Nottingham Forest FPL: Who To Own, Captain And Avoid

Now the good news, because there is some. The other end of the pitch is a different business entirely. Forest's defence sits ninth in our rankings — comfortably top half — and crucially, the fixtures are kind to it. Leeds at home first up, then Coventry at the City Ground and Crystal Palace away inside the first six. Our model rates this a genuinely favourable run for clean sheets, and clean sheets are the whole point of a defender's existence. You don't need Forest to score to bank points from their back line. You need them to be organised and boring, which — happily — is rather their thing.

The honest caveat: Liverpool away and Spurs at home sit in the middle of that run, and no defence enjoys those. You're not buying six shutouts; you're buying a back line that should clear the bar in the softer half of the fixtures — Leeds, Coventry, Palace — and you bench or grit your teeth through the nasty ones. That's a perfectly good deal at defender prices. It's how sensible squads get built.

The trap here is symmetry. Managers see a team with decent fixtures and buy the attacker because attackers are more fun. Don't. Fun is not the currency. When the model says worst attack in the league and a hard run for goals on top, the ceiling on any Forest forward is a shrug and the floor is a string of 2-pointers while your rivals' picks actually do things.

The call: Forest defenders and the keeper are live picks for the opening gameweeks — buy one, start them against Leeds, Coventry and Palace, and don't lose sleep benching them for the Liverpool trip. Forest attackers? Leave them alone entirely. There is no version of this run where they're the answer.