Aston Villa
Villa Park
Aston Villa FPL: Who To Own, Captain And Avoid
The call — Emiliano Buendía takes Villa's penalties, their free kicks and a share of the corners — every dead ball at Villa Park runs through one £6.0m midfielder — and our model still likes a £4.5m full-back better. That tells you everything about where the value sits in this squad, and it isn't the pretty end.
What has not being with FFIQ cost you this season?
One squad, picked before a ball was kicked and run for six gameweeks on three transfers — no hits taken. Scored on FPL’s own results.
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Let's be honest about what you're buying into. Villa sit in the bottom four of the league for attack in our projections and only marginally better for keeping the ball out, and the fixtures do them no favours either way — after Hull away it's Forest, Spurs away, Brentford, Newcastle away and Manchester City. That's a run where goals will be scarce and clean sheets scarcer. So the question isn't "which Villa player hauls" — it's "which Villa player is cheap enough that his floor pays the rent".
That's Matty Cash. He starts every week, he's £4.5m, and he's on corners — which is about as much attacking involvement as a budget defender ever offers. He won't win you a gameweek. He'll play 90 minutes, pick up the odd bonus-flavoured return, and free up money for the players who actually score points. That's the whole job description at his price, and hardly anyone owns him — fewer than one in ten.
Buendía is the only attacking route worth a second look, purely because he takes everything and next to nobody has him. But you're paying £6.0m for set pieces in a bottom-four attack facing Spurs, Newcastle and City. That's paying for a ceiling this team can't reliably reach. And spare a thought before anyone gets excited about Jackson up front — he's £6.5m, sits at the bottom of our Villa order, and a striker in the league's 17th-best attack against this fixture list is romance, not value.
The rest — McGinn, Barkley, Kamara — are honest footballers who start, but midfielders at £5.0–5.5m in a blunt team are dead money when the same price buys into sides with actual fixtures.
The call: if you need a £4.5m defender who genuinely plays, Cash is a perfectly sensible enabler — buy him and think about him never again. Everyone else in claret and blue: leave alone until the fixtures turn.