options.

Now, of course, that’s a truism. But what this analysis does is to prove in data that that is the case, as well as allowing us to uncover other trends that occurred in the season just gone.

In this (long form – grab a coffee, or something else…) report, I’ll look through last season’s data to understand some of those key trends and surface 2023/24’s Talismen – all the while thinking about how these findings can help us forecast for the season ahead. Or, at least, set up for Gameweek 1 as well as we can.

Quick note: I use the term “Talismen” throughout. I know it’s not grammatically correct, but as a neologism it fits into the spirit of the FPL world just fine in my opinion – think of “differential” and “Gameweek” as examples.

The Data

As always, my elves scraped the FPL API for last season’s data. They bent, shaped, and reformed it in the lab to generate the data set which underpins this piece. 

Talisman analysis breaks down into 3 steps: 

1. Collate overall and team FPL points scored. 
2. Find out who scored the most FPL points within each team (“Lesser Talisman”). 
3. Remove non-individual points like appearance and clean sheets to generate a “Talisman Points” metric, which enables us to see who the Talisman to own was per side (“Greater Talisman”).

Just because I’m a total nerd/professional researcher (who’s currently on gardening leave, so if you’re in need of an SRM/AD, client or agency, feel free to get in touch!) who loves to dig into the data as much as I can, I’ll also throw in a couple of extra analyses to cover off any further areas of interest.

You may know these as Sloppy Seconds and Exit Velocity.

Analysis 1: Overall and Team FPL Points scored.

In some ways, this section is more of a review of the overall profile of last season compared to the ones that preceded it. It’s both interesting in of itself (at least I think so) and acts as a springboard into the main Talisman Theory piece.

1a – Overall Points

The overall number of points scored in FPL stays relatively stable.

We’re always looking at ~31k overall points scored every year in fantasy.

There was a small uplift in the covid years by ~400 points, reaching an historic (in the time I’ve been keeping an eye on this, anyway) high of 31.7k points scored in 2022/23 driven by Kane and Haaland going berserk. Things fell off a small bit last year. We’ll look at why in a minute.

Let’s first have a look at the “points profile” of this season vs others, beginning with the “200 Club” – something I’ve been keeping records of for 8 years now:

Just having a look at how this has progressed over the last 8 seasons, we seem to have made a bit of a recovery in terms of the number of 200 Club members per season from the dog days of covid (i.e. 2020/21), when there were only four – the rather beige (if you played that season) quad of Bruno, Kane, Salah and Son – who made it.

Overall, there’s one person of real note here (who won’t get much of a mention going forward as his brilliance is implicit): that man Mo Salah. Reaching the 200 club every single year he’s been in the Premier League – and being the sole member of the 300 club – is a simply astonishing legacy of consistency. Basically: bow down. Or genuflect, if you prefer. The Egyptian King is an FPL juggernaut who should be enjoyed while he’s still with us.

Looking at the table, last year we had seven 200 Clubbers – back towards the heydays of 2019/20 and 2018/19 – which is a good thing for FPL if it continues. That’s because there’s variety in choice, meaning multiple picks, strategies and templates are plausible – as opposed to seasons like 2020/21 and 2017/18 when there were only a small collection of players doing well, which has the effect of pushing the template into a solid state. A more fluid template – or no real template at all – makes for a more interesting FPL season (at least for podcasters – you try podding through “er, so you just pick these guys and it’s all good”!) Hopefully this trend continuing, combined with the new changes to the format, will keep heavy templation at bay.

On those new changes, it’s interesting thinking about how the new FPL format allows you to accrue up to 5 free transfers. If we have multiple players on a 200-Club trajectory but can’t fit them all in, the newfound luxury of being able to transfer in and out individuals, for free, with carefully constructed strategies could emerge as a new way to play and maximise your time owning these heavy hitters.

There’s additional analysis to report on here, looking into the “100 Club” (i.e. scorers of 100-199 points) and the “50 Club” (50-99). The data for this is below:

This time around, within a picture of relative stability, I have only one thing to point out: the number of players scoring 50+ points in FPL per season is trending downward.

We’ve long heard complaints that the way FPL scoring works means we narrowly focus on a small well of individuals – which is kind of true. We’re realistically looking at around 29% of the available player base being of interest to us as FPL managers (i.e. scoring 50+ points).

Let’s hope this trend is bucked over time. The changes to the bonus system unveiled for this season could have gone much further in my opinion to bring more players into the game – for example, rewarding defensive players for CBI separately to enhance their bonus potential. But anyway, the fact is that more players being relevant to us creates more flavour around the season through that creation of choice, and the need to make decisions, rather than a scenario where we plod through with the same names throughout the 38 Gameweek marathon.

• A high-water mark for non-pen xGI

Just a quick note on something I noticed last year: there were a lot of players who recorded over 20 non-penalty expected goal involvements.

To see if this was unusual, I went back as far as OPTA stats go, and, sure enough, the season just gone stands alone in terms of players resulting above that threshold:

I’m not going to go into the why of that here – Proper Football Men can discuss that better than I can (hello James @PlanetFPL! (ps best podcast out there by a mile, I listen every week)). But the fact is that last year was the highest scoring year ever in the Premier League. 1084 goals eclipsed the previous (in a 20-team format) record of 1072 in 2018/19. Could this be a product of factors such as the current cohort of managers being the best we’ve ever seen? Maybe.

But hey, either way, the FPL ramifications were felt too: e.g. the defence being a near-total deadzone for most of the campaign. This has been seized upon by FPL as well in terms of the pricing for 2024/25: defenders have been notably downgraded in price seemingly across the board. To me, that means one thing: potential value. We tend to see distressed assets roar back to fashion in FPL (look no further than Arsenal’s pricing last year), which means paying extra attention to opportunities in defensive investments could be prudent in the year ahead. Some enthusiasm for this could be punctured, though, by the new rules that defenders and goalkeepers now are penalised -4bps for every goal conceded. This hinders bonus accumulation even if they get attacking returns.

It’ll be interesting to see if last year marks the beginning of an era of Goals, Goals, Goals, or if was a mere anomalous high-water mark. We could, instead, see a pushback next year if defensive solidity is reprioritised.

Note: I prefer non-pen xGI, so that’s what I’ll use to assess players throughout this report when I reference underlying data. I tend to see penalties as a bonus to a player’s FPL worth, and therefore prefer to see what players produce (without the spot kicks) as an indicator of value. That’s just me though!

1b – Team Points

Let’s look at FPL points vs league finishing positions:

Some points of interest:

• Arsenal end the year with the highest FPL points scored through the team. Only the Gunners and Man City hit 2000 points, underlining their impressive seasons as mainstays in our squads (albeit more in an attacking than defensive sense for the latter).
  • Given the goaltastic season we had, having those defenders perform well (compared to the rest of the field) makes the difference for Arsenal’s points total: in the much-maligned defensive ranks, they take the 1-2-3 in terms of points scored, reflecting their xGC of just 27.9 collectively for the 2023-24 season.
  • Arsenal end up with 6 players (Saka, Odegaard, White, Havertz, Rice (surprisingly) and Saliba) in the top 20 raw points scorers, with a further 3 players (Gabriel, Trossard and Raya) in the top 40. This is the highest proportion of any team. In fact, of the top 40-point scorers in FPL, Arsenal players comprise 23% of all points scored by these players – only Man City and Aston Villa scored double digits in this regard.
• When looking at the data it becomes clear just how far ahead the top 3 are compared to the rest of the pack. Arsenal outscored City by 132 points. They, in turn, outscored Liverpool by 164 points collectively. Newcastle are then 122 points behind the Redmen, and then Chelsea head the pack beneath – again, some 94 points below the Magpies.
  • This underlines how, apart from a few exceptional individuals (e.g. 200 clubbers Son at Spurs and Ollie Watkins (you have to write his name in full, that’s the rules) at Aston Villa), most viable FPL assets are usually concentrated at the top clubs – the yawning gap between these clubs’ totals and the rest is testament to that.
• The largest disparity between real life finish and FPL points scored are seen positively at Brentford (+5, thanks largely to the likes of Mbeumo and Wissa) and negatively at West Ham (-5 due to floundering in Moyes’ last season, with the honourable exception of Bowen and some other mids)
• Sheffield United fail to score over 1000 points – I think that’s the first time I’ve ever seen that!

Now we’ve looked at the teams, let’s have a gander at players – starting with Lesser Talisman.

Analysis 2: Lesser Talisman

In this step, we look at which player scored the most points for each team, which I call the “Lesser Talisman” due to its innate simplicity.

Here’s 2023/24’s Lesser Talisman Ranking:

Key points:

• Palmer’s outrageous debut season is rewarded by his enthronement as Lesser Talisman King. It’s an oft-repeated point but, given he didn’t start for Chelsea until Gameweek 7, it’s a mad total.
  • Fun fact: Palmer averaged 7.6 points per game over the 32 games when he was a starter (yes I know he’s missed some games, but I cba). If he had played from the off, he’d (assuming he started each game and produced the same etc etc) have been on course to hit the 280s, making him the highest scoring lesser Talisman since Salah in 2017/18. Cold indeed.
• 25% of the Lesser Talismen are in the forward position, with Ollie Watkins top of the pile.
  • Fellow striker Solanke reaches the top 5 too, which is a great achievement for a player who plays for, with respect, a less fashionable club than Ollie Watkins. It was his best points total, and in the underlying data he hit the numbers he deserved: 21.7 npxGI, 22 goal involvements. The Bournemouth striker is one to watch for next year, even at the 7.5m pricetag. Consistency is a virtue across 38 Gameweeks. To me, he epitomises Talisman Theory a little.
  • Notably, both achieved above 20 for non-pen xGI last year (Ollie Watkins 24.2, Solanke 20.3), but the former not being on pens and still realising 32 (excl. FPL) goal involvements is quite incredible. He deserved more than just the small bump to 9.0. Ollie Watkins was also 4^th for shots on target last season, meaning he’s likely to be favoured by the tweaks to the bonus system.
• Sandwiched between the two strikers are Son and Bowen. Despite a disappointing end to the season as exertion and injuries took their toll on Spurs, Son managed to achieve his hat trick of 200 club entries.
  • Mr Dani Dyer (Bowen) is, a bit like Solanke, another epitome of Talisman Theory: a comparatively mid-priced player who is the apex predator in terms of points scoring for his team. Also, a bit like Ollie Watkins, he achieved more than 20 goal involvements sans penalties last season. Bowen achieved the 200 club in 2021/22 and ran it close again this time. This consistency also makes him one to watch when the fixtures smile kindly especially at 7.5 m.
• Despite a high points total, Saka coming in with just 11.1% of his team’s output to make him the Lesser Talisman speaks volumes of the situation at Arsenal – there’s less of a focal point, meaning FPL point scoring is more spread around per Arteta’s process-driven attacking setup. In of himself, our star boy was streets ahead of his nearest teammate Havertz in terms of non-pen xGI (21.2 vs 15.9). He was also the 6^th most fouled player last season, something which now gets rewarded in BPS. Following Havertz’s reclassification as a forward, alongside a quiet year for previous counterpart dangerman Martinelli, focus is likely to again be on the England man – albeit we may see some interest in Havertz to fill out the forward slots (more on him later!)
• Mo Salah just does Mo Salah things – although his powers have been allegedly on the wane, he still tops the league in terms of non-pen xGI for the year gone by (pipping Haaland by just 0.01 on 27.3). We’ll need to see how he slots into the system purveyed by, er, his new manager, but with very kind opening fixtures I’d wager he’s likely to be in many teams and possibly the most captained come Gameweek 1.
• To move us on, I’ll highlight two results that Lesser Talisman throws up which are perhaps surprising: Foden and Gordon come out on this measure as their teams’ Talismen, rather than Haaland and Isak. Akin to Saka, both score relatively lowly in terms of the actual proportion of points scored vs their team. In my mind, that’s mostly due to one thing: appearance points (and associated clean sheets in FPL): both appeared in 35 games this year vs Haaland and Isak in 31 and 30 respectively, which just about nudges the midfielders’ numbers above the strikers’.

Now, as I say every year, I find this analysis simplistic. Another way to put this: vanilla in the extreme. This is demonstrable in the chokepoint of players between 10-12%, which is too bunched up to tell us anything useful. 

If we’re doing objective research well, we should ask: how can we improve this analysis? 

The key to answering this question is remembering the insight we’re looking to generate from this: our focus is on identifying Talismen using the most effective method possible. 

As Lesser Talisman doesn’t quite get to that, we need to sharpen our data set. 

I’ll do this via the next step, which is where we remove “team-based points” through generating a metric that I call “Talisman Points”, so we can home in on individual metrics like goals scored, assists, and bonus points to create our “Greater Talisman” metric.

For this purpose, “team-based points” – meaning things like appearance points and clean sheet points (including negative points incurred for multiple concedes) – are removed from the data. Disciplinaries are retained as they are meted out individually.

Why? 

• On removing appearance: Of course, minutes played is hugely important in terms of picking players – arguably the most important, in fact, especially in terms of FPL Review. I am not arguing this isn’t true. But, in this specific use case, these points aren’t as relevant. For the purposes of this analysis, understanding individuals’ unique contributions is what’s important.
  • For example, if a player plays 38/38 games for 90 mins an individual scores 76 points by default as a baseline, which skews the data. In 2023/24, we saw only a few players like Saliba play every available minute – in the past, the likes of Conor Coady and Jack Cork furnished this example well.
• On removing clean sheets: Yep, it’s a double whammy for minute-heavy defenders and goalkeepers. But, again, the reason for doing the Talisman Theory analysis is not to uncover the players who contribute to collective point scoring, but instead to identify players who make the difference for their teams in terms of scoring goals or those who got the assist [he said it.gif]. This deals with some of the “bunching” I mentioned earlier– particularly for a club like Arsenal where defenders scored so many points.
• On keeping bonus: Like it or lump it, bonus is a big part of FPL. Elements such as defenders keeping clean sheets clearly contribute to bonus points being scored, so maybe it could be argued that these could be excised too. But the fact is that these points are just the kind of individual points we’re looking for – players earn them through their individual contributions on the pitch, so they stay.

Right, now we’re all agreed, let’s elevate this “Lesser” analysis into something better…

Analysis 3: Greater Talisman

Nb: I’ve omitted the relegated teams so we can focus squarely on who’s left – I acknowledge the researcher bias behind framing the data this way yet think this is the optimal way to go about it.

How to read: each team is listed, alongside their greater Talisman. Individual points and %s are expressed, and the table is ranked by the %. Relegated teams are omitted.

There we go.

More variety and better distribution, which uncovers improved insights.

But one thing doesn’t change: Palmer was definitively the Talisman King last season, with (relative) clear blue water between him and second place. This is also true on a net points level (ie rather than %), where he outscores Haaland (who overtakes Foden as Talisman by this analysis) by 20 points.

It’s fair to say no-one saw this coming (other than Kieran @FPLDiscomfort, who will no doubt be jabbing his finger at his preseason tweet!), which makes it even more remarkable.

Palmer has been denigrated in some circles as a pen merchant. But, despite those penalties coolly dispatched (9 scored from the spot), Palmer is in fact far from said pen merchant: he ended the season 5^th for non-pen xGI, which underlines the season he had in an otherwise disorganised Chelsea side. He also had the most (non-FPL, i.e. FPL assists discounted) goal involvements last season (33).

Chelsea have a tough start at home against Palmer’s old club Man City but drop into a fine set of fixtures between GWs 2-8. Come Gameweek 1, I still think his EO will be high – especially as there’s a preference among the less-engaged crowd to plump for last year’s top scorers when making GW1 selections. This isn’t nailed on, though, with Palmer being awarded the highest price rise between seasons in FPL history. As a result of his heroics last campaign, he’s now a legitimate premium in his own right at 10.5. This means he’s now an intriguing “choice pick” rather than an auto-include. And could there be alternatives in the Chelsea ranks…?

Anyway, good process, FPL (I sincerely mean this).

Further notes:

• Greater Talisman sees no less than 9 forwards emerge as their team’s key man – 4 more than we saw in the Lesser Talisman results.
• Ollie Watkins again runners up to Palmer. He’s got a nice early season run which may well mean people going without from Gameweek 1 will need to have a plan to bring him back in sooner rather than later: at the time of writing, there’s no reason to believe his consistency will be impinged on next season.
  • I was shocked he was just 9.0m when the prices emerged. Even though it’s his first 200 Club, Ollie Watkins’ stellar season coming, as noted, without penalties to pad out the 37 FPL goal involvements in 37 starts is a pretty astonishing performance. It feels like a case of FPL gaming the system a little somehow to fit a pre-devised pricing structure: after 175 points in 2022/23, he only received a 0.5m price rise last season to a start price of 8.0m. He’s figured in the top 10 for non-pen xGI over the last couple of seasons (7^th, and 3^rd) and has the output to match. There was no way in my mind he’d be below 10.0m. This feels like a gift for a consistent player, whose appeal will only be burnished by the bonus point adjustments as well. We should take advantage of Ollie Watkins as an effectively discounted premium: that price is feels incredibly cheap, both in the raw FPL data and Talisman.
• Although Bournemouth’s net points scored overall is low, we need to give some serious props to Solanke again – on the podium as 3^rd best Greater Talisman of the campaign. Effusive praise is due for his improvement this year compared to his debut season for the Cherries – he went from 13 non pen xGI in 2022/23 to the 20.2 I previously mentioned. Iraola’s appointment no doubt played a significant role, too, once things started to click around October time.
• Bowen again figures highly here, but an indifferent fixture list for West Ham is likely to put people off to begin with as they adapt to life under new manager Lopetegui. He’s one to consider when fixtures brighten up in the teens.
• Let’s highlight Mateta, a surprise name in 5^th, now:

• Mateta Got Better

It’s fair to say Jean-Phillippe Mateta had never been a player of real interest to FPL managers. Since signing for Crystal Palace in 2020/21, he’s had an, at best, insipid time of it, registering 8 goals in 3 seasons plus a solitary assist. He’s been in and out of the XI: fellow strikers Benteke and Edouard have been preferred for large tranches of his tenure in South London, which means he’s certainly had to bide his time.

What happened last season following the appointment of Oliver Glasner as Eagles manager in February has been extraordinary.

I mean, just look at this:

The Frenchman simply became a different animal over the final stretch of the season.

He once told The Athletic he believed he could be one of the best strikers in the Premier League, and he certainly could lay claim to that as Palace stole the show at the business end of last season.

A large part of that is the change in how he’s deployed, displayed in the drop in assist numbers pre and post Glasner: he was much higher up the pitch, had service from the likes of Eze and the now departed Olise, and the transformative January signing of Wharton helped diminish the need for him to come deep to receive the ball.

There’s uncertainty over his staying at Palace – “Has he peaked, both in ability and saleable value?” is a valid question. There are also the twin issues of Olise needing replacing with someone as equally creative and Eze needing to be retained for last year’s attacking trident to function as well as it did for the season ahead.

There’s also the question of overperformance: Mateta scored 16 goals from an xG of 10.9, the 3^rd highest overperformance in terms of G-xG in the league last term. He also had the 3^rd highest shot on target % of any player last year, which will be rewarded more in bonus nowadays. Can he keep it up? Or was it merely a purple patch?

Either way, inevitable charges of recency bias aside, Mateta was arguably the second biggest surprise package last year behind, obviously, the Cold One.

*

• Salah and Bruno handily cover off their respective teams in terms of Greater Talisman. Salah is Salah is Salah (one for Guardian Football Weekly listeners), so I’m not going to repeat what I say every time about him. To turn instead to look at the Portuguese, it certainly was a quieter year by his standards as an, at times, shambolic Man Utd side (riven by injury) stumbled their way through the season. He’s normally near the top of the charts for non-pen xGI (3^rd in 2022-23, 8^th in 2021-22) but last year he was down at 14^th (albeit with a higher non pen xGI than 2021-22) in a year when we saw record numbers with 20+ by that metric. However, now Ten Hag’s future is somewhat more secure, there’s players coming back from injury, and new signings are undoubtedly coming, I’d never count him out of the equation – especially with a good run of fixtures from GW21.
  • I’ll also quickly slip in a mention of Rashford here – he’s down to 7.0 again as his boom-bust cycle endures. This is a player with one 200 club and two 170-point finishes who has yet again (as with 2021/22) had an off year for a myriad of reasons. But, as we saw in 2021/22 when he ended the season with 205 points after an initial price of 6.5, he’s one to never write off – a bit like I mentioned with the defence, he’s a distressed asset who could pay dividends for early investors at his new price of 7.0.
• Despite coming 5^th for net Talisman Points, Saka languishes in 12^th overall in terms of proportion of points scored. Don’t let that put you off though: I’ve already mentioned his numbers, and it’s worth underlining again how Arsenal scored the most points of any team last year. Even in the Greater Talisman analysis, there’s still a clear spread when it comes to attacking points but he’s nonetheless the Talisman when it comes to the underlying data. I’ll focus on his team-mate Havertz later, though, who may just compete for our attention.
• Haaland and Isak pip their midfield team mates to Greater Talisman. This shows cutting the data to look at non-appearance points can change the picture a little. However, as we’ll find out in just a second in Sloppy Seconds, it’s bloody close. Especially when it comes to the Toon pairing.

Well, there you go.

Palmer smashes it. He’s the Talisman King, and, although no-one could have anticipated it at the start of the season, everyone could’ve guessed it at the end.

Let’s have a look at our extra analysis, Sloppy Seconds, to see if there’s any further insight to glean…

Extra Analysis: Sloppy Seconds (aka Which Teams Are The Most Talismanic?)

What I do here is look at the distance between the Talisman and the second highest scorer of Talisman points per team to see which teams are outright Talismanic, and where there’s a spread.

Here’s the data (again with relegated teams removed):

How to read: The table shows Team Talisman Points, Talisman, Sloppy Second, and Distance between the Talisman and Sloppy Second both as an integer and as a %. By reading across, you can make comparisons per team. My highlights are in red.

Notes:

• Palmer’s brilliance is underlined once more. Chelsea were by far the most Talismanic team out there – the “Cole Palmer Team”, if you will. But will it be the case next season? New signings are certain under Chelsea’s recruitment practice; the likes of Nkunku (now, puzzlingly, a 6.5m midfielder) are back on the scene; and a new manager with new ideas in Enzo Maresca is in place. It’s 100% one to watch, especially as Palmer should be afforded extra time off following England’s run to the final of the Euros meaning a later preseason start.
• Solanke, Ollie Watkins and Son all outstrip their seconds by above 9%, which again points to their sides being the more talismanic out there. Solanke – provided he remains on the south coast – should continue this into next season, as should our hero Ollie Watkins. But will Son? Richarlison – now reclassified as a forward – seemed promising in fits and starts in the Postecoglu system and could well narrow the gap if he can find his form for Spurs… if he’s the starting striker.
• All in all, about 2/3 of the teams out there (omitting the relegated sides) were somewhat talismanic if we have a 5% cut off at the Gross/Joao Pedro diagonal. I don’t think that’s particularly unexpected; we can, as noted at the very top, intuitively grasp who the Talismen are and, often, the data bears that out.
• Saka still manages to put 4% between himself and Havertz, but I’d veer towards Arsenal not being a Talismanic side last season.
• But there are two teams of particular FPL interest worth talking about who were most definitely not Talismanic – or didn’t have an individual, but rather twin Talismen: Man City and Newcastle.

*

Scandi forwards beat out English midfielders – just.

Between Lesser and Greater Talisman, the Talisman mantle changed hands most notably at Newcastle and Man City – where in Lesser, the Talismen were Englishmen Gordon and Foden, the revised figure in Greater reads Isak and Haaland for their respective clubs.

Let’s look at what happened, this time by looking at the Talisman Points data among all players, not just per club:

I’ve highlighted three teams here: Arsenal, Man City and Newcastle.

As a test case, we can see that Saka’s got a fair bit of distance – relatively speaking – compared to fellow Gunners Havertz and Odegaard.

He’s sandwiched between the two City players – Haaland and Foden.

We can see that, in terms of FPL points, Foden outscored his Norwegian teammate.

But if we remove appearance and clean sheets, he gets eaten up by the robot.

This is a function of how Talisman Theory works in this analysis – but it’s still mightily close between the two of them.

One quirk regarding Foden is that last year he was the biggest overperformer by a long way in terms of G-xG – +8.7, hugely ahead of Hudson-Odoi and the previously highlighted Mateta in 2^nd and 3^rd on ~5ish. There’s a question that naturally presents itself: is it Son-esque “finishing skill”, with those delightful long-range pearlers, or is it luck? Where Foden’s concerned, it’s probably the former. It’s one thing to bear in mind, though, especially if we back him should Haaland’s record high price make us baulk at the robot’s inclusion longer term with the Englishman looking decently costed at 9.5. He also took the 2^nd most shots on target last year (2 behind Haaland’s 50), meaning he’s nicely placed to gain from the changes to bonus points awarding.

This brings us to Newcastle – and, looking back at the data, it’s close: just 2 attacking points separate Isak from Gordon.

Isak outperformed Gordon last year in the end in terms of non-pen xGI (19.3 to 17.4) but, like Mateta, this was predicated on a serious tear down the home straight having had a disrupted season prior to that: the Swede managed 93 of his 172 points (54%) in just 13 Gameweeks, an average of 7.15 points per Gameweek, following his return to action against Arsenal in GW26. Which is fantastic.

Gordon was more of a solid performer through the course of the season, and, lest we forget, was another slightly surprise package at the start price of a mere 5.5m. A 183 season isn’t to be sniffed at, and he’s more than earned his 2m price hike to 7.5m. A quick aside here: apart from decent non pen xGI, one thing Gordon excels at is drawing fouls for penalties. He got 5 of these last season, more than anyone else in the league. Extra routes to FPL points are always good – especially if, like me, you owned both the penalty winner (Gordon) and taker (Isak) at points last season. He was also fouled the 7^th most last season, which now awards BPS.

All in all, what I see here is a divergent picture focusing narrowly on Man City and Newcastle. At City, I’d expect Foden and Haaland to be too expensive to pair – with this pair of Talismen, you want one to “cover the other”. But for Newcastle, you just might be able to slip Gordon in alongside Isak and get both Newcastle Talismen – they cost 7.5m and 8.5m respectively. I’d feel the Swede is looking likely to be in most teams given the Magpies’ opening fixtures and his electric end of the year last time out. For longer term players, there’s a whiff of Callum Wilson and Ryan Fraser back in the day at Bournemouth about this duo. And it’s a relationship that could feasibly strengthen, especially because Newcastle not being involved in Europe meaning a focus squarely on the league during a relatively kind opening run.

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So that’s Sloppy Seconds – an interesting look at which team are more or less Talismanic.

Let’s move on to one final bit of analysis: Exit Velocity

Exit Velocity

The aim of this analysis is to show us who ended the season strongly in terms of scoring Talisman Points and therefore might be worth looking at next year – tentatively forecasting that if they ended the season strongly, they may “pick up where they left off”.

Obviously, there’s a bit of a logical stretch needed here, and I accept that – as I sit here writing this in mid-July, many things could change ahead of GW1. I’d like to state for the record (before Analytics-inclined individuals like my friend Jack start frothing at the mouth) that I’m as sceptical of “form” as they are – any idea of “momentum” will also of course be checked by the fact that there’s a summer in-between seasons, and there will, of course, be transfers and injuries and other factors in preseason which may change things too where teams and players are concerned.

And yes, I know some teams had doubles (and more doubles) and some didn’t down the home straight, which needs to be borne in mind during the below.

Let’s have a look at this data, then – it’s the top 20 players in terms of scoring Talisman Points over Gameweeks 29-38:

How to read: table sorted by net Talisman points scored through final 10 gameweeks, alongside proportion. Also identified if a player actually was their team’s Greater Talisman.

Some notes here:

• Cole Palmer. Coldly consistent! There was no let up by him across the final 10 Gameweeks, further burnishing his Greater Talisman king credentials.
• Mateta scored the most points as a proportion of his team’s overall team attacking points scored. In fact, it should come as no surprise to any of us who lived through the final 10 Gameweeks of the season that all 3 of Crystal Palace’s attacking trident feature in the top 20.
• As mentioned, Isak’s barnstorming end of season performance sees him 3^rd highest Talisman Points scorer across the final 10 weeks – that final thrust saw him pip Gordon as Newcastle’s Greater Talisman.
• Foden and Bruno duked it out for a spot in our teams back in the 30s when we were looking at buys in, and both were worth their salt in terms of individual attacking points returned.
• Elsewhere, I like the look of Gibbs-White as a potentially mid-range pickup when the fixtures suit – such as the start of the season coming! Yes, they were chasing safety at the end of the campaign, but MGW their catalyst: he had the best npxGI of any Forest player last season, coming in at 21^st overall – one place behind Odegaard. A 6.5m price is pretty decent.
• A quick word on Bruno Guimaraes – he was the most fouled player last season by quite some way (108 times, 14 more than second placed Jordan Ayew and a whopping 33 in front of third placed Kudus), something which is now rewarded with BPS in the changes made.
• Joint 6^th with Bruno (just 1 point off the top 5), is Kai Havertz. Let’s have a quick look at him to round this section off.

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High on Kai

It’s fair to say Kai Havertz’s purchase last summer caught many on the hop.

It was a huge surprise, with many writing off as a puzzling error Arteta’s decision to move the lanky German across London from city rivals Chelsea for a princely sum.

It took a while for him to find his place in the Gunners’ system. His arc eventually took him from an initial deployment as more of a roving 8 to his final fit as an erstwhile frontman, supplanting Gabriel Jesus from the team.

It’s fair to say he flourished towards the end of the campaign, and his overall score of 180 points meant he achieved 0.5m price rise, while his change in position on the field has been recognised in reclassification as a forward.

Looking back at Arsenal lineups last season, it seems like the 4-1 victory over Newcastle in February (GW27) was the first time Havertz outright started as the paper no9, following a decent performance moving into the slot during the 5-0 victory over Burnley.

Just for fun, let’s have a look at the pre and post CF positioning:

It’s all a bit approximate as there were times when Kai was deployed as a centre-forward during the season before the arbitrary watershed I’ve signposted here, but this is nonetheless highly encouraging. For comparison, Greater Talisman Saka averaged 6.58 points per game over his 35 appearances, so potentially (all things being equal) we’ve got a really interesting asset on our hands – Havertz’s points as a centre-forward, at 7.58 per game, translates into a 288 point season.

(Of course, his redesignation as a forward means he loses 1 point for a goal, and clean sheet points, but there’s more bonus on the line per goal.)

Either way, I’m really interested in seeing if I can fit him into my drafts – even if the forward line is looking congested ahead of Gameweek 1

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So that’s Exit Velocity. It’s a bit shaky in terms of the rigour of the analysis, so take it with a pinch of salt.

Let’s move on to the end.

Evaluation

Caveats first: 

There are lots of ways to analyse FPL data. You may disagree with the method or the findings, or indeed think a different approach is better. Perfectly reasonable – but, if so, you do the work and show how you can do it better (but please credit and don’t brazenly steal others’ work or ideas!) 

Context is key. Some teams and potential stories haven’t got a mention here, sorry. There are always many stories to be found in a large data set, and I’ve had to excise many in the interest of (relative) concision. But the fact is I’m obviously not saying that players from those teams aren’t worth considering. This leads me to… 

Talisman Theory is part of – not the full – picture. This article isn’t claiming to have solved FPL, nor be the most important bit of information you should use when picking your team. The fact it is evidence-based means it should be worthy of consideration, but please weigh this analysis alongside others you may have read, listened to, or made yourself before making decisions. It’s meant to be a weapon in your armoury, not the whole arsenal.

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So, what have we seen this time around and, crucially, what does that mean looking into next year?

Here’s some thoughts that struck me as I ran the analysis:

Goals, Goals, Goals meant the Gunners’ defensive performance sets them apart and that means there may be real bargains in defence in 2024/25. I’m not entirely sure this is the beginning of a trend – having those 10 players at 20+ npxGI seems anomalous – but if it does look to be going that way again next season we’ll need to react accordingly. That means decimating the defence, aside from the one or two teams displaying some semblance of solidity. FPL seem to have reacted to what we saw, via a seemingly blanket downgrade in defensive pricing. What we need to bear in mind, though, is it could go the other way, too –football managers could react to the goalfest of 2023/24 and move to tighten things up. If so, the defence could be where bargain gems are located for the 2024/25 season. Maybe we could even see big at the back again! I do think that the newly instituted penalisation of defenders for conceding does temper optimism about a resurgence currently, though.

The 200 Club recovery points to increased options and strategic avenues, and long may it continue. It’s great for the game that there were so many players scoring 200 points, aided and abetted by a kind pricing system last year which helped to fit all those players in ahead of Gameweek 1 last year. Fortunately, the pricing ahead of the opening weekend for 2024/25 doesn’t seem to echo last year’s picture. That creates difference, diversity, and debate in FPL, which is broadly a good thing: The template can be challenged by other players who have the capacity to score highly, meaning that there’s more fun can be had (notwithstanding EO!) That’s as long as one of the more expensive players (eg Salah to Saudi) doesn’t disappear any time soon – in which case, we’ll be able to fit everyone into an identikit team. The changes with 5 rolling transfers make me feel optimistic that there are going to be avenues of differentiation where the heavy hitters are concerned; people will be in different situations depending on your team and your transfers available, meaning deciding to  “stick or twist?” becomes more important than ever before. I’m excited to see what strategies emerge to maximise point scoring potential among the Talismen.

Cole Palmer’s cold fire came out of the blue. He’s the Talisman King no-one saw coming, but he monstered FPL last season. We always see someone come through and have a storming season from nowhere, and the case of Cole Palmer – as with the likes of Danny Ings and, in flashes, players like Jesse Lingard in days gone by – again reiterates how we need to trust both our data and, unfashionably in these days of model-led decision making for some, our eyes on certain players prior to their explosion into the mainstream. FPL moves so quickly now, meaning gains from individual players marginalise quicker than ever before as they begin to shoot up the points rankings. It’s an eternal truth that getting these players early is key – and, maybe, it’s heightened a little further now due to the proliferation of FPL information. More than ever, taking a chance on players early, hoping you’ve got the real McCoy, is to be recommended to get ahead of the pack. A player like Nkunku may fulfil that brief from the outset.

Ollie Watkins & Solanke exemplify Talisman Theory. Neither of these players emerging as Talisman was a surprise. But what that does do is underline how Talisman Theory helps us with our thought process: when you’re out fishing for a player from the likes of Bournemouth in particular, it remains a zero-sum game in FPL: in most scenarios, just get the Talisman. Otherwise, you’re probably trying to too clever and will fail (a pitfall I often fall into). Ollie Watkins in particular feels like an absolute gift to FPL managers due to his consistency under Emery coupled with his first tranche of Gameweeks. It’ll be difficult to overlook him as a “discounted Premium” in fantasy.

Mateta is the exemplar of the new manager bounce. It’s often derided, but highlighting the Palace striker’s transformation under Oliver Glasner sheds light on how players’ fortunes can be turned around by a new person in charge, who maybe sees something in an individual the prior incumbent(s) did not. The Premier League probably has the highest standard of managers ever, as the fusty old brigade has been replaced by laptop-clutching analytics lovers who have a heavily honed, usually exciting, style of front-foot play. When one of those kinds of managers is installed, be on the lookout for potential Talismen-in-waiting that stand to benefit. Liverpool, under Slot, could be a place we could look for an unexpected hero to emerge by that thought process. Or perhaps if Ten Hag leaves Man Utd early in the season, then look out for a game-changer.

Kai Havertz could be a game-changer next year. In the same vein as Mateta, Havertz stands out as a player who came to prominence later in the campaign, benefitting from positional clarification at Arsenal. These kinds of tactical tweaks in-season should also be closely observed, as we can see the galvanising affect that they can have on players which could well lead to a lot of points once they’re in situ as a productive cog in their team’s machine – especially if there’s the usual naysaying when such changes occur. I’m very interested in putting the German in my side from the start – especially if I need to save money within a “twomium” setup if one goes with Haaland and Salah.

Conclusion

It’s important to bear in mind this is a snapshot in time of the game; next year, we may well see a totally different story. Back in 2022, when I wrote the last edition of this, there was one team which wasn’t Talismanic at all: Chelsea. How the turns table. However, reports like these help us identify and analyse trends which are arising and, through the findings I’ve reported, can help to forecast how the season ahead may look.

Essentially, you shouldn’t expect this coming season to replicate the last one: as always in FPL, each season brings new heroes, new villains, and Mo Salah will score over 200 points.

This year will be different with the changes to the format. But I think that, at the end of the day, Talismen come and go, but intuition will always guide us toward the probable main points scorer in every team. And backing them in FPL is usually the right call.

Thanks for reading.

You can find me on X at @WGTA_FPL. I run a podcast called Who Got The Assist? along with @FPLPricey, available at all good (and bad) pod platforms, and on YouTube. Check us out!

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