Newcastle United FPL: Who To Own, Captain And Avoid

Newcastle's £5.0m Defence: Worth It Despite the Ugly Start?

Twenty-one points over six gameweeks from a £5.0m defender that hardly anyone owns — well under 1 in 10 managers have Malick Thiaw, and our model rates him the best route into this Newcastle side. That's the headline. The small print is the fixture list, so let's be honest about it.

Newcastle open with LIV (H) and TOT (A). Nobody is buying a Newcastle defender for those two, and our numbers agree — this ranks as a tough run for clean sheets, and Newcastle themselves grade out as a mid-table defence right now, around 13th in the league on our projections. Same story going forward: roughly 13th for attack too. This is not an elite unit you back blindly. It's a solid one you buy at the right price.

The right price is the point. After the opening pair, the run softens properly: BOU (H), LEE (A), HUL (H), COV (A). Newly promoted opposition twice, and Bournemouth and Leeds are winnable shut-out fixtures. Thiaw is the pick of the bunch — usually good for 3-4 a week with clean-sheet weeks pushing him to 6+, and at £5.0m that's honest money for honest returns. Lewis Hall is the alternative if you want the attacking involvement of a full-back, though our model actually likes Thiaw's overall package better. Botman's out there at similar numbers but sits behind both in our order, and when three centre-halves cost the same, you take the one the model trusts most.

Elsewhere, Horníček at £5.0m is a quietly decent keeper punt — save points keep goalkeepers ticking even in weeks without clean sheets — and Wissa at £6.0m is the budget forward option, though a mid-ranked attack facing an average fixture run means he's a squad-filler, not a star. Roughly 5-6 points most weeks between them, nothing that wins you the gameweek.

The romance-free read: don't buy this defence for GW1. Do buy it for GW3 onwards, when four of five fixtures are genuinely kind and the entry fee is the cheapest it gets.

The call: buy Thiaw for GW3, bench him against Liverpool and Spurs if you're early. He's the best £5.0m Newcastle have — just don't pay for the two weeks you can't use.