£4.0m Defenders and £4.5m Forward: FPL Insights

The final weekend of pre-season threw Fantasy Premier League managers exactly what they crave in August: clues. Not vibes, not training pictures. Concrete selection hints from Hull City and Ipswich Town – and they mostly centred on the cheapest players in the game.

At Portman Road’s end of the conversation, the £4.0m defender landscape is sharpening. At Hull, it’s still a fog.

Ipswich: £4.0m clarity, £4.5m chaos

Union Berlin 2-4 Ipswich Town

• Goals: Clarke, Emersonn, O’Shea, McAteer
• Assists: Davis, Walle Egeli x2, Mehmeti

Gary O’Neil has stopped experimenting. He named the same back four that started Ipswich’s penultimate friendly, and with the season days away, that matters a lot more than any July kickabout.

Dara O’Shea, Issa Diop and Jacob Greaves – all £4.0m – were supposed to be locked in a “two from three” centre-back battle. That script has changed. O’Shea has been pushed to right-back, with Greaves and Diop paired centrally and Leif Davis (£4.0m) flying down the left. In possession, it often looked like a back three with Davis playing like a winger.

O’Shea’s new role carries a tempting upside. He curled in a fine goal here and will have more licence to join attacks. But when you’re shopping in the £4.0m bracket, managers usually want one thing above all else: dependable defensive returns. On that front, Diop looks the safer bet. He’s the classic DefCon accumulator – the type who quietly racks up baseline points while others chase the occasional screamer.

Davis is a different conversation entirely. He ended pre-season with more attacking returns than any other Ipswich player – four in total – and added another assist in Berlin, whipping in a cross for Jack Clarke (£5.5m) to score. At times, Davis was stationed higher than Daizen Maeda (£5.5m), with the Japanese forward shuffling inside to cover when the left-back surged on.

The question now is simple: can Davis finally turn promise into consistent FPL output in 2026/27, two years after frustrating managers at this level? Some promoted centre-backs last season, like Esteve and Ballard, churned out DefCons in around half of their starts. Davis will need to make his attacking numbers impossible to ignore for managers to pay the extra over a cheaper, steadier £4.0m centre-half.

Clean sheets from these budget defenders would help, too. Ipswich’s new goalkeeper Kjell Scherpen (£4.5m) hasn’t fully convinced yet. Union’s two goals weren’t howlers, but they were the kind that leave a keeper quietly annoyed with himself. It’s early, but the jury hasn’t filed back into the room just yet.

Higher up the pitch, Sindre Walle Egeli (£4.5m) crashed into the FPL conversation. Listed as a forward, he started and delivered two assists – one for Emersonn (£5.5m), one for O’Shea – and finished pre-season with the fifth-most minutes in the Ipswich squad. That’s not fringe-player territory.

There is, though, a clear warning label. Walle Egeli started on the right flank here after operating as a No. 10 last week. In both positions, he faces heavy competition: Abdul Fatawu (£5.5m) is returning from a knock, and Julio Enciso is about to walk through the door. Enjoy the £4.5m chaos merchant while he’s in the XI, but don’t build your season around him.

One more subplot: Jaden Philogene (£5.5m), who scored 12 league goals last season, finally made his first pre-season appearance. His summer has been clouded by transfer links, and there’s still a real chance he’s playing his football somewhere else by September.

Hull: rotation, risk and one nailed £4.5m keeper

Hull City 0-0 Nice

This was not a thriller. For FPL managers, though, it was still instructive.

Elliot Stroud (£5.0m) went straight into the side on debut, starting on the left wing. Three other summer signings arrived from the bench for their first minutes: midfielder Lucas Gourna-Douath (price TBA) and centre-backs Lucas Herrington (£4.0m) and Nobel Mendy (£4.0m). Another new attacker, Joe Gelhardt (£5.0m), didn’t feature at all.

“Because he had an injury. He has an injury from Leeds, three weeks already gone. I expect in two weeks he will be on the pitch with the team. Right ankle,” head coach Sergej Jakirovic explained afterwards.

Despite a bruising injury list, Hull did at least welcome back John Egan (£4.0m), Jens Hjerto-Dahl (£5.0m), Paddy McNair (£4.0m) and Liam Millar (£5.0m). Egan and Hjerto-Dahl both started, giving the XI a distinctly Championship flavour: eight of the 11 began life in the second tier last season.

That’s unlikely to last. At centre-back, Egan and Semi Ajayi (£4.0m) got the nod for this final friendly, but the sense of a looming reshuffle is hard to ignore. Herrington and Mendy were eased in from the bench, and Mendy, the club-record signing, looks an obvious threat to the incumbents’ minutes. For managers eyeing early Bench Boosts, Ipswich and Coventry’s £4.0m defenders already look more appealing from a fixture standpoint. Add Hull’s rotation risk into the mix, and the Tigers’ budget backline becomes even harder to trust in August.

The uncertainty doesn’t stop at the defence. Up front, Oli McBurnie (£5.5m) currently has very little competition, but that may change quickly.

“I hope also we will bring, in a few days, another option for the striker position,” Jakirovic said.

Behind him, two £4.5m midfielders – Regan Slater and Matt Crooks – are just about hanging on to their starting berths, helped by injuries to several potential rivals. Gourna-Douath, on this evidence, looks more likely to challenge Hjerto-Dahl than either of them, with the Norwegian still playing his way up to full sharpness. Hull continue to be linked with more central options, which only deepens the uncertainty.

On the pitch, the contest with Nice was cagey. Most of Hull’s threat came from dead balls. Slater and Mohamed Belloumi (£5.0m) delivered dangerous corners, and Egan, Hjerto-Dahl and Mendy all had half-chances from set pieces.

Belloumi stood out. He was the attacker most likely to make something happen, carving out Hull’s best open-play opportunity for himself before seeing his shot beaten away. Beyond his flashes, Jakirovic’s side struggled to open Nice up.

One position, though, looks settled. Konstantinos Tzolakis (£4.5m) is almost certain to start Gameweek 1. He impressed again here, producing an excellent double save late in the first half and handling everything else with authority. On this evidence, he’s going to be very busy this season – which, for FPL managers, might be exactly the point.

Budget defenders, a £4.5m wildcard forward, a workhorse goalkeeper: the cheap seats are filling up fast. The question now is who you trust when the real stuff starts.